So! Here we go, announcing my very first Steam page. Exciting!
Koimori started as a small gift I made over the course of a week for my girlfriend. I wanted to create a little idle game to keep her company while she was studying. At first I went for the obvious idea: some kind of tamagotchi pet, maybe a cat hanging out at the bottom of the screen, with a yarn ball and a few toys. But her real-life cat had passed away just a few days before, so... that didn't feel like the best choice. Then I thought about the koi tattoo on her arm, and immediately it felt more personal. Also way sweeter and more romantic that a standard tamagotchi.
I started tinkering in Unity. I knew a bit, but not that much, so animating my drawings to behave like a real koi was an interesting challenge. Sometimes they'd do weird stuff when trying to reach an alga, but most of the time it worked, and I felt like I'd nailed the vibe.
During development, I sent test builds to a friend, who ended up keeping the app running for days while he worked. Completely unprompted! That's when I started thinking I might actually be cooking something good.
Coding the koi as they are wandering on the screen... Awesome right?
Eventually, my girlfriend and I broke up. No hard feelings. I saw her again a few months later, and she told me she was still using the game from time to time. It made me genuinely happy that she didn’t tie sad feelings to it, and that it still brought her a bit of comfort. Afterwards I kept thinking: if she was still using it, and my other friend kept it running to this day… maybe I was sleeping on something that could bring joy to a wider audience. So I started refining it, ported it from Mac to Windows, and set up the Steam page to gather feedback while I continue developing the full game.
I haven’t fully figured out what the progression system should look like. A big part of the charm, to me, is the zen vibe — no XP bars, no notifications, just wandering, calming koi. But I also want to meet players’ expectations for a paid product, so I’m exploring ways to unlock more content and koi types while keeping the original feeling. Stay tuned! And feel free to share any ideas you have.
Cheers!