Steam Gaming: Keeping Virtual Fish with Chillquarium

Posted on October 7, 2023 by Aywren

As of late, I’ve been having a lot of fun with “idle” games – games that let you check in on them from time to time, but mostly run on their own. Chillquarium is similar to the old-skool Fish Tycoon games, just without the punishment of fish death should you forget to check in on them.

The game is very simple, and the super short tutorial only shows you where to go to purchase your first five packs of fish. After that, everything else is up to you.

The learning curve is really gentle, however. While you can feed the fish, they don’t die if you don’t feed them – in fact, feeding just gives them a small boost in XP, which allows them to grow into an adult faster.

There’s no illness or medicines. No dirty fish tanks to clean. You just discover different types of virtual fish, and it’s really as chill as the name of the game.

Basically, when you open a pack of fish, you can unlock a variety of aquatic creatures (snails and shrimp are included). They can vary in rarity (from common up to legendary) and in color (normal, painted, golden and rainbow).

The rarer a fish is, the more income it generates just by being in your tank.

So, the basic idea is to sell off the fish that don’t bring in a good long-term income and use that money to buy more packs. You’re hoping to randomly pull rarer fish and build up a residual income.

Every time you open the game, it dumps money on you based on how long you were gone. But you do have to make sure to check in at least once a week or the income becomes capped.

You can name fish if you want to set them apart from their fellows. You can also lock a fish so that you don’t accidentally sell it.

The game does start out slow as you’re waiting for your first rare fish to grow up and start bringing in profit – they all have real-time growth, and some can take days. But once you upgrade your tank a few times and start buying the higher-priced fish packs, money starts to ramp up.

The cost of some of the decorations are astronomical, but it shows you the kind of money you can be raking in once you get further into the game.

I’m having a lot of fun checking in on my fish for a few minutes a few times each day. Despite the lack of pressure to actually play the game, I’ve put in five hours so far. I certainly foresee me continuing to play as I’m almost about to unlock saltwater fish for the first time!

Recommended?

Yes!

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