Comfy Aquarium | Website

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Comfy Aquarium

An idle-style game for relaxation!

Comfy Aquarium is an idle-style game designed to create a tranquil and soothing environment for players seeking relaxation. Dive into a world of serenity as you build and customize your very own virtual aquarium. As an idle-style game, Comfy Aquarium uses a laid-back gameplay approach. While you can actively interact with the game, Comfy Aquarium is designed to provide a soothing experience even when you’re not actively playing. Watch as your fish gracefully swim, aquatic plants sway gently with the current, and ethereal music fills the air.

Basic Information:

Genre: Relaxing, Idle-Style Clicker game

Platform: Mobile, IOS

Target Audience: Anyone often stressed seeking a method of relaxation

Game Rating: E

Our Idea

Our goal was to design a game with therapeutic effects. There are already a lot of aquarium games out there, but we wanted to create something that is truly relaxing. We know life comes with a lot of stress and our goal was to make something that could bring tranquility to people. Sometimes, even playing games can be stressful and we want to take our game in the opposite direction. There is something about sitting back and watching your fish swim around that is very nice. Doctors offices’ often keep aquariums as a means of building a calming environment. We want to replicate this feeling in our game where players can look forward to chill, laid-back gameplay.

My Project Role

Lead game designer
Lead UI/UX designer
Visual artist

Research

We are aiming to design a therapeutic aquarium game that perfectly balances the playability and relaxation of the game, so that players can relax in the healing aquatic world to relieve the stress in real life.

Other groups have created very similar products. Some of these include inspirations that we had for our own game. One example is Tap Tap Fish, which is also another aquarium game that is designed to help players relax. Players can decorate and fill their aquarium with cute fish and watch them swim around. Tap Tap Fish is also an idle-style game. What makes Tap Tap Fish unique, is that it has a built in AR mode which allows users to be fully immersed in their aquariums.

Another genre of games that helps with relaxation is farming simulators. An example of a farming simulator is Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley has a therapeutic effect for players because it allows them to play the game at their own pace. It is also very open-ended which gives players a lot of options for how they want to play the game. Some other examples of farming simulators include FarmVille, HayDay, and Cities Skylines.

Open world games are another group that can have therapeutic effects. Open world games provide huge worlds that players can take their time exploring. Minecraft is a great example of an open world game that a lot of players can find relaxing. Minecraft has a very soothing environment and is also very open ended giving players a lot of ways to play the game. Some other examples of open world games include Genshin Impact and Breathe of the Wild.

We conducted a short analysis on some of the games mentioned above:

Games

Pros

Cons

Tap Tap Fish

(Idle game)

Great graphics, very pleasing to look at
Overall designed to be relaxing
Customizable, great for players with creativity
Has a great idling system letting players enjoy the game without having to play too much
Very satisfying

Has a lot of events, makes collecting stressful at times
Events have too much content, forcing players to be constantly on the game
Some content is locked behind paywalls

Stardew Valley

(Farming simulator)

Overall designed to be relaxing
Overall designed to be relaxing
Has a lot of room for creativity in how players want to play
Exceptional graphics
Nothing is locked behind paywall

Can be hard to find others to play multiplayer with
Gameplay can be slow at times, especially walking around
Some content can take a long time to reach

FarmVille

(Farming simulator)

Sense of having something to care for
Satisfying to watch farms expand over time as players leveled up and obtained new resources
Had some social aspects

Consumed a lot of time and energy
Required players to constantly come back to the game
Made players feel bad about not coming back to play
Some content is locked behind paywall

Minecraft

(Open world)

Has a lot of room for creativity in how players want to play
Decent graphics
Can be very relaxing depending on how you play
Lots of goals and end game options for players to explore
Nothing is locked behind paywalls

Can be frustrating at times, depending on how the game is played; things such as deaths, loss of items/structures
Gameplay can be slow at times, especially walking around

Genshin Impact

(Open world/

Gacha game)

Incredible graphics
Caters towards different audiences
Great storyline
Exceptional farming system
Doesn't require too much daily commitment

Feels really bad to miss events
Is a gacha game
Some content locked behind paywalls
Does encourage players to play the game often (once a day)

Survey

We also wanted to gather some information about others’ thoughts on some topics relating to our game. Using a Google Forms survey, we asked participants about stress/mental health, aquariums, and games; in particular, gacha games.

Section I - Stress/Mental Health

For this section, we wanted to see how often a general population might get stressed. Since most of our demographic is students, we know that they often face a lot of stress with daily activities such as academics, balancing schedules, work, relationships, etc. Young adults might also be facing stress from work or relationships. Our survey shows that 56% of participants answered they do have stress often from a number of reasons including school, work, family, and relationships. (Figures 1 & 2) We also asked about what kinds of methods people used to counter stress. The most common answer was playing games, followed by sleeping and listening to music. 93.8% of our participants said that their strategies do work very well for them. (Figure 3)

Figure 1: How often did our survey participants feel stressed?

Figure 2: What contributed to our survey participants stress?

Figure 3: How effective were counter-stress strategies?

Section II - Aquariums

We then asked participants about their experiences with aquariums. Our participants seemed to have an overall more positive response towards aquariums. 80% of participants said they do enjoy going to aquariums (Figure 4) and 60% of participants have owned one before. (Figure 5) 90% of participants also mentioned that they believe aquariums can be helpful in improving mental health. It was surprising to find that so many people enjoy aquariums, which gave us more confidence in the development of the game. Participants were then asked about the pros and cons of owning aquariums. The most common answers for pros were being able to have something to take care of or being able to enjoy/watch your fish. Almost all participants mentioned maintenance as part of the cons of owning an aquarium.

Figure 4: Did our participants think aquariums could help with mental health?

Figure 5: Have our participants owned fish tanks before?

Section III - Games

We first asked participants what genre of games they enjoyed. Sandbox games ended up being the most popular. Then we went more specifically into gacha games. Many of our participants had experiences playing gacha games with a wide range of how much they enjoyed them. (Figure 6) Participants were asked about the pros and cons of gacha games. Good gameplay and artwork were among the most common pros. There were a lot more complaints about gacha games. These included the excessive paywalls and how much time and effort you have to spend on the game.

Figure 6: Do our participants enjoy gacha games?

Main Takeaways & Insight

A lot of people do enjoy playing games as a stress reliever
Music and sleep are also very popular stress relievers
Gacha games generally seem to have more complaints than compliments
The biggest complaints for gacha games are paywalls and how much time and effort you have to invest in them

Brainstorm

Once we’ve defined our problem, we used our survey data to brainstorm and organize possible features.

Miroboard that our team used to ideate and collect our ideas

Scrapped Ideas

While there were many features we couldn’t implement (due to the size of our scope), these were a few of the notable ones that we decided to scrap since they did not align with our project goal.

Random colored fish

Our original idea was to use a gacha system for fish where each fish the player obtained was assigned a random color. We scrapped this idea because it was too random and created some frustrations. Since we want our game to be stress free, having a random color system would seem a bit too hardcore for a casual idle-game. Our survey data also showed us that players often get frustrated with gacha games when they don’t obtain the items they are looking for.

Feeding fish & care system

A traditional aquarium requires care and maintenance. We considered adding a feature that would simulate this however ultimately decided against it as this could bring unwanted stress to the game. Introducing a system like this might make players feel punished for having not completed an action.

Final Design

Our final game design features the following mechanics:

Currency - universal currency collected from idling
Shop - main hub for obtaining fish and other items
Treasure boxes - used to purchase fish
Customized fish coloring - create custom colored fish!
Decorations - enhance your aquarium with purchasable decor
Customized aquarium settings - optimize your aquarium with custom settings

User Experience

The user experience should be incredibly smooth and as least frustrating as possible. Since this game is all about being able to relax, there should be no confusion with the functionality of the game. This should not be a very busy and stressful game. Players will not need to perform a lot of actions in order to get the full experience of the game.

Game Flow

The game progression will scale as you buy more Treasure Boxes and upgrade your aquarium. Treasure Boxes get more expensive the more you purchase them (up to a certain point). Players will need to allocate some of their resources into upgrading their currency production to compensate for the increasing prices.

Outside of scaling progression with currency, there is no real progression in the game. Comfy Aquarium is designed to also have sandbox elements where players can make build and customize their aquarium to their liking.

Game UI & Visual Design

Our UI is designed to be very straight forward and have only a few primary functions. This is to ensure that our game navigation is simple and helps with the relaxing experience. Having a complex UI would be contradictory towards our vision for the game being relaxing and easy to play. We want player’s experiences to be as smooth as possible without any road bumps, especially with the UI. Starting with a full site map, we created several artifacts that would help us design our UI.

Site map of the game navigation created using Miro. This map displays all the pages of the game along with their functions.

Extremely rough storyboard sketches of the in-game shop function

Early low-fidelity wireframes developed using Figma.

Sample of more detailed mid-fidelity wireframes created on Adobe Illustrator

High-Fidelity

Finally, we constructed our high-fidelity designs in Adobe Illustrator. We went with a very basic overall feel to keep the visuals simple, straightforward, and easy to look at. The primary colors of our UI are shades of several shades of blue (light, regular, and dark) that fit with the aquatic theme of our game. Our choice of font was Futura, since we felt that it delivered a very modern and simple feel to add towards the simplicity of our UI. We kept a very straightforward feel throughout the UI to minimize the time that players have to spend looking at it to encourage players to spend more time on the aquarium visuals.

Sample of high-fidelity UI design created in Adobe Illustrator

Artwork

Fish

The fish are the most important aspects of the game. We went through a few iterations starting with conceptual artwork. We wanted a variety of fish types and we experimented with several different ones. We also made the decision to stick with freshwater fish for consistency purposes. Although, visually, our game has the look and feel of an underwater scene, the fish we picked are ones that you might be find in an actual aquarium.

Concept sketches of fish

Upon receiving feedback, we changed our art style a bit to fit a more cute and cartoonish, yet simple and mellow art style. Originally, our concepts were a bit too detailed and some of our designs also had jagged or jarring edges which would bring the artwork away from a calming and relaxing environment. Changing our art style kept our artwork consistent. We feel that the new art style we adopted also aligned with the goal of our game. We also experimented with different color combinations. In our final design, we chose to give each fish just one or two colors as there needed to be space for players to customize their fish.

Our final design for the fish drawn in Adobe Illustrator. The seemingly empty space will be filled with players' choice of color

Players choose the primary color of their fish. This is an example of the Arowana in three different colors

Clams & Treasure Boxes

To keep consistency, we also used a slightly different but mostly similar cute,cartoonish style to create the other parts of the game such as the clams and the treasure boxes.

Treasure Box sprites

Clam sprites

Backgrounds

One of the customizable features of our game are the different tank backgrounds players can choose from. Each background has different lighting and gives off different moods. The backgrounds are designed with different combinations of layers.

Different backgrounds that can be selected in-game

Animations

Some parts of the game have animations to make them feel a little more lively. While we did not have time to animate as much of our game as we would have liked, we felt that we had enough animated items to where our game did not feel too flat or unlively. In particular, we gave one of our “rare items” an animation to make it feel a little more special when players obtained one.

Treasure Box sprite opening animation

The "rare item"

Decorative plants with subtle animations to give the aquarium a little more life

Development

Comfy Aquarium was developed using Unity. Our team included two game developers that specialized in helping with the development and code of the game. Twice a week, our team of designers met with the developers to discuss what the next stage of development should be. We followed a timeline prioritizing the most important aspects of the game before moving on to the smaller details.

Screen recording from Unity of developers working on the background animations

Play Testing & Changes

Our team had the chance to conduct a couple rounds of play testing for the features that we had completed. The two main features that we wanted to focus on in our testing were the Treasure Box shop and the decoration system. In addition, we also made changes in various other areas including adjustments to the tank lighting, text adjustments for clarity, visual indicators for clarity, quality of life changes and bug fixes.

The most notable changes were in our Treasure Box shop. The original design for our Treasure Box shop was a bit confusing. Players did not understand that they needed to select a color before opening a box. To address this, we reworked the layout of the color sliders and how they functioned. In our original design, we used color sliders that had RGB values. However, this proved to be confusing and made it hard to pinpoint exact colors. We then tried using an HSB based color slider. This version also had similar issues where it was quite difficult to pinpoint exact colors. Finally, we moved away from using sliders and instead tried a panel that used HSB values. This proved to be much easier to use as it gave more of a visual indicator to help players select the exact colors they wanted.

Left: First version of our Treasure Box shop using RGB values, it was hard to pinpoint exact colors

Center: Second version of our Treasure Box shop using HSB values, we added a visual indicator for the colors in the slider but it was still hard to pinpoint exact colors

Right: Final iteration of our Treasure Box shop using HSB values, we switched the sliders into a panel to give a wider visual indicator in selecting exact colors, this design proved to be much more effective

In our play testing, we found that most of our UI and navigation was pretty clear. It was designed with the intention of being very straightforward and simple without too much complexity. Our play testing revealed a lot of areas that were either bugged or not working as we had imagined. To solve this, we had to go through our data and the whole app to make sure all areas of the game to find all of these areas. Some areas we did not realize were problematic until we had conducted our play testing.

Game Balancing

In order for a game to be enjoyable it should be balanced in all phases of gameplay. In our game, since we are using a shop system, prices of items and currency production should never feel as if they are too much (making the game impossible or extremely tedious) or too little (making the game feel too easy). We chose to use a scaling currency system that scales with the amount of currency players produce throughout the game. It will still feel progressively easier to obtain items but should not be too easy. Below are charts that we used to show the different shop prices at different stages of the game. Unfortunately, this was something that we did not get to play test, but it is definitely something that should be tested as a near perfectly balanced game is not likely to be achieved immediately.

Clam Levels & Price, Pearls per tap

Oyster Levels & Price, Pearls per bunch

Mussel Levels & Price, Pearls per second

Tank Levels, Number of Fish, & Price

Tank expansion levels, price, and number of fish.PNG

Treasure Box Levels & Prices

Final Game Showcase

Currency

The universal currency in Comfy Aquarium is Pearls. Pearls can be earned through idling and a few other methods. Pearl production can be increased by purchasing and upgrading clams. Each clam will unlock a new way to earn pearls through idling. Pearls can be used to buy items in the shop.

Pearl

icon

Shop

Spend your Pearls here!. The shop is your main component to progress through the game. Buy new fish and decorations to enhance your tank and customize it to your heart’s content. Upgrades for your tank are also purchasable through the shop and will allow you to unlock new features and bonuses.

Treasure Boxes & Custom Fish Colors

Our Treasure Box system allows you to have control over what kind of fish you can have in your aquarium! Each Treasure Box purchased from the shop will contain 1 out of 5 possible fish. Different types of Treasure Boxes will have different sets of possible fish. The odds for each fish can also be viewed through the information tab. While the fish that you get is random, the color of fish is completely under the your control! Using the color panel, select which color you would like your new fish to be and all Treasure Boxes purchased will contain that color fish. Wanting to switch it up? Change the color panel again to a new color to begin unboxing a new color fish.

Decorations

Decorate and enhance your aquarium tank with decorations purchased from the shop. Place them however you want in your tank, giving your tank a unique look. Our decorating system makes it easy to place and store decorations. Changing things up in your tank will not take long at all.

Customized Aquarium Settings

Finally, our game features custom aquarium settings where you can choose what kind of feel your aquarium has. Change the backdrop and lighting of your tank from a select number of backgrounds or change the flow of your aquarium. You can change these settings whenever and to whatever you are feeling.

Conclusion

Future Updates

Now of course, there were still many things that could be refined. Our play testing revealed many areas that could be improved. We did our best to address and make improvements, however there are still many areas left untouched. Although we probably would not be updating the game anymore, here are some of the things that could be expected should we update the game.

Quality of Life and General Changes

UI Clean up and refining. Our current UI is very simple and straightforward and while this is intended and does fulfill our goal of making a stress free environment, some areas can appear to be quite bare. If we were to brighten up the UI with some refinement and details then this could be a massive improvement in visual quality.
“Store All Decor” option; option to move all active decorations into the inventory.
Adding confirmation buttons to avoid misclicks (specifically to some areas of the shop and the “Store All Fish” option)
Scaling sell prices; currently the sell price for fish is a flat numerical value. As players progress through the game, the value of their fish decreases since their Pearl production will increase. Adding a scaling sell price will make it so players won’t feel so bad to sell their fish since they will receive something in return.
Erase mode; an easier way to store decorations quickly
Empty history message; add a message in the history tab to clarify that the player has not yet purchased any Treasure Boxes

Larger changes

Adjustments to item prices and currency system. Related to game balancing, this may require a lot more play testing. We don’t want any items to feel too expensive. If players are feeling the dread of having to save up too many pearls to buy something, this is not very fun. On the flip side, although we are leaning towards more lenient gameplay, we don’t want it to be too easy. This is also not fun. Game balancing may take a few tries before it is done right and may never be
completely perfect.
Pity system. Commonly used phrase in gacha games, a pity system refers to a guaranteed drop after a player has pulled a certain amount of times without success. Our Treasure Box system is not entirely a gacha, it is modeled like one so a pity system would be something very helpful towards players. We don’t want players getting frustrated when they don’t get the items that they want. Currently our game does not have a pity system, however we think it would be best if
one was implemented.
New Aquariums. The current design for Comfy Aquarium is based around a single freshwater tank that the player manages. We would like to expand this to allow players to own multiple aquariums. This can give players more flexibility in designing their tanks without having to move things around when switching tanks. Having multiple tanks will give players access to multiple layouts as well as a variety of new decorations and fish.

Other additions

New treasure boxes & new decorations. We designed our Treasure Box system in a way in which more content can always be added. New treasure boxes featuring a new collection of fish can always be added alongside the existing ones. The same can be said for tank decorations.
FAQ. Something that we did not have time to implement was the FAQ menu. We thought it would be a good idea to add a menu with FAQs in case players were confused about anything. Mockups of the FAQ page were created but were not implemented due to time constraints.

Mockups of the FAQ screens created in Adobe Illustrator. Unfortunately, due to time constraints we were unable to implement this feature.

Widgets

Our original intent was to create a widget for the game. Since Comfy Aquarium is a mobile IOS game, we wanted to design a widget that would display a player's tank right on the homescreen of their phone. The widget itself would act almost like a window into the aquarium. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, we were not able to create a working widget. However, we did create mockups for what we wanted the design to look like. The widget is very simple and non-interactive. It is intended to be a decorative item for your homescreen.

Mockup of the widget feature displayed on IOS 14; created in Adobe Illustrator. Unfortunately, due to time constraints we were unable to implement this feature.

Reflection

Given the short time frame, I believe that our team had accomplished our goal of creating a therapeutic game for people seeking a relaxing environment. I am satisfied with the current version of the game and I think that our team did a fantastic job in making this idea come to life.

It is not to say that this project did not come with its challenges. This project was my first time being a project lead/manager. I learned a lot about being a PM and I have also found that it can be very challenging in making sure that everything is going smoothly. It can be quite overwhelming when you have to think about all the things that are going on at once. There were a few times where I wasn’t quite sure if I was making the right decisions but they ended up working out. In the end, I am extremely grateful that I had the opportunity to take the lead on a project that I was very passionate about.

In regards to game design, I definitely learned a lot about design choices and how to determine whether or not a design choice was working. I had a lot of ideas that I was excited for in the beginning, but many of them turned out to not work for the scope of our project. There were many things that we came up with as the project went along. I think that it was for the better as I think the current version of the game is in a good spot compared to what our original ideas for the game were. It’s not to say there are a lot of things to improve on. As I mentioned above, there are still many areas in which I think could be improved/implemented given more time to work on the project.

This project was also the first time that I worked with developers. Usually my projects just involve me coming up with a concept or building a prototype on software that I am familiar with. Although I did not do any of the actual coding, I still had to become a little knowledgeable in that area since we needed to come up with solutions for whatever was not working out. It was a great experience to be able to collaborate with others and I learned a lot about working with others who do not specialize in the same area as me.