What it is
Fishoid is a browser-based ambient fish tank simulation. You pick a theme, customize the aquarium, and leave it running in the background while you work, read, or relax. It's a passive screen companion rather than a game with goals or scoring.
From the developer
In the developer’s own words, from fishoid.net.
I have built a cosy fish tank simulation you can leave on a large screen and watch from time to time. I like pixel art but didn’t want to be religious about it, so I think of it as pixel art adjacent. This summer, down with the flu, I started a small experiment. It ended up taking about 50-70 hours of my time, iterating over several months. There is a 24-inch display in my kitchen powered by a used Lenovo mini PC (previously it was a RPi, but I had to upgrade to get a better GPU). I used it to show a rotation of my home photos, but now I’ve switched it to show this fish tank. No prior game dev experience, but years of backend development and all the time spent reading indie dev blogs (honourable mentions Factorio and Banished) helped. I used LLMs to give me a hand. It rather felt like playing a game, maybe like Factorio a bit, switching from system design to art direction and back and learning more about game dev to make it look better and better. For me it became a way to express creativity I might otherwise not have had time for. Along the way I learned what marine snow is and how fish swim. One funny story was me curiously asking an LLM if it could find some research papers on fish swimming patterns and styles and base the implementation on that, and it did. I also used it to create a surprise for my wife’s birthday: on the day, three fish with QR codes appeared, each leading to a quest in the real world. But that is another story. Halloween is around the corner, so try the Halloween theme.
Editor takes
“There’s no upgrade curve or long-term loop to crunch, but as a free ambient widget it’s not pretending to be a game—it’s a screensaver with a theme picker.”
“For a 50-70 hour solo project by someone with no game dev experience, this is a surprisingly cohesive little aquarium—just don’t expect mechanics or a win state.”
“The pixel-art-adjacent sprites and theme options give it a gentle retro warmth, though I wish the watery visuals had a bit more motion to watch.”
“There are no runs or builds to chase, and that’s the point—customization is the replay value, so it’s more desktop companion than one-more-run hook.”
How to play
The aquarium runs entirely in the browser. Choose a theme and customize the tank to your liking, then let it sit on screen. There's no active gameplay loop; it's designed to be observed intermittently.
Tips
- Best on a large screen or secondary display where it can run unobtrusively.
- Experiment with different themes to find a palette that suits your space.
- Treat it as ambient decor — glance at it occasionally rather than watching continuously.
Questions
Is Fishoid free?
Yes, Fishoid is free to use in your browser.
What art style does it use?
The developer describes it as 'pixel art adjacent' — inspired by pixel art without being strictly bound to it.
Does it require installation?
No, it runs in the browser with JavaScript enabled.
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