earned throughout Adventure mode, each level requires the player to pick three pets. Each pet can aid the player during gameplay. There are bonus rounds where the player can collect shells, which can be spent to place fish in the Virtual Tank. After a tank is completed in Adventure mode, it will be unlocked in Time Trial mode. Time Trial mode restricts the player to completing the first tank in five minutes and in ten minutes for the three subsequent tanks. The purpose of each level is to collect as much money before the time runs out. Challenge mode is unlocked after Adventure mode is completed, and there are four levels that are unlocked in subsequent order. The player has to fight increasingly difficult waves of aliens while taking care of the fishes and unlocking the pieces to the egg. Both modes award the player with shells. The Virtual Tank is the player's personal aquarium where their fish is maintained. The tank can be used as a screensaver. Development During his time working for the online gaming portal Prizegames.com, George Fan was researching Java games. He came across the website for PopCap Games and found their games better than the other Java games he was researching. Afterwards, Fan left Prizegames.com and became a freelance video game designer. Fan started developing Insaniquarium, back then codenamed FishTank, using Java in July 2001. He paired up with his colleague, an artist named Tysen Henderson, for him to create the backgrounds. They formed Flying Bear Entertainment together to develop the game. Fan's main purpose with creating Insaniquarium was to develop a video game to enter into the Independent Games Festival, having decided to do so along with Henderson after seeing the independent games in Game Developers Conference 2001 (GDC 2001). Fan's idea "was to create a game that's easy to get into, yet unfolds into something much deeper." The first prototype simply featured clicking on the fish to feed them when necessary. 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. He entered Insaniquarium into the festival in 2002. The prototype submitted took a month to create. 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. Insaniquarium later