For years, the range of digital aquarium games that are released each year have oscillated between two extremes: the purely aesthetic “desktop toy” and the complex, systems-driven simulation that demands you manage water chemistry and filter flow rates. Tiny Aquarium: Social Fishkeeping, however, swims somewhere in the tranquil middle – offering the pleasure of taking care of a living digital tank without the need for spreadsheets or the tedium of maintenance. It’s a comfortable game to keep around in the corner of your screen and to check in on from time to time rather than something to dedicate your whole being to, and for that, I do appreciate it. Today, I want to discuss my experience with this game.
Developer: Lunheim Studios
Publisher: Future Friends Games, Gamersky Games
Genre: Indie, Idler, Desktop Companion, Fishing/Breeding Sim, Collectathon
Release Date: June 23rd, 2025
Reviewed on: PC
Available on: PC (Lin, Win, Mac)
Copy was provided via PressEngine (Review Policy).
Tiny Aquarium: Social Fishkeeping is trying to be a lot of things at the same time. A cute little desktop companion, a funny little fishing game, a webchat-based social experience, and a terrifying eugenics-simulator (more on that later!) – all in one!
The gameplay loop mostly consists of fishing, for which you can either head into offline/solo play, create a lobby for your friends and strangers alike, or join a public lobby.
Lobbies can host up to a hundred folks but even with ten or so somewhat active folks in some of the lobbies I’ve joined, I had trouble casting my line and finding good fishing spots because of how crowded it would get. On top of that, I’d frequently click on other people’s ships rather than the ocean, which in turn would make the game ask me whether I actually want to visit this person’s aquarium.
These lobbies are also where the social components kick in. There is a chatbox you can use to yap with folks or to trade fish, and you can check out people’s aquariums either through these places or the “social” panel in the aquarium view. When you spectate other people’s tanks, you can even leave reactions, which in turn award the other person with currencies.
The ideas are there… but, in practice, the social experience feels fairly transactional and rather isolating. People begging for reactions or trades in chat seem somewhat frequent. Similarly, folks appear to be afk half the time or they just ignore the chat window altogether. On top of that, though, when you cast your line and are typing, it’s a bit awkward when you get a bite all of a sudden because you have to stop typing all of a sudden to fish or just not fish at all. It feels a bit weird.
More than anything, though, I’m a bit worried about a lack of moderation options one could enforce but maybe I’m just a worriwart. No idea. Either way, the social experience isn’t great in this game, and well, the fishing mechanics are nothing to write home about either as it’s pretty much just “keep the green bar above the fish” over and over again. I wish the devs would have maybe added some alternatives here, much in the vein of Isle of Jura. Maybe as a toggle or using different tools, unlocking new decorations, something like that.
The other component of Tiny Aquarium is the fishkeeping bit. Fish you catch in the lobbies can be put into your tank(s), where you then have to feed them and clean the glass panes. If you’re ever not able to log in for a while, you can also just freeze the fish tanks without a worry, which is a nice feature.
Fish will grow up after a bit of real time (or using bits and commands if you’re a Twitch streamer) before they generate money or are able to be bred. The breeding mechanics are kind of where I derive my pleasure mainly from. It’s not the most in-depth, of course, but I find it fairly enjoyable, much like the systems that are in place in games like Bobo Bay, Umamusume and Chao Garden. It’s simple… but I can overcomplicate things a ton if I want to!
Breeding influences three different parameters that fish come with:
- Size (Affects the Sale price)
- Fortune (Affects the passive money yields)
- Fertility (Affects the breeding cooldown as well as the double-spawn chance)
As such, you can often go out and catch a large number of fish, then sell the ones with undesirable parameters and use the good ones for breeding. Interestingly enough, interspecies breeding is fully okay, so the game doesn’t care at all whether your Piranha will eat up that Goldfish with the high stats.
On that note, the game doesn’t concern itself with the diets or habitats of fish, either. All fish can survive in your tank together no matter the species… but I kind of also would have loved to have the option of using saltwater tanks and fresh water tanks alongside each other, perhaps even with some bonuses.
Speaking of tanks, this is where I have another thing to complain about: Most of the currency I make from fish sales and the passive income goes out of the window for fish tank upgrades. I want to breed my fish to create some über-fish that in turn will generate me all the money I need! That, however, requires having more tanks and more fish per tank, which in turn means buying upgrades for capacity using the money I generated.
It kind of works as a progression system, I’d like to say, but it also feels very slow and unsatisfying, especially with upgrades doubling in price while only offering 2 extra fish per rank and with additional tanks being locked behind experience levels that feel annoying to play around.
The game also doesn’t merely lock additional tanks behind this level-up mechanic but also upgrades to your equipment, new forms of bait, new items, and various features. This could very much work as a Facebook game, except it’s a paid title with no microtransactions.
There are events and quests in the game, too, which is very reminiscent of that same FB-like social game structure but most of this stuff does not actually encourage community or social interactions, which I find a little bit peculiar.
Overall, I do find the game aesthetically pleasing and rather enjoyable, both in terms of its look when shrunk down and placed on one of my desktop corners (even while I’m writing this review) as well as the breeding mechanics that borderline turn this game into a eugenics simulator, albeit a simple one. It’s grindy but in a stress-free way, and rather than forcing you to check in every hour, you can just leave it running as a desktop companion while occasionally looking after your fish – or even just freeze the tanks to unfreeze when you have some time.
Now, the game is advertised as a social experience… but while it does indeed implement aspects of mobile and social network games, it doesn’t really feel all that social. Much on the contrary, I found it to be somewhat isolating, much unlike Webfishing (which is a fantastic web-based fishing game). So, if you’re looking for a social game, this isn’t it.
That said, if you’re looking for something comfy with a lot of decorating, questionable breeding mechanics, and min-maxing potential… and all of that with the ability to play the game at your own pace, I do think that Tiny Aquarium is a good game to check out, although I am curious to see how long the developers will continue updating it and what will happen to the game and a player’s enjoyment once the community inevitably dies out.
Verdict: Tiny Aquarium: Social Fishkeeping is a charming yet odd amalgamation of aquarium sim, fishing game, and social platform that doesn't quite nail becoming more than the sum of its parts. Its relaxed and cozy desktop companion mode makes it an enjoyable, low-stress background game, in my opinion, but the shallow fishing mechanics, awkward social systems, clunky UI elements, and slow progression muddy the waters. That said, I'd imagine that this might be just the right type of bait to hook all kinds of cozy gamers as well as anyone for a very simplified breeding simulator.
This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.
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