Games Like Aquaculture Simulator

Two economies share one facility. They do not share a strategy.

Trout are volume

You raise rainbow trout to weight and sell them by the kilo. The margin is thin but predictable — as long as the water holds. Trout demand cold, heavily oxygenated water, and they do not forgive mistakes.

Koi are judgement

A koi's value is not in its weight. It is in grade — pattern, colour, body conformation — scored from pond quality to show quality. A single fish can be worth a hundred trout, or almost nothing.

Reading a young koi

A young koi does not show you what it will become. It shows you a range: pond quality at the bottom, show quality at the top, and a price estimate stretched across everything in between. The younger the fish, the wider the guess. You have to commit anyway. Keep it, and it eats — every day, for up to two years, at your cost. Cull it, and you may have thrown away the best fish in the building. The estimate only sharpens as the fish matures, and by then you have already paid to find out. That is the game: not raising koi, but deciding which ones are worth raising.

Water is the constraint

Every tank runs on the same three pressures:

Safe. Stressed. Critical. Watch the zones, or watch the growth stop.

Customers write to you

Orders arrive as email on the facility PC — a small in-game operating system with mail, a calendar, and banking. A buyer names a price and a pickup date. Accept or decline. Accepted jobs land in the calendar. No Sunday pickups. When the day comes, net the fish, move them into transport tubs, and get them to the loading bay — but not too early. Tub water is bad water, and the fish know it. Miss a date and you pay twice: in money, and in reputation.

The pressure is the point

Electricity for aeration. Feed. Water changes. Fixed costs that arrive whether your fish sell or not. Every mediocre koi you keep out of hope is a mouth you feed for nothing. The economy does not force you to cull — it simply makes sentiment expensive.

Made by one person

Aquaculture Simulator is built by a single developer in Germany, in Godot 4. There is no publisher and no team. It launches in Early Access because the systems are done but the balance is not — and balance is the one thing a solo developer cannot test alone. What you see is what there is, and it will grow with the people who play it.