Insaniquarium was mainly designed and programmed by George Fan through his company Flying Bear Entertainment.

The game was a success, garnering general praise for its fast-paced gameplay, and was downloaded 20 million times as of April 2006.

Insaniquarium is a virtual pets simulator with a blend of elements from action, strategy, and puzzle video games.

[5] In addition to feeding the fish, the player must protect them from aliens that periodically enter the tank and attempt to eat them.

During an initial playthrough of Adventure mode, at the end of each level of a tank, the player receives a new pet from the egg.

[2] The player has to fight increasingly difficult waves of aliens while taking care of the fishes and unlocking the pieces to the egg.

Fan decided to add more depth to Insaniquarium due to his inspiration from an unknown Java game, which let the player buy upgrades with accumulated resources.

[1] Fan was in a cyber cafe in Hawaii when he heard that Insaniquarium made it into the festival as a finalist, to which he openly screamed with joy.

[13] Fan designed and programmed a majority of the game along with drawing its concept art and composing some of the music.

[8] Flying Bear Entertainment first released Insaniquarium as a free, Java-based online game on their website on August 31, 2001.

[19] Astraware later released the game on Palm OS smartphones and Windows Mobile phones on August 6, 2008.

[23] PCMag's Carol Mangnis stated that Insaniquarium "takes the joy and anxiety of maintaining an aquarium and turns [it] into a supercharged Tamagotchi-like experience.

[3][15] Steve Palley of GameSpot said that Insaniquarium is "a fast-clicking experience that's several orders of magnitude crazier than your typical real-life aquarium.

"[6] GameDaily's Samantha Rupert recommended Insaniquarium, having written that the game never gets boring due to how it changes every five levels.

[21] Dieter Bohn of Windows Central recommended playing the game for "something to pass the time with or just need[ing] a little pick-me-up after a long day at work.

IGN's Levi Buchanan said that every tank was "almost fiercely colorful", and that the guppies and the ultravores evoke different emotions.