The Tannin and Botanicals Update, with Plant DLC drop!

We heard the community calls for tannins, and here they are! With 8 new botanical pieces and 5 new substrates, players can now create the blackwater aquascape of their dreams. A new in-game store will also spawn wood that leaches over time.

Real world tannins impact the water chemistry, so in-game tannins in Fish Game do, too. The Chemistry Panel will show tannin levels, and players can watch how these levels impact other stats like pH and light.

Tannins don’t just impact water, they also support fish health and lower some species’ stress levels. Some fish species are also just big botanical fans, so keep an eye out for their responses to botanicals and botanical substrates.

Just like a home aquarium, botanicals and wood stop leaching tannins over time, so be sure to look out for leaves degrading and seed pods darkening. Wood also returns to an inert state, leaving the piece beautiful but tannin-less.

Need more leaves? In addition to the new botanical pieces and substrates, all players will be getting a new plant: Ceratopteris thalictroides (aka Water Sprite). Want even more? Get the Plant Variety Pack 1 DLC and enjoy 10 new plants!

If you want to have a say in what DLC content gets released next, head over to our Patreon. Memberships above $3/mo will be able to vote on which DLC are released next, and memberships above $5/mo will get DLC Steam codes automatically sent to their inboxes without having to purchase them while subscribed (plus other tiers with other perks that you can check out).

As always, we are fixing bugs and updating systems, so check out the change log below!

ADDED

• Tannins Chemistry Stat

• 5 new kinds of substrate that release Tannins.

• 8 Botanicals (leaves and seed pods) that slowly decay, releasing Tannins over time.

• A new store, Blackwater Banks, where all Botanicals and Tannic Wood (see below) will spawn.

• Certain species of Fish now have a Tannins Stat that can lower the stress of otherwise negative water conditions.

• Tannins will also reduce the amount of Bacterial infection in a Fish, regardless of the species.

• Fish behavior specifically about foraging among or hiding in Leaf Litter at the bottom of a tank.

• Most very small Fish will now automatically eat biofilm if there is enough Beneficial Bacteria in the system. (Note: we know Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter aren’t necessarily the main food source here, but the Beneficial Bacteria stat is a useful approximation of the bacterial abundance at any given time)

CHANGED

• Some substrates already in-game should affect Tannin levels. Some will even bind Tannins and clarify the water now.

• Improved the UI for Substrate tooltips to be clearer and more useful.

• Wood is a well known source of Tannins in the real world, so we added a new way all Wood items can spawn that will add Tannins to the water, just like Botanicals. Only the new store will have this form of wood, so unless it is specifically labelled to release Tannins a piece of Wood can be considered “pre-leached”.

• Game stores now have equipment setups. These are unclickable to prevent confusion about how to get equipment (via the menus at your home tank) but their presence is more consistent with player tanks.

• Hardscape can now spawn mirrored. If you love aquascaping this doubles your possible palette.

• Made Fish much more likely to accept a cave it would have seen as too small in the past.

• Reduced average XP cost for unlocking stores.

FIXED

• Improved the Store hardscape spawning rules so large pieces are more likely to spawn in the back of the tank than they were previously (it looks much nicer on average!)

• Examining Plants now correctly zooms in on their midsection instead of their roots.

• Fixed a bug that would sometimes create a wild swing in Chemistry when switching tanks.