Terrarium games.
Idle/clicker games where you collect, breed and sell critters in an aquarium, terrarium, garden or other habitat.
What makes a good terrarium game for me?
a good loop: buy one critter, feed it, it grows, sell it, have more money to buy more, feed those, grow them, sell them, unlock a higher tier of critters, rinse repeat.
lots of variety: games with many different types of critters, in various tiers of rarity, and with special even rarer colours.
terrarium decoration: making the box with critters pretty, bonus points if decorations are functional and give buffs.
good intuitive and accessible UI: this goes for any game.
Masterpiece
My favourite games in the genre, the top of the crop. As perfect as they can get, a true master class. The games I keep returning to.
The best aquarium game in my opinion!
Great accessibility features, gorgeous art, well-balanced.
[» review]
Gorgeous pattern breeding mechanics!
With frogs having body, pattern and two colours, there are millions of potential combination. Easy to lose yourself in for hours on end.
Whimside
Reinvents critter collector at a body part level!
You don’t collect the critters so much as collecting the genes for different body parts to breed the specific critters you need.
[» review]
Quite good
Games that are great, with a lot of the things I love, that I got hooked on for a good while before putting them down.
Birdwatching Notebook
Decorate your window, attract birds and photograph them!
This game brings a refreshing approach to collecting the critters. You don’t buy and own them, they just visit, and you take photos of them. Upgrading your window attracts more/different birds, unlocks different decorations and allows the birds to perform different animations that you in turn can photograph. Super cosy!
Bunny Park
Attract cute bunnies by decorating your cosy garden.
Can be played as an active decoration game, but can be set up as more of an idle game with the use of butterfly-shaped bots.
[» review]
Cheeky Chooks
Adorable clicker mini-game!
Blissful chaos, yet grateful for the option to turn the chaos off.
[» review]
Croakoloco
Immersive frog mode activate!
Sets itself apart with the ability to control frogs, jumping around and eating flies.
[» review]
Time is Honey
Super cute decoration mechanics!
Unique in its customisation, slapping stickers on bees as you go.
[» review]
Little Aviary
Brings some feathery life to your desktop!
Sits on the bottom of your desktop, has a cute little egg hatching animation, has tons of birds that just flip flap around and land on your windows if you let them. I know it’s meant to be sort of an idle companion game, but I’ve enjoyed playing it actively as well.
The koi game I’ve been waiting for!
Reminiscent of the relaxed atmosphere in Koi Farm, but with terrarium game mechanics. Absolutely gorgeous and without a doubt a masterpiece in the making.
[» review]
Mixed bag
These are the “needs some more time in the oven” games. They have good elements that make me not dismiss them entirely, but they also lack in too many areas to really hook me.
Cats Are Money
A lot of potential but very little refinement.
The game lacks a lot of things (toggle for holding feeding/loving buttons, “sell all adults” button, 🔒-ing the cats you don’t want to sell) and has a lot of screenshakes in dialogue windows, which would usually be enough for me immediately dismiss it, but there’s something about the things that it does have that makes me want to see where it goes.
[» review]
Chonkers
The fatter the cat, the better the pay!
I am surprised it took me this long to find a cat terrarium game.
It’s a gorgeous game that does everything a terrarium game should do, and does it well. Initially put this under ‘quite good’ because it was a bit of a slow start, but then the pace picked up and I moved it to masterpieces, only to find that the pace slowed back down and progression is very slow, so I feel conflicted but am putting it under ‘mixed bag’ in the end.
[» review]
Peacequarium
Good short-term hyperfixation, hard to play long-term.
Had fun for a while, but it’s hard to pick back up after a break, no strong sense of progression compared to other games. The potential is there.
Not a user-friendly UI, and freezes when autosaving, super annoying.
Really bad
I just really did not enjoy these games. They were either frustrating, unpolished, un-userfriendly, or just plain boring.
Cozy Littlequarium
Bare-boned and unfinished.
No sense of progression, all the fish are unlocked from the beginning, there’s too much clicking going on, the UI isn’t intuitive at all, and the game reverts back to Chinese every time you start it up.
Easy Bubbles
Unfinished Chillquarium clone.
Jarring animations. User-unfriendly UI.
The one bit of added value can be found in its links to real-life Google searches from the fish profiles.
In the oven
These games are reviewed in an unfinished state, and are therefore not yet ranked into a tier because they need some more time in the oven.
Aviarium
Needs some polish, but will be great!
This game has a LOT of birds, and that variety already puts it in my good graces. It needs a lot of polishing to get there, though. The graphics need to be smoother, the birds need to get some intelligence, and there’s room for some UI improvements.
To be reviewed
Have any other suggestions? Let me know on Discord!
