Backlog Blogging: Aquarist

Posted on November 11, 2025 by Aywren

Aquarist is a sandbox simulation game in which you create your own business through building fish aquariums and completing aquarium-related jobs. I know that I just posted about Tiny Aquarium last week, but this game differs quite a bit in that it’s not a collecting game, but truly has more focus on the more technical aspects of keeping an aquarium.

For example, every tank you work with you must build from scratch. You start with an empty tank and have to manually add the substrate, fill it with water through the use of buckets, place filters and heaters to balance the water, sometimes you have to tweak the pH as well, and then buy the fish that fit the type of tank you’re building.

While you have the freedom to choose whatever fish you like, you do have to keep in mind whether it’s a freshwater or saltwater tank. You also have to group fish and plants that thrive in a particular temperature range, so you can’t just toss things in willy-nilly and not seem some loss. Fish also need a certain number of plants, decorations, and other fish of their kind to thrive. Though it’s a bit rarer, some fish require pH adjustments to the water. You can see all of this on the fish’s profile before you purchase them.

While all of this sounds very technical, the game does a great job of introducing you to what you need to do through tutorials that give you step-by-step instructions. You start out as a youngster with an ambition passed on by your father to keep aquariums, where you learn the ropes through reviving your family’s ailing aquarium. You then graduate into doing odd jobs for other people, and eventually work your way into opening your own aquarium business from your basement.

You can decorate this little shop, set up about 4 aquariums there, and also stock aquarium and fish-related goods for customers to purchase.

Every day at a certain time, you open shop, customers come in, and they pick you clean of whatever they find interesting. You can either sell aquariums as a whole, or fish as individuals – though I believe they only purchase adult fish who are in a happy status.

As long as fish are happy and adults, they will reproduce for your automatically. But you do have to keep an eye on the tank balance to ensure all of their needs are met to maintain their happiness.

Once your basement business takes flight, you move up to the next step – the aquarium exhibition. The in-game quests take you through this progression automatically, so it’s not all that difficult to achieve, aside from earning the money to buy the location.

There, you have a lot more room to build tanks to your heart’s content. You also can build larger and more varied tanks overall.

You can still take on jobs, and sometimes you get sent special fish that you must raise that pose a challenge. It’s been a while since I’ve picked up this game, so I don’t recall all of these little side quests and mini-missions, but they do help to break up the shop-keeping gameplay loop well enough.

Beyond even this, you can eventually open a full-on oceanarium. I haven’t reached that point in the game yet, as I still have to amass the funds to be able to afford opening one. And beyond even that, the game has a number of themed DLC you can purchase to add more functionality to the base game.

I don’t currently own any of the DLC because I’d much rather get through the base game before I get distracted by additional types of content. It seems like there’s a lot of long-term playability here, though I’ve heard good and bad about some of these packs.

So, if you’re into fish-keeping and aquariums – or you’re like me, and wish you could keep an aquarium but just can’t given the situation – this is a pretty fun little simulation game to scratch that itch. It’s often on sale for pretty cheap on Steam (as it is as of writing this), and there’s a free demo to try out if you want to see what it feels like first.

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