I’ve historically struggled with idle or clicker games, with a few notable exceptions but something drew me into Chillquarium enough to pick it up and give it a try. Chillquarium takes creature collection and idle gaming and mashes them together like an aquarium gatcha game. It definitely scratched an itch for me, even if ultimately I think I’ve learnt that idle games are largely not for me.
Chillquarium starts you off with a single aquarium and a pack of 4 cards. Each card is a fish that you place into your aquarium that will generate daily cash for you (over the course of the day, not all at once every day) so that you can buy another pack of 4 fish cards. In order for the fish to start earning cash, they have to grow into an adult form. As a player, you can choose to wait anywhere from 10 minutes to 7 days for that to happen, or you can speed it up by holding down your mouse button and feeding the fish food to speed their XP growth.
This starts the idle/collector cycle that Chillquarium lives for. There are five categories of fish cards across the game, split between fresh and salt water types. You can buy three aquariums each for fresh and salt water fish and upgrade their size to hold 100 fish each. Across those five categories of fish cards you’ll have common cards, rare, legendary or mythical cards that only appear once every so often to start filling up owning all the different fish in the game. Every single fish has a normal version, a painted version, a golden version and a rainbow version – all increasingly more rare than anything before it. Chillquarium casually places a roster of all the fish you’ve discovered that’s where my gameplay loop focused in on. I had to get that creature collection filled up to completion.
A common fish might appear every few purchases, a common golden fish once every 150-200 purchases. If you want a mythical rainbow fish however, you are going to be slogging away to beat the odds for months. This led me to the perverse behaviour of opening the game daily, selling every fish that wasn’t making me lots of money that I’d already found and buying all new fish cards. I’d then close the game, wait for tomorrow to come and see what had become an adult and sell them off. Rinse and repeat. This was to see what kind of rarities I’d get, and whilst I completed my normal fish collection without issue, the golden and rainbow fish largely elude me several months in.
This might sound like a really hands off experience and you’d be right to think so. Whilst I take pride in keeping my third fresh and salt water spaces as a showcase for my rare and favourite fish to swim around in, I increasingly found Chillquarium transactional. Get in and out ASAP. Part of the reason for this is that nothing else matters except for buying and selling fish. You can add some lights and decorations but they cost a silly amount of in game currency and do absolutely nothing to improve the game experience. The game works as a lovely screensaver though – just put it on mute as the single music track wears thin after two months.
Did Chillquarium get under my skin? Yes. Did it confirm that idle games probably aren’t for me? Also yes. This is a gatcha idle game distilled down to a purist form and for that I give it high praise. I opened the game daily to buy and sell fish like a Pavlovian response. That soon wore very thin after 8 weeks though and I’ve truly had my fill because its too hands off for me. If you are looking for a relaxed, aquarium idle game though – this is definitely the best of the bunch.
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