Back before PopCap was bought by EA and the company saw the detriments that the very move brings, they made the most awesome "casual" games that somehow intrigued both casual and hardcore gamers alike. PopCap's major successes include Bejeweled, Peggle, and Plants Vs. Zombies, but through playing all of their games for the past twelve years, Insaniquarium is by far my personal favorite, and in my opinion, the most original, creative, and fun.

This game is part simulation, part "management", part tycoon, part action, and all sorts of...well, insanity. You are put in charge of an aquarium, where you can buy goldish, carnivorous fish, and many other types of creatures that you grow and make money off of. (First win of the game: goldfish poop money!) You use this money for upgrades (upgrade the food to make the fish grow faster and get hungry less often, buy carnivorous fish that poop diamonds but eat little goldfish, etc.). You have access to dozens of unlockable aquarium pets throughout the game that help you in various way, and you choose which three you'd like to bring to any level. Oh, but I haven't mentioned the aliens. That's right, folks, aliens are so jealous of your awesometacular aquarium that they'll attack, and throughout the campaign the aliens get fiercer (and sometimes come in multiples!). Aliens will eat your fish, but not if you kill them first with a laser gun that you can also upgrade...with the money your fish poop, of course.

Not only does this game have a great campaign that will keep you busy over the course of quite a few hours, but it also presents new challenges to the player along the way, in the forms of various alien types, different fish you have to figure out how to make profitable, etc. Not only that, but throughout playing you'll unlock sea shells that serve as currency for a "Pet Aquarium", where you can purchase fish (among other things) for a relaxing sim aquarium. These fish are essentially the same species from the game, but they come in a large variety of color combinations and sometimes even have special skills (some hilarious, some useful, etc.). What's even better? The selection of fish in the store is randomized and changed daily, meaning you'll come across some really awesome fish one day that you might not see for awhile again, so you can save your shells and get rarities or even just cool looking fish to add to you aquarium. You can collect quite a few, and you can even name them. You also have access to their "interests" screen, where you can learn more about your fish. Does Gill like to take walks in the park? How long have you owned little Floater? You can see all that and more.

Insaniquarium is a perfect example of PopCap at their finest. Sure, the game is "casual", but it offers you so many options and it has so much detail that many developers wouldn't have added in (like telling you your fish's interests, for example). If you are a fan of PopCap's earlier work, buy this. If you are a fan of simulation or tycoon games, buy this. If you are looking for a game with a sense of humor to pass a few hours, buy this. This is PopCap's best effort, and will forever be a classic.

Childhood Reignition.

If you ever wanted to keep fish but were worried about how to deal with the inevitable alien tank invasions which would occur multiple times a day, this game will be perfect practice for you!

I always wanted this game since a kid ! Got it in the Steam Summer Sale 2014 and I'm loving it !

It's very fun and have a good replay value.
The only problem that I would say is that you can't run it in very high resolution (It's old, give it a chance :P) and have no real graphical and gameplay option in the menu.

I am runing it on windows 8.1 and dont seem to have any problem ..
Just run the game windowed while doing something and have fun !

P.S. .There's also a screensaver option but I never used it !

Quite possibly the best game ever created.

The level of strategy required to play this game is nearly incomprehensible; I found myself having to have a piece of paper nearby just to draw out budget plans, and that's not even touching the complex combat system. When combat occurs, there's a sharp balance you have to hold between managing aggression and doing damage; less attacks per second to keep an important character safe, or more to finish him off but maybe propel the alien into your school? It's very difficult to the point that survival horror comes to mind as a genre.

The budgeting system is intense. Allocating funds between fish and weapons borders on art instead of strategy. Don't walk into this game expecting a casual experience. Without spoiling too much, I'll say that the upgrade mechanics are also amazing. While it's usually linear improvement, expect stellar new graphics and sounds along with your stat buffs. There are upgrades for fish, weapons, food, and more that I won't mention.

The soundtrack in this game is absolutely killer. Seriously. It's amazing. You could sleep to the calm tracks, but I can personally vouch that when PopCap wants to build suspense, they build it. They then deliver. Hard. The enemies you'll be fighting in this game are, as previously mentioned, no joke. Those linear upgrades I mentioned are less upgrades and more a scrabble to keep up with the standard of ten steps behind the enemy. Good luck accomplishing even that. And believe me. You'll be pounded with sick beats the whole time.

The cast in this game is great. Deep, dark, thoughtful lines and lovable characters, models, and animations make this game truly beautiful and unforgettable. Every death is truly a tragedy. The end credits are mostly comic relief (literally the first you'll see in the entire game), so they lack a bit in the way of factual information. Through my own research, I've found a few of the character actors:
1. The dolphin's sounds were ripped directly from a Soviet nuclear submarine.
2. One of the "hidden" special characters' grunts are from Sylvester Stallone's first role ever. I'm not sure they attained the proper licensing, but it looks like the beginnings of the lawsuit were swept under the rug.
3. The guppies sound like a plethora of different actors, but is actually just Bill Murray pretending to be hundreds of other actors.
4. The final boss is voiced by Bill Murray acting as himself.
5. The last one I could figure out was the carnivores' bite sounds are the exact same sound as the dog bites in CoD: Ghosts. I'm not sure how that happened, but I promise that if you compare them they're exactly the same.

The last thing I'd like to touch on is the amazing graphical expertise that the art department at PopCap has. Genuinely soothing and peaceful graphics put you into a calm state right along with the soundtrack; that is, until and alien shows up and the advanced gore engine tosses guppy shreds all over your tank. The shading effects are also amazing. Shadows are affected by laser blasts and temporal warp shifts (TWSs as known ingame), and you can almost see the reflection in a guppy's eye as her beloved little sister is strewn halfway across the tank by the razor-sharp teeth of an extraterrestrial. When it needs to build suspense, it acknowledges the hardware shortcomings of the time and leaves a lot to the imagination; however, I promise you that when that suspense finally culminates, you'll wish they'd left a little more to be imagined.

This game definitely isn't for casuals or noobs. I'm not trying to be offensive, but I promise that it'll stomp you into the ground over and over, and its version of a reprieve is stepping back long enough to pull on a pair of steel-toes. The only tip I can give is to avoid indecision because I promise that if you falter for even a second, it'll destroy your guppies so fast that your economy will be irreparably tanked. And if you ever try to turn tail and run, you shouldn't be surprised to find some boot laces dangling from your nose. At least you can take comfort in the fact that the biggest inconvenience you gave the AI was having to dislodge its heel from your colon.