Lemme tell you about Insaniquarium! Deluxe

Insaniquarium! Deluxe is a game developed in 2001 and released in 2004 by Flying Bear Entertainment, Co-owned by George Fan and Tysen Henderson, based in California.

The main idea behind Insaniquarium! was a game that was simple, yet turned into something more, and Insaniquarium! is exactly that. 

[INITIAL GAMEPLAY FEATURES]

On the surface, it appears to be some old, retro, even janky fish feeding game. The initial gameplay is just two fish--known as guppies, which, although normally refers to young fish, is the name of this fish species, no matter the age--which do nothing but swim around... almost. These fish get hungry, indicated by turning pale and frowning, and if left hungry will die. This is where your first feature of gameplay comes into hand. Click on the screen to drop one piece of fish food, and the guppies will swim to it. whichever one reaches it first gets the meal, and turns back to their normally colored, happy self. Rinse and repeat this process until the guppies grow up; they become slightly larger. This, however, is not the last phase of growth. They grow one more time, as an adult.

The second feature of gameplay is money; each fish drops a certain amount of money, depending on their age and type. This early into the game you only have one type of fish, but later on that changes. The baby stage of guppies drops nothing, however it doesn't take long to grow out of that stage. Their second, "juvenile" stage, is where they drop silver coins. These are worth $15 each (inflation be damned). The guppy's adult stage drops gold coins, however, which are worth $35 each. Also, each fish food costs $5 each, but that's never really too big of an issue.

The third feature of gameplay is... (drumroll please)... Aliens! bet you didn't see that one coming. Every few minutes you'll hear an alarm, accompanied by text at the bottom of the screen describing what type of alien is about to enter your tank. When this happens, your cursor turns into a gun, and you must kill the alien by clicking on it. If the alien touches any of your fish, they eat it, making a loud crunch sound with blood particles floating in the water. Upon death, the alien drops a diamond, which is worth $200. It should be noted that shooting the alien pushes it, depending on where you shoot it. So you *can* guide it away from your fish, if it's getting too close.

Finally, for the base features, are the eggshells. Each level has three pieces of an egg you can buy for a certain amount, increasing with each purchase and per level. Once you have obtained all three egg pieces, the level ends, cracking open the shell to reveal a pet. Pets can be equipped at the start of each level (up to three at a time), and come with different perks. For example, the first pet you encounter is Stinky the Snail, who creeps along the bottom of your tank, picking up any coins you might've missed.

Since Insaniquarium! Deluxe has a lot to it, I might explain more in another blog post. For now, if you're looking to buy the game it's $5 on steam, but for the next couple days it's on sale for $1. This is probably the most information I can give you without spoiling much of the cool stuff. Play it for yourself, and let me know what you think! And thank you for listening to me rant about some silly old video game :)