Game Review: Insaniquarium Deluxe for Windows, Mac

You know, I'd really like to meet the person that sits down and decides "alright, I'm going to create a game about fish in an aquarium...and just for the fun of it, I'm going to make aliens invade the aquarium while the fish poop money!". Seriously, who comes up with that? Well here it is...Insaniquarium.

First you start with one lonely guppy and can only have one piece of food in the aquarium at a time. When your little guppy gets hungry his color fades and he must be fed or he will die pretty quickly. Once he's eaten enough this fish will have a growth spurt and start dropping copper coins which must be clicked on to add to your money bank and will disappear soon after they reach the ground. The fish will have another growth spurt later on after which the fish will drop silver coins (more valuable than copper), and one much much later which turns the fish blue, gives him a crown, and makes him drop diamonds instead (much more valuable than silver).

As you gain money you can purchase more fish for more money and for a better chance that you'll be able to save at least some from the aliens. To pass each level you must be able to keep at least some of your fish alive as the aliens try to eat them and buy three pieces of an egg. After you pass the level the egg hatches and give you a new pet that can help you in ensuing levels. When you have more than three pets you must pick which three you'll take with you each level.

Money is good for more than just fish and pieces of eggshell...you can also upgrade the type of food you feed your fish so they'll have their growth spurts faster, upgrade so you can have more pieces of food in the aquarium at a time (trust me, if you have 100 fish you'll NEED more!), and buy better and better guns to shoot the aliens with. In later levels you can also purchase piranhas that will drop diamonds from the start but will eat baby guppies and megafish that drop treasure chests but eat piranhas on occasion.

In addition you can also collect points for playing and buy fish and accessories in the shop for your personal aquarium where you can name each of your fish and set them as your screensaver. These fish need to be fed a couple times a day or so or they'll get sad, but they don't die, they just won't drop any shells for you so you can make more points and buy more critters.

I got this game as a gag gift because of my work with aquarium fish and my serious aquatic addiction (what? It's only 18 tanks!). It's surprisingly addicting to play though only took me about a week of 30-60 minutes an evening to beat all the levels and unlock all the pets in adventure mode, then there's still timed and challenge modes to play around in. Even after all the levels have been gone through, though, it is still fun to play just to earn more shells for the store and zone out for relaxation time.

The graphics are cartoonish and lack the amount of detail that's coming to be expected in this day and age but for a lower-price game it's what's to be expected. The game I have is for the computer (no idea if there's anything out there for the game systems) and can run on Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista.
I've been playing this game off and on for about two years now and have yet to run into any glitches or have it run slow, the screensaver of the virtual tank takes about a minute to load on my computer but other than that everything starts up and plays quickly.

Overall this is a fun little strategy game that's great for relaxing with at the end of the day or if you're lucky enough to have a job that involves free time to play this is a very good diversion. It's simple enough to learn and easy enough for kids, yet the higher levels are still engaging enough to keep an adult occupied.