Idler creature collector games have taken on a sub-genre all of their own over the last few years. I only dabble in a few of them as the hands-off approach doesn’t always appeal to me, but Joyquarium piqued my interest. The reason why, was that it offered 144 fish, with three variations of each, and plenty of aquarium customisation. A full month of checking in daily later, I’m here to say it’s a good (fish) egg.
The fish are segmented into seven tiers, costing different prices per bag of fish. Each bag gives you four fish at random from that tier, and you can upgrade fish food to increase the chance of getting a rare, legendary, shiny, or colourful fish. Once you’ve bought the fish, they’ll need to grow into adulthood, and this is where the optional clicker element comes in. You can choose to click away, dropping fish food that speeds up the countdown to adulthood for each fish, or you can turn on an AFK food dropper instead. I opted for the AFK approach, which allowed me to focus my time on customisation.
In Joyquarium, you can buy up to ten aquariums. There are three sizes to choose from, but then over a hundred different decorations to place too. Plants, flowers, driftwood, and stones will increase the cash generated from adult fish up to 200%. CO2 filters will increase the tank capacity. Some cosmetic backgrounds and lights can also be purchased. The more tanks you have, the more photo options in the camera filters will unlock. For each tank, you can add on lens distortions, film grain, colour contrast, various focus effects, and plenty of camera tricks to make each tank fit a vibe. Combine it with your lighting, and you can set up some very cinematic or crazy scenes. It is this that makes Joyquarium stand out from the crowd. Yes, the fish part is great, but setting the vibes you want and letting it run as a background to relax and stay calm and focused on a piece of work, for example, is where this game excels.
Speaking of fish, one thing I appreciated was that the grind to unlock things wasn’t stretched out too thinly. After 7 hours across 28 days, I’d unlocked 47% of all fish varieties, and I’ll be continuing to check back in for a few minutes every day or two long after this review to check in and tweak things. I’ve found myself now focusing on completing the encyclopedia of all the discovered fish, which I’m sure will take a lot longer to do, but I’ll have fun casually dipping in and out on my way. When selling fish to make way for new buys, you can padlock your special fish to make sure you can’t accidentally sell them, which is a nice touch. That enables safe use of the “sell all” features, as you’ll only sell your unwanted fins.
Colourful, creative, personalised, and without stretching itself too thinly, Joyquariaum is a treat for the casual idle gamer. There’s plenty to collect and customise, and you can automate all the wait periods to speed up through decorating and AFK feeders. Joyquarium is a relaxing and engrossing entry into the idle creature collector subgenre.
Review copy provided by the publisher. Joyquarium is out now on PC.
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