Today's sponsor is Daku Aquatics. If you haven't tried Daku Aquatics yet, what the hell has been stopping you? Go to daku aquatics.com d a k u aquatics.com and check out their selection of plants, shrimp and fish. Right now if you go to the website, they have powder blue rams, gold rams, Celestial Pearl, Danos, Orange Venezuela Corydoras, and some of the best rice fish I have ever seen. If you haven't tried rice fish, they're a very hardy species that can stand even colder temperatures of water. Check them out at Daku Aquatics and use promo code aquariumguys all one word at checkout for 10% off your entire order. Unfortunately, they only ship to the United States. For now, please bug him on his Instagram feed in the show notes. Again, Daku Aquatics on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, but more importantly dakuaquatics.com D A K U Aquatics for some of the best fish, plants, shrimp you can find. And it does support the podcast Also. This podcast is going to be doing an interview of a developer and a game called Fish Game. For those of you that have never tried the game or purchased the game, we're going to be doing a giveaway. There's going to be some giveaways of the game. Certainly check the show notes for the link for the free giveaway of this wonderful game. This interview was done a while back. Since this interview they've added all lot more to the game. It's very impressive what they've done with this game. I'm excited to present this interview. Definitely check this game out. It's so much more than a game. It's definitely an education tool and happy to present this. So let's kick that podcast. Welcome to the Aquarium Guys podcast. Hello all. I am alone in Studio B. Adam and Jimmy are both gone, I believe on vacation. We're just gonna make up if they weren't on vacation that they are now. Honestly, I think Jimmy wasn't going to show up anyway because he's in Florida and that cyber hack happened with the Microsoft stuff. So he's probably a week from coming home anyway. So rest in peace Jimmy. But I do have of course Dalton in our editor here to help back me up as my temporary co host. Hi Dalton.

Hello.

Otherwise known as Big Daddy for those that are listening at home. So today we'll just get right into our topic. We have a special guest gord from Fish Game. It is a popular game on Steam that you can buy right now. It is a fantastic game that I've spent quite A bit of time playing and going over myself. Gord, it's a pleasure having you on.

Thanks for having me on, guys.

Now, Gord, before we get too far, what is your role in the company?

So I am the studio director of a company called A Shell in the Pit, and we're a contracting studio. We mainly do, like, sound design and music for video games. And it's also like my solo music name, which was. That's how it started. And then I just never rebranded and it. I wound up with a company on my hands and then we actually branched out into. Into game development, specifically to develop pretty much only fish game, because it's just a thing I always wanted to happen and no one else was making it.

So you make it sound like you're one of the crew, but I feel like you wear many hats. You're the owner of the company. It's your idea for fish Game. Give us the details of where this idea came from.

Yeah, it is my idea. It came from being a fish keeper in university, mostly university. And a little after university, I kept fish, mainly South African cichlids, other oddballs, and really loved it. And I felt like there wasn't a game out there that was doing it how I wanted to see it done, I think. And in a way that I think only fish keepers probably understand, in that the animals themselves are much more complex than we think. There are tank dynamics and personalities and almost politics inside the tank. That felt ripe for a game to me. Um, and when I wasn't able to keep fish for a long time after, I, like, moved out of my. My wife and I moved to South Korea for a year and a half. And then we came back and we were living in the city and things were just busy and the living space was small and time was limited, so we weren't able to keep fish. And I was like, I really miss that. Surely somebody has made a simulator for this. And no one really had. Not. Not in a way that scratched the itch.

I can confirm. I've been waiting for a. I want to say use the word simulator, but if you look at games like Goat Simulator, they have kind of bastardized the word simulator for some sort of sandboxy game. But I've been looking for some way that I can take my hobby and put it digitally, maybe even just for ideas sake, or to not be able to spend money on something that I want to try before I buy. And there just hasn't been anything. You know, there's. There's. What was it the game that I grew up with that found the most fun doing that has absolutely no relevance in fish keeping. Was the fish tycoon.

Oh, was there a tycoon game?

It was, it was 2D. It was supposed to be like a fish store tycoon. You were crossing different guppies and different fish. None of them had conventional names. They would literally take the clip art and then just mash like one tail and paste it onto another fish. Nothing was relevant. Nothing actually made sense. There was no water change changes. It was just something silly and flash game esque.

But that was I'm having images flash through my mind. No pun intended.

Right. So when I found this game was immediately locked in, had to buy it, give it a test. And I, I got to admit I'm quite impressed. If those that haven't tried it yet, we'll have links in the description. Check it out. It is on Steam. We'll get into detail. But when we start the podcast, generally we don't talk about software and video games. I'm an IT professional by trade, so I'm going to try to divert my questions less nerdy on purpose. But we always ask people where they got into fish keeping is the starter question. So you said you got into it in college. Was that the start or was that where it really blossomed?

Well, I've always been in, I've been into fish my whole life. Like growing up was always fishing with my dad was like. Or just fishing in general was my number one thing I wanted to be doing at all times. If I ever went camping and there was somewhere to fish, I would be there like from dawn till dusk. And then I think it was university probably after a bad breakup or something. Might have even been late high school. And I got. Got a betta fish kind of on a whim. Betta fish in a bowl. I think it's a probably pretty common story for a lot of people and we kind of wanted to see if it would recreate somewhat in the game too. So I got a betta fish. I got a goldfish, I believe to live with the betta fish. I can't remember if it was in the bowl or not or if I got a little 15 gallon or something. Then the goldfish killed the betta fish. I was angry at the goldfish so I went and got a convict cichlid. And that did not kill the goldfish. Didn't care about the goldfish. But then it grew and then I wound up with the bigger tank. So I might as I was like, well I might as well put more stuff in the smaller tank. So. So. And you know, wound up with three, three aquariums in my bedroom. I. From what I recall, this was when I was still like at home living with my parents. So it must have been like first year university. Yeah. I had a 48 gallon cichlid tank. I had a 25 gallon red belly piranha tank. And then I had a 15 gallon that I think I was just putting like random stuff in. I remember catching like a pike minnow and putting that in that once.

Nice.

And a. Disgusting fish. Worst aquarium fish possible.

Not. Not a fan of the pike minnow, eh?

No, for cleanliness of a tank. They're. They just take, they take the hugest shits I've ever seen come out of an animal.

Where again was this that you would find a pike minnow to put in there? Because I'm trying to like get an idea of what species you could have possibly grabbed.

This would have been in northern B.C. canada.

Gotcha.

Out of, out of a rock quarry.

Those would be messy.

There's a lousy pike minnow.

Yeah. There's some Floridian species that are live bearers that are full on like extended teeth. They look like miniature crocodiles. And.

Oh, wow.

Some, some of those kids that'll go out, they'll capture some of these specimens. They'll put them in and they'll just watch them rip fish fish apart. They're almost like, like a mini barracuda. So they, they'll, they'll have.

Ours are toothless.

Yeah, yours are, Yours are toothless. But extremely, like you said, shit machines.

Yes. And. Yeah. And hardy. They're super, really, really hearty.

Very hearty. So you got the idea that you wanted to do this fish game. Walk us through the steps. First you had the idea, you had this development group that you wanted to put together. You know what encouraged you to jump off the board, risk financial time stress and really put this together to assemble a party and make your dream come reality.

Yeah. So I think the first things I ever did were just trying to do some game designs and spreadsheets because I actually don't know how to program. It's not. I'm a, you know, I write music. That's my thing. But I'm pretty good at spreadsheeting, so I had kind of a RPG going in spreadsheets. That was probably 10 years ago. Abandoned that for a while, but then the thought came back to me and I just threw it out there on Twitter, I was like, if somebody makes an actual. You know, good fish keeping game that is paying attention to these certain things. Or if somebody wants to make that, like, I would throw. I would throw money at it. Because in looking for a game I wanted to play, I found it doesn't exist. And from a business perspective, I was like, well, that's a gap in the market. Then I generally, you know, when I want something and it's not there, or if I like something. What I like to tell myself and what I like to tell, you know, other people that are entering any kind of creative medium is that if you like something, you're probably not alone. You're probably not a precious snowflake. And if it doesn't exist and you make it, there are going to be other people that are also going to like that thing. I got a response on that tweet from the developers we're working with now who are based out of Indiana, Aaron and Ryan. And they said, hey, we'd like to take a swing at that. And so they did just like a very simple prototype, like design, only complete programmer art. Looks looked like paper cutouts, basically to show me that they could throw a fun thing together, that they were competent developers. And I said, this is cool. I committed to, you know, a certain chunk of money. And then I texted my friend Destin, friend, colleague, who runs a YouTube channel called Smarter Every Day that some people have probably heard of. It's. It's gotten pretty big. But we've been working together since day one because, you know, he's got a platform. I just said like, hey man, if I made a game, would you like, tweet about it? And he asked me what it was about and I told him the premise and he was like, hey, call me. So I called him and he was like, this sounds really cool. And it actually sounds like up my alley and up my channel's alley. So I'm in too, if you need extra support. So we became business partners on the development of the game.

We.

So we were able to put more money together so we could start building in unreal and do it properly, you know, like real properly nice.

So most people think that you're like, well, let's just give this a try and find someone. They don't think that you get to put like an Alpha together and try before you buy. But there even is at a point that you invest money in that amount of risk. So you at least have like, here's the concept. At least you pay for your models before you even build a car in that. In that rudimentary Model. When you guys sat down, what was your mvp? And for those that don't know that project management term, it's a minimal viable product.

For the very first prototype, it was quite minimal. I think we had fish that could school. Ironically, we had breeding in the first prototype, which we still don't have in the main one now because we want to actually do genetics and stuff. The fish in the prototype were just, you know, multiplying. That would be easy, but we want them to actually inherit traits from their parents and that kind of thing. We, I think we had eating, dying, little hunger bars going up and down and breeding. I think that's all we had. But it was in a nice little loop and it was already kind of fun to play. So that was the MVP for the prototype. As far as MVP for the main game, that is harder to nail down. We have more like design pillars for the main game. For us, for a sim game, the MVP is what we released, I guess in October, which was again, lots of content, fairly robust behavior systems like solid aquascaping and some chemistry. So enough, enough for it to be fun, but not like full on deep, deep everything in there yet?

For sure.

Yeah.

So for those that have not tried the game, explain them on a high level what the game is so we can tell them it's fish, an aquarium simulator. But talk about these pillars. When you launched the game in October, I was not part of that launch. I have been in this now for, whoo. I'm going to go with a couple months, maybe a little further than that. I dove in it hardcore and I've been very impressed. Again, where we're at. Today is July 24th. You know, tell people the state of the game. What high level does this game do for users that are listening that may want to purchase this?

Yeah, sure. Fish game. Our goal, like our core design pillar that I just mentioned, is we want to recreate the feeling of fish keeping and what we feel is important about fish keeping, which means we've removed the economy, which I know robs. You actually own a fish store, so it might be a bit different for you, but most, most fish keepers are not wanting to worry about the money. Right.

I'm a founder, not the owner. No.

Okay.

That's someone else's responsibility. I just help.

Yeah. So we, we didn't want an economy system. We didn't want people to have to grind to earn things to buy more fish. We still have like an XP system that somewhat functions like that. But one of the things we noticed with a lot of the other games is that it turned the fish into tradable commodities, which I think when you actually keep fish, that's not how they feel. They feel like, you know, pets. We wanted it to be a pet simulator where you actually care about them and it feels like they get to know you a little bit, they grow, they have interactions with their tank mates. You have to balance compatibility with tank mates. So we want the. It was that recreation of the feeling. That's what we really wanted to latch onto. So as far as what you do, you start the game, you get a tank. I think you get three tanks to choose from in size. This is when you start, then you hop over, you can shape your sand, you can change the color of the sand, and then you can start visiting these shops. And the way that you go shopping is you just grab the stuff and throw it into your inventory, which is like your backpack, rather than pay for it. And we're making that exciting by limiting what you can do at first. And also exciting but also not too overwhelming because if we just gave everybody everything all at once, A, people get bored fast and B, they get, you know, decision fatigue and paralysis. So it is this sort of drip feed of new stuff to keep the game interesting and also to make sure people don't get overwhelmed by all the systems all at once. And some of those systems include sickness in health, food, the water chemistry. Water chemistry is there from the beginning. We've got like a camera system so you can take really nice pictures of the fish in game. You can clean your. We've got siphon filters, we've got algae sponges. And these are all kind of unlockable so that you're not just freaking out about what to do at once. And then of course you can also unlock different tank sizes and eventually custom tank sizes. So we've got tanks from one gallon to over 3,000 gallons, which is fun from the game because we want it to be realistic, but we also want there to be a bit of fantasy. And like most people don't get to have a 3,000 gallon tank.

No, not at all.

And yeah, I could go on and on because there's lots. But, and, and of course fish like, that's the main thing that everyone's excited about. That's the main thing that everyone's requesting is just more, more fish. So we do unlock like you start with easier fish and then you get into, you know, the more difficult fish, which might be because they're more sensitive or might be because. Because they're more territorial or aggressive. Yeah, we're still adding fish. I think we've got 130 types of fish right now across over 60 species.

And when you guys add fish in, it's not just like you would go to some other type of games that people have seen where they'll either have something vague like they'll call it a tetra or a blue tetra. You actually are going off of real, not just common names, but actually adding scientific details. You're putting real fish species in this game, not just putting something vague, putting the detail and modeling these things to be exact. So when you have a neon tetra versus a cardinal tetra, you have those variations displayed. Most people, they just put their, their red blue tetra in a video game and call it good. And they'll never touch any other tetra in the, you know, in the vast array of hundreds of different tetras, you guys have very detailed accuracy, which from a fish keeping standpoint, that immediately cuts me off of this is not an aquarium simulator in my mind, and I know I hate using that, that term I spoke of earlier, but I don't, I don't know if I have a better one other than this detachment that we have from real fish keeping to virtualized fish keeping. I was delighted when I went in there and I wasn't just given everything. I saw some people in, in a chat in your discord and we'll have the link to the description for your discord as well. If you want to ask questions directly to Gord, his team, or the community there, because the community answers questions live and you can actually play along with people there. Some of my questions answered just by the community members, but I was delighted to see that you just didn't pop in and immediately get all the fish and all the decorations and a blank slate, that it took time. Build up experience and you still have a chance of getting certain things that are more rare. It very felt gamified. Imagine if you put yourself in Pokemon and suddenly you had all 151 Pokemon available at your fingertips. Suddenly the game would not be fun anymore. So you have both the elements of the full simulator at your fingertips, where you can put things in your backpack, have an inventory, emulate your information. But on the other hand, you're going through, you're experimenting, you're putting fish together, you're seeing how they breed, you're getting your hands dirty, and you're literally feeling the gamification while keeping it true to fish keeping. So just my little moment of, you know, applause as a fan of your product. If it weren't for the fact of keeping it honest, I would not even have you on the podcast, my friend. So thank you.

Yeah, I appreciate it. There's, there's a reason we called it, you know, fish Game instead of Fish Simulator. We, we wanted it to be a game first, to simulator second, but kind of still at the same time, I think we wound up making one of the deeper simulators because it's fun. It's still, we can gamify the simulation.

So for those that aren't listening live, again, we're in Discord. You can find our link to our Discord in the description. Otherwise go to aquarium guys podcast.com bottom of the page you'll find the link to our Discord. And that's where we do these podcast. Forgive the noise, but I'm actually going to launch this because I want to go over a couple different details on this to ask some questions on how the game works, specifically more of the details. But first off is I was impressed because generally in these games you'll see where you just feed them food. You'll have essentially maybe two types of food. You'll have a flake or a sinking pellet. This you have carnivore, vegetarian flakes, tropical mixes. There's a lot of different options. How does that interact in the game? This is where I get nitty gritty audience, so forgive me.

Yeah, all of, all of our fish. You know, like we, we, we did a ton of research. Like, Erin and Ryan weren't super into fish when we started, but Erin is a incredible researcher, so she read through multiple huge books just on fish keeping because we wanted it to. Our main fear was to disappoint enthusiasts, you know, because enthusiasts are, they're either going to be our biggest cheerleaders or our biggest detractors. And there's of course, a certain depth of the enthusiast who will never, never be able to satisfy. We just did a lot of research. So the more research we do, the more we find that kind of every piece of the puzzle is really important. So with the nutrition update that we released probably four months ago now, before, we did just have one type of food, but we wanted to have omnivores, we wanted to have, have carnivores, we wanted to have herbivores, but also in certain degrees as well. So we've actually got a nutrition matrix that you can see if you hover over a fish species when you're in like the My Fish panel to tell you what they eat. And these are generally True to life. So it's. It's part of the whole, like playing, but also teaching part of the game so you can have the fish in the game and. And learn what they like to eat just by playing.

I've actually seen some of the chat in your discord go in there and learn details about. Because generally what I'm see from our communities, we're aquarium people first, and then we find your game and share it in our aquarium community, but people find your game and then learn more about the aquarium. That's what I just get so lit up about. So when people are in there, they learn that these species take, you know, take certain foods, certain care, and then they go look it up to see, is that real? Is that validating? And they do, and they change their own habits because they have that fish at home. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's just. Mind blows how much that one education piece alone can do just in the video game for your users.

Yeah, that's been one of the interesting things because we're going to Aquashella next weekend and we went to the last one. And so it is this sort of like breaking into a new and professional community as well, where we're the only game there. And a lot of people are like, huh, what's going on with this? And something that we were afraid of, and I heard murmurings of, but I think most people that were not so bad about it was that there is a bit of a fear among the professional community that we're trying to, like, replace fish keeping. But I think stuff like that shows that, because we're not for starters, but we want to be a complement to it. We actually want to improve the fish keeping of people that are already doing it, but also, you know, potentially be like a gateway drug to real fish keeping. You know, what's that like saying? I don't know if it's true or not, but, like, most fish keepers quit after like six months, and they quit forever, probably because they have a nitrogen spike or something that kills their whole tank and they get discouraged for sure. And if we want to hopefully train, you know, incidentally, like accidentally train people to actually enter the hobby, if they're doing it for real, they're spending the money more responsibly and then having it be a lifetime thing for them, that's.

A crazy thought to me. Anybody that sees the past development of any type of a pet simulator, everybody remembers Tamagotchi, those little keychain things at least, you know, I'm an old guy. That was My childhood where you had these little keychains where you have like a pet cat and you have to remember to feed these things. And that was supposed to be some sort a pet simulator. If you're in a living apartment and your mom says you can't have a cat, you get a Tamagotchi. Well, did that ever cover it? No. So then they upgraded it. Maybe you had a Nintendo DS when you were older and they you got Nintendogs. I, I have seen cases in my personal life where people gave a kid Nintendogs and all it did was build the hype to have a real dog someday. I feel like this is all it's going to do is Tamagotchis are back.

Oh yeah, they're a big thing thing my, my daughter had to have. She's got like yeah, she, she's got them. They're they're big into Tamagotchis now.

That's cool. I, I, they were awesome. They were a great idea and it was they and they were in our design document. Like we, one of our original elevator pitches was like, you know, we wanted to be 100 Tamagotchis in a tank.

Yeah, Tamagotchi is what was fun. But again like the Nintendogs thing, all it did was build hype to get a dog. It was talking about the dog. You know, when I do a dog mom, if I get to the certain level in the 10 dogs, when can I get a real dog? So if there's ever a fish game element to me all it is a have me get that burning itch. We call the the new tank. We talk about new tank syndrome where you had aren't cycled. But we also talk about multi tank syndrome here in the podcast where you just even if you have nine tanks, all you is think about what I can do for the 10th. When can I get that 10th tank? And I tell you what, playing this game and sitting down for a few hours, especially going through some of the stores and randomizations of items just inspire me to go and spend money on getting a no more natural decor. Finding a plant I found in the game, going, ordering that on, you know, OX Aquabid. It's not been good for me but I do, I do love it.

That's really encouraging to hear. We want to get some partnerships going with some aquarium companies and stuff.

Yes, you can find this plant online right here. Click and buy now for your real tank. That would be evil of you because I would definitely click that shit.

I want to figure it out. It's also hard one of the reasons we're going to Aquashell is to bridge this community. We want to partner with some other businesses. I think it can be complementary, mutually beneficial, I hope.

100%. Some questions we have from the audience. How often are species added to the game right now? You said you had 100 plus.

We have 130 like types. It's a bit tricky. Sometimes it's just a different color. Sometimes it's a new model, new species, but sometimes you can add a new color to make it a new species. So we say we have 130 types of fish right now and the frequency with which we add them usually once every two months. Probably we were doing it more frequently when we. When it first came out. And we're also like, kind of just running out of money to afford adding fish forever. So we're going to be releasing, releasing more regular DLC packages. They'll be cheap. They'll be like, I don't know, three. Three bucks. Three to five bucks.

I actually got a direct message from one of the users here asking how much money they could donate to the cause to have a fish added to the system. In the, in the development steps.

We. We have that in the works as well. We're gonna, we're gonna do a patreon that will have like voting tiers for influencing what, like the next DLC will be and then up tier as well. So, like, you just get the DLCs when they come out without having to pay more. And then there will be a tier where it's just like, add the fish you want and it'll be. It's not super cheap because we've got to pay our modeler for it. And then we spend the time to design the behavior and stuff. So I think it's like 800 bucks, a thousand bucks or something because it's, you know, it's paying. It's. You're paying a worker for sure.

So I was actually picking on you, building up to the waiting for the date of this podcast and message you about Bentley Pasco and I's favorite fish, the weather loach or dojo? Loach. And how you had to have it immediately and how you had to have the one farting fish in your game. Where is the development on that, sir?

Model is done.

Are you kidding?

Yeah.

Wow. All right. I'd take it all back. And here I thought I was just razzing you.

Behavior design is not done.

That's okay. That's the difficult part. I'm assuming.

It's not that difficult, really. It's a bunch of sliders. We spent a ton of time designing the system to design the behavior, so that's something that even I can do. There's no programming involved anymore. It's just. We've got sliders for how fast they swim, a bunch of. We've got the whole animation system. So, like, how much do they bend when they swim? And then. Yeah, a whole list of behaviors, and I just have to turn them up or down.

So I'm assuming farting has to be added, though.

Farting would have to be added.

Okay, good.

Whether or not that's getting in, I'm not sure.

We have bubbles, so it just needs bubbles. That's all it needs. All right, so next question. Oh, go ahead, Dalton.

I do have.

Sorry. I do have a question.

Can you make certain fish eat other fish that are larger than them and infinitely more value? Can. Can you set that as a variable?

Can I, like, can I make a tiny fish be able to eat a larger fish?

Yeah, you know, Yeah. I mean, let's say catfish and an arowana. You know, obviously one of them is worth a lot more money and a prized fish, and the other one is like, just garbage fish.

Could.

Could you program something like that in there?

We have. We have fish eating fish can eat fish. It's like the short answer and. Absolutely. Oh, is there a backstory here?

There is. There is. He's being a bit of a dick. I had black arowana when they were just from South America. That was legal when they're just hitting the trade and it cost me a ton of money and a shovel nose. Tiger catfish that I rescued ate it whole. So he's being a bit of a dick for this one, but.

Big old catfish mouth.

But there is. There is fish eating fish in the. The game, correct?

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Dalton, for that important question. Now, when you begin the game, does it start. Put you in a starter zone where more of the fish are more starter friendly, where people can learn a little easier?

Yeah. When you start out, I think you only have access to two shops. You have. What's the new name? Fish and Cheaps. We used to have something that was more possibly getting us sued, so we changed it. Fish and Cheaps.

And does it rhyme with some particular company?

Yeah. Yep. Yep, it does. And then we were like, I might want to get partnerships sometime. So maybe we'll love it. Maybe we'll change this. And I like the new name better anyway. It's smarter. Yeah. Basically, you start with access to, like, goldfish and betas so, you know, the same fish that people would usually start with. And then as you gain xp, which are like little coins, you can upgrade systems with which aren't built on grinding. It's just. Just every in game day, which I think is about 15 minutes, you get another XP, you can unlock more stores, and that will start opening up more exotic fish, more aggressive fish, monster fish, that kind of thing.

Noise. Can Robs get a Steve achievement? Something. Something ate. Ate by catfish? No, thank you, friend.

That would be funny. We don't have any of our achievements in yet. We'll wait until we're done breeding, but that might be doable.

Well, we're gonna go a couple different niches of the game. We. I know we can't talk about every bit of it, and you just need to get your hands on it and play it. If you're listening to this, it's very, very well worth it. Releases and patches that you guys have put in have really expanded the game. Even when I've done it, I know the most recent that you guys have done is the big one, at least is the gravel. And I was the substrate for the tanks, which has been very impressive. Can you go in a little detail for the listeners on that one?

Ye. When we launched, all we had was sand, and you could do different colors of sand, and you could only have one color at a time. Like, if you switch the color, it was all changing. What Ryan has set up now is that we've got sand, we've got gravel, we've got coated gravel, we've got glass beads, we've got soil that's off the top of my head, tons of different colors, and you can actually layer them on top of each other so you can mix and match. You can do sand art if you want, but you cannot. And you can use it to just, you know, create microbiomes and do more components. Complex aquascaping. It's been really cool. The community's doing some really wicked stuff with it.

And when you guys go through the different types of substrate, you actually shows which one's a nerd, which one actually changes the water chemistry. I was very impressed. And the ui, when you're putting it in, allows you. When you say layer it, it's almost like you're doing the dirt art when you were in school, where you put in the different colors of different sand and you gave it to your mom back home, but you're doing that to the bottom of the aquarium. What the difference is when you first do that in Aquari aquarium It doesn't maintain the pattern. This definitely maintains a lot of the pattern. You're keeping the elements there of the design you intended while still being able to leech or do the nutrients that was intended to have in those layers of substrate, like you said, the biome. But then it doesn't seem to shuffle around when you're doing the day to day activities in your simulated aquarium.

Yeah, I mean, we still have cichlids that can dig holes and mess up your perfect sandscaping. But yeah, no, it's, it's gone very well. We don't have the chemistry systems public yet. So like we will have substrate that affects chemistry. Like and we, and that's built, but it's just not added yet. Because we don't want to do that until we get the equipment in. Because right now if we, you know, add substrate that throws chemistry out of wonk without giving players a means of controlling that chemistry, people might get a little.

I keep, I keep forgetting I might be in the beta. I am in the beta. I'm looking at the client right now. I gotta, I gotta watch what I'm playing with versus what other people are playing with.

Yeah, we don't have a lot of, like, we don't really have a lot of development secrets, so we don't have to. If there's stuff in the beta, that's.

It's coming, guys, you've seen it, it's fine.

Yeah, it's coming.

When your heater blows up, do you shock yourself in the game? No, I don't think you do. Fish, Gump.

The question above that though, I thought was a good one. It said in old sim cities there could be disaster disasters. Are you thinking about anything like that? You know, thinking about power outages, ammonia spikes, things to respond to like that.

We don't want disasters that just happen randomly like they did in the old, in like SimCity 2000 and stuff. I think most people turn those off. I didn't love them. So disasters can happen, but we want them to be disasters that happen and it's your fault and you can find out why so that you can avoid it next time. So. So yes, we can have ammonia spikes. Yes, you can put the wrong fish in with the wrong fish and they can kill each other. Yes, you can pick up a diseased fish from the store and if you overstock your tank a little bit too much, everyone else is going to get sick too. That can all happen. But the hope is we're providing the information just with. You can dive down into the data, like, we've got, you know, all these stats for every fish and every plant, which is a bit overwhelming right now to see what's going on and what they need. So. Yeah, disasters. Yes. Random disasters that you don't have control over. Not so much. Like, I remember I had. I had a heater explode and like superheat a tank once and I was just pissed off. That wasn't like. I wasn't like, oh, good learning experience. It was like, no, that heater sucked and half my fish died.

That's one of the feelings you don't. The vibes you don't want to bring to this simulation.

Yeah.

So what are some of the details that are still missing that are going to be future pillars of the game? You talked about DLCs as well.

So we will be doing a lot of content DLCs for specific fish species, more plants, more hardscape.

Those.

We are still deciding on the order that they're going to be released, but we're going to be probably organizing them from GE for geographic locations. So we'll do like an African cichlid pack and then there'll probably be, you know, multiples of those because there's a billion of them. And then we definitely need another just general Africa pack as well. So actually the. Yeah, the African cichlids would be included in the Africa pack because we've got a. We've got a store called Toto's.

Hypothetically, this is all asterisk right now.

Yeah. Toto's rainforest, which just doesn't have enough fish in it yet. So, like, I want. I want the shops to all have like a fairly similar level of variety over time. And. And with the DLCs, we'll release new free content as. As well. As far as major system updates. What we still have coming is.

My big question is filtration. I don't see like, you know, hang on the back filters, canister filters. It just seems to be an element that just isn't there yet that's coming.

So, yeah, our next big update is that. The next one I think we might be doing in improving plants next. And then after that will be the equipment and chemistry update. And that's going to be a big one. And then after that is going to be the long road into breeding, which is going to be. We don't know what we're doing yet. We know that we can do something, but we don't know what. Yeah.

So in the game, after breeding, we're.

Pretty much calling it done. As far as systems.

Sure. You said you don't know exactly what you're doing yet, but you want some sort of. I forget what. You were worded it as a genome at the beginning of the podcast.

We want some kind of traits. Like we just don't know what unreal is capable of and what our systems are capable of yet until Ryan actually gets in there and starts trying somewhere stuff. But he's been busy with other stuff. We want, you know, the right species that are supposed to breed with each other to be able to breed with each other for the offspring to inherit trait traits from the parents. So we, you know, long term we would like players to be able to, you know, breed new subspecies. But what, which traits we'll be able to do like have inherit we're not sure with because. Or no, we're not sure about yet because we don't know what the technical limitations are.

Sure.

Like we probably won't be able to do like physical deformities. You know, we're feeling more optimistic about things like color, temperament and just. And behavior in general. So I do think it's probably quite possible that you could, for instance, breed a subspecies of like really chill red devils.

Nice. Just breed that aggression right out of them.

Daniels. Yeah, yeah. Or the opposite.

I want to see just really, you know, defecating neon tetras, you know, just want to make them crap like a goldfish. I'm gonna breed that into them. If we could please just.

I mean, we have like, that's in there. Fish have different. There. There are some fish that cause more waste than others. It's in, it's in the back end.

So I have a couple questions just from, you know, my testing and UI standpoint, when you go to these fish stores, you click on a fish store and it loads a tank, or maybe in the future a couple tanks and you'll go to this fish and chips or whatever the store would be, whatever the name was made up as. And some of them are pretty simple. Like you'll go to one and it'll just be a bunch of goldfish in a tank with a colored gravel and you'll see that some of them, you know, maybe a good percentage of the goldfish are in poor health, which is stereotypical of some big box stores. You know, it's not something you haven't seen out in the wild. It feels very. Oh, I've seen this before. This looks like, well, we can pick on one that doesn't exist anymore. Walmart used to be this place. Walmart doesn't sell fish anymore. But, but back in the day when I was a kid, you go in, you see, you know, 50 goldfish in a small tank, and a good 25% of them were half dead. So you go in there and you get that common goldfish vibe. Then you go to the next store, and the next store was much better. You have a tank that was, you know, maintained, maybe has a bunch of angelfish and corydoras. But every time you go to the store, the decor that you can take out of the tanks, the fish you can take out of the tanks seem to be somewhat randomized. And you have. Some of them have names, some of them don't. Explain the naming system versus not naming system.

We wanted to show players that you can name the fish. So just the fact that some fish have names, we just wanted to show players and then some don't. We wanted to show players that, like, hey, they can be named. So when you go into your fish tab and you click around, you'll find out that you can, you can rename your fish to whatever you want. Want.

So I see some of the stats also are randomized. Is that intentional? Like, sometimes you just get a very vigorous fish. Sometimes you get a very lethargic fish, and you just want to make sure that it's the whole game systems at random.

Yeah, those are randomized. They'll be semi randomized because some, you know, I think some fish may. Well, no, I think the traits. Any fish can have any trait. Well, but general behavior will be within a window that is reflective of the species. But those, those specific traits, if they're lethargic or if they're. Yeah, vigorous or Some of them are passive, some are. Some are uninterested. Those. Those are randomized, but they're also limited to a certain number.

I love that comment, Dalton. I do like all this experimentation here without blowing my money and pissing my wife off in real life. Bingo. That right there should be the statement of the year on the, on the bottom of your. Your steam tag for all the adults buying the game. I can set up my tanks, try things out without pissing my wife off. Boom. Send it, ship it. I showed my wife this and she's like, oh, good. Hopefully you can, you can save money and plan better.

Yeah, we've got a lot of. A lot of those comments for sure.

I got a couple different questions I've asked before. There is a. Another discord community called Fishwiki. They're a fantastic group of people, and you guys did a community gathering and kind of A public interview where you went on the discord there and answered a bunch of their users questions, questions about the game. A couple questions came up where in a tank you'll have a fish that maybe an injury happens to. Whether a fin gets damaged, doesn't grow back or a eyeball gets removed from some something that happened to the fish and then permanently for the rest of its life it'll be happy, healthy feeding, but it just won't have an eyeball or a couple fins will be damaged. Is there anything in the game now or in the future that may capture that?

We don't have permaculture, permanent scarring. Right now we do have fin damage both from disease and aggression, but it's all healable at the moment. However, I really liked that idea. It's just going to be a matter of simplicity. Can our systems do it? Do we have the budget? Do we have the time?

Sure.

Like yeah, the, the general answer for like oh, can you do this for our game? Is like we want to. We probably can't afford it. Fair enough.

Enough.

But you know, hopefully we just, we're still selling pretty well. You know, I, I know, I know there's a huge audience out there and we just have to continue getting to them. I want this to be the best fish game and very hard to get better. Then I know we're playing a long game to get there, but so far I think we're, we're doing okay.

Now let's get to the harder questions. Is the man made fish such as flower horns or the Neon Glo fish going to be in the, the game?

Flower horns are already in, I believe. Glo fish, well they're patented so we can't just put those in willy nilly.

The, yeah, the term glofish would be, you'd have to, you know, tippy toe around that name for sure.

Well, they came to our booth at Aquashella and oh, they wanted to talk but I haven't heard from them. Hey, so we'll see if they're still there.

Glowfish people make this happen, happen. Yeah, I'll buy the glowfish dlc.

So yeah, we would like. I'm down. I read up on them. I wanted to make sure there wasn't anything like ethically wrong. And it seems like they're actually, you know, they're healthy fish, they're happy fish and they don't exist in the wild. But neither do any of these goldfish.

And for those, for those that are listening, we sometimes when we bring this up, we've Talked about it in prior podcasts on some of the unethical fish that are out there. There are dyed or dipped fish fish that you'll see there. A lot of them call it fruity. Tetras are a common one. They actually take the white skirt tetra, commonly dip it in an acid mixture, and they permanently bleach the skin with different colorations. It's a terrible process, very cruel to fish. There's also fish tattooing for those that haven't seen it or heard of it, where you can purchase from other countries in Indonesia, Singapore and otherwise import patterns such as hearts, dots, numbers. You can even put marry me whatever you want and tattoo them on common fish such as mollies, tetras and others. There is a, excuse me, 60 to 40% chance of them living. So they let them heal up before they send them and they'll tattoo, you know, neon colors into the fish. That's terrible. Then there's also glass fish that they'll inject dye into, so you'll see like a colored glass fish. Those are all terribly inhumane. The glowfish are genetically crossed with certain DNA where it's coral species, whatever they're using for color, and it's nothing that they're dying, bleaching, dipping, injecting. It's actually part of their DNA that they're growing in. So it's not natural, but it's not inhumane. It's just a different process. So for those that want to look into that, you can certainly message us in our discord. We'll. We'll point you in the right direction. There's an Amazonis article that does it in depth and quite, quite well for those that are listening.

Yeah, I think that point is part of the design or part of the design pillar of wanting to recreate the feeling of fish keeping is I, I think once you get into fish keeping, you stop seeing the fish as just moving decorations. You know, that's who these fish are being sold, sold to. Generally not serious fish keepers.

Yeah. I had a person in my discord the other day see a post of the verbiage ornamental fish, and that immediately triggered him. Hey, come on, man. We love these things. They're not just decorations. I'm like, you know, that, that, that's fair. That is fair. Well, the Easter eggs in the game, we, we must know more. Could give us give us details on any Easter eggs, please.

Easter eggs or, or hints.

You don't have to reveal them.

Oh, hints.

Up to you. You, you, you can divulge as much or as little as you want.

The. The rocks are going to be mostly in cichlid paradise. Okay. The. The most important one is that the. The. The bridal Shiner can only be found in Community Commons. The shop.

Community Commons Bridal Shiner. That. Okay, just take. Take a moment. Right. You. You have, you know, closer to. Was it 130some fish. I keep forgetting the number because I'm a space cadet. You went in such detail that you have a bridal Shiner that is not a normal.

It's not an aquarium fish for anybody. Except the person that won wanted it in. Who is the youtuber avnj who's a fish biologist. And they're his favorite fish. They're native to the area he lives in which I believe is Chicago Ish. And they're endangered. He wanted to help raise awareness about their existence. So we put them in for him and let him help us design the behavior as well.

Yes, it's a North American endangered species. I believe it's through the central into Great Lakes territory at least. I'm not too certain of the population, but I've definitely familiar with the species. And I'm so tickled that you put that in there for. For awareness for the species. It made my day.

Yeah, those are the. Those are the types of additions that I'm getting really excited about. Like once. Once all the really popular fish are out of the way, those are the kinds of things that I want to do more of. Like I really like. Like I had a macan puffer. Like just strange oddball fish with interesting behaviors. Whether or not we can replicate those behaviors perfectly, who knows. But not that the bridal Shiner is strange. It's just strange for an aquarium fish because only AV and J can keep it because he's keep them because he's a biologist. For everyone else it's illegal.

I was going to ask before if you guys had like even in. I like to compare Pokemon especially you said RPG and you like to build up in the game. There's always like the mew or the Mewtwo in the game. The hardest details. And you did, you know, put out the shiner. Is there going to be like an elite mew or Mewtwo in the game or is there one right now that people can go hunt for if they buy the game?

Right now there isn't one right now. But I know what it's going to be. And because we still have to we right now everything is pretty random and there's rarity just because sometimes you get A bad draw. You know, we've, we had someone on the Discord today. Just like, they're like, I cannot find iridescent catfish. It's taking me hours. And then, but then they got, they got three, like right after they said that and that, and we're just like, oh, see you later, Gotta go, gotta go play with my fish. Whereas, yeah, like, I remember another discussion being about the bridal shiners. Someone was saying like, I cannot find them. And someone else saying like, oh, I found like 20 on my, in my first hour. So I would like that to be a little more designed. I think I was like half asleep or dreaming last night. Like, I wanna, I want to look into deck card, like, you know, like Magic the Gathering, that kind of thing. Thing. See how they design their deck, their, their card packs. Is there rhyme or reason behind that or is it just random, you know?

Oh, there is absolutely rhyme or reason. I'm an absolute Die Hard Magic the Gathering guy as well. And they're, Yeah, I, I, I can tell you the, the chance ratings on a lot of, a lot of sets for sure.

Yeah. So I, I think, I think designing the stores, maybe not as aggressive as like MTG would be, but designing the shops so that they, there is a little bit more hype around certain species. But then again, like choosing which species those are going to be.

Well, you said you knew your mewtwo. What would be. What's going to be the mewtwo?

I mean, probably the red arowana.

The red arowana, Nice. Have it just be that golden mythical species. I thought you were going to say something like a Death Valley pup fish or something.

Well, it's got to feel expensive. That one's just impossible.

That one's just pure impossible. Possible.

Yeah. Well, the Death Valley pup fish is like, that's not something people have a value associated with. Whereas, like a red arowana, they're like, oh, okay, I know that's worth $35,000.

Oh, yeah, for sure. Definitely a high dollar might. So they're okay. Red arowana mewtwo mew that you can't actually get in the game is the Defile Pub fish. There you go.

Yeah, there you go. Yeah.

You got to show up to a conference, get a code, win a tournament. Then you might be able to get it and unlock it in the game. There you go.

Yeah. I find that kind of scarcity really fun. And it makes up for not having an economy system. Right? Like just having the creatures themselves be the, like the interest in the, and the Scarcity.

So if I'm a listener, I'm wanting to try the game. I get into the game and I want to know how I can help participate to make the game better. One, buy the game, refer my friends, buy the DLCs, join the community. Is there anything else that listeners can help with or do to make this game better? Is there a wiki that you guys need help building something?

Yeah, we would like. Yeah, if somebody wants to, if somebody's a wiki master and wants to help build a wiki, that'd be great. The other thing is like, which is maybe a little more serious but like we want to work with people in the retail fish space as well. Like we want, we want to sell the game in store yours. We want to put your hardware in our game. We want to put your breed of beta in our game. Like there's, there's lots of stuff that we want to do to help a get the word out about the game, but also hopefully make some money for some other people too. So if you're. Yeah, if you're a aquarium professional of some kind, that's, that would be cool and it sounds like a good idea. Please drop me a line and we can talk. Like, I don't really have a business model for you yet. I've got some things roughed up. But we to, you know, run some beta tests on how it can work as like a retail product. Right.

For sure.

You speak multiple languages. We probably want to talk to you because we're going to be doing our localization soon and we need people that know Phish lingo in more than one language. That's really valuable to us, man. We need all kinds of help, but mainly, yeah, play the game. Hope you like it.

Go to Fish Game for more information on the game. There's an about list and a development blog right on there. And of course you can find it on Steam right in our link here in the podcast notes. Again, if you are a manufacturer, I know there's a lot of different people in the industry that listen to the podcast. Contact them outright or you can message us here at the podcast. We will get you directly in touch with Gord. Gord, I appreciate it. Now, is there any glaring things that we have missed in our interview that we need to tell the audience?

No, I think I just missed. I missed biologists. We also like talking to biologists when we're putting new species in.

Absolutely. You guys actually have, have quite a group a community of different fish people on the discord there helping out. But again if you're that person that happens to work on a species, clearly they've already put a shiner in. They'd like to help participate in your. Your research as well.

Yeah, biologists. Oh, teachers. I forgot. Teachers. We want to get if. Yeah, if there. If you're a teacher and you're into fish and you have, like, an aquarium part of your curriculum, and you think this could be valuable to your students, that's also something we'd like to talk about, but other than that, I think we're good. And, like, maybe I'll just come back another time.

It just hit me.

Anything super important.

Dalton, how great would this be if this replaced the Oregon Trail? Remember that? In our computer classes.

I love the Oregon Trail.

I got to chat to the guy that made. Made it when we made our video for Smarter Every Day when we launched Fish Game. It was pretty cool.

What were you saying before Dalton, I cut you off?

Oh, I was saying he was talking about people he'd like to contact him. I was just saying, you know, investors with very large checkbooks, I'm sure, you know, give them a call.

Who would call?

Absolutely. Well, Gord, where's Tracy Morgan? Yeah, where's Tracy Morgan? You need Dwayne the Rock Johnson. He's actually a secret fish nerd. That's who you need on your side. Who knew?

My wife has worked with him. I wish I'd known.

Hey, that's a guy you need to get. Get in touch with. Call your wife immediately after this podcast. Well, guys, again, check the link in the show notes on Steam Fish Game. Right now, it's $25. I believe there's probably a steam sale. This podcast will be going live a little bit down the road, but. So I don't know the price then when you. You get this, but maybe there'll be a DLC by then. Snipe that one for sure. Thank you, Gord.

Thanks, guys. A lot of fun.

Dalton, any last updates for the listeners?

No, I actually. I bought and downloaded the game while we were doing this, and I thought, oh, you know, I'll put it off to the side here, and I'll set a little tank up. And I kind of got my ass kicked. I didn't have my plants rooted right. You know, I'm looking into it. I'm like, man, I got to think about this. I can't do that and listen to what's going on here. So I was really impressed in the, you know, three minutes I had it open. Really cool stuff.

Until next time, listeners. Thanks, guys. For listening to the podcast, please go to your favorite place where podcasts are found, whether it be Spotify, itunes, Stitcher, wherever they can be found. Like, subscribe and make sure you get push notifications directly to your phone so you don't miss great content like this.

That's in there. Fish have different. There. There are some fish that cause more waste than others. It's in. It's in the back end. No, for cleanliness of a tank. They just take. They take the hugest shits.

I'm assuming farting has to be added, though.

Farting would have to be added.

Okay, Good.

Fish eating Fish can eat fish. It's like the short answer, and absolutely. Oh, is there a backstory here?

There is. There is. He's being a bit of a dick.