Australian Parents Develop Fish Pond Game ‘My Koi’

My Koi looks like a beautiful game.

This isn’t a typical game dev story. It is a story that will impress game devs around the world. Brisbane parents Jane and Andrew Dyson of Sakana Studios have gone far and beyond to release their own game app called ‘My Koi’ for iOS and iPad. They have accomplished this whilst raising a family and committing to their day jobs. The app was originally released on iOS in May and has now gone global with it being available in 10 different languages. Impressive, right?

My Koi simply put is a fish pond app that lets you name and feed the Koi whilst admiring their beautiful colours and taking in the tranquility of the pond. It’s designed so you can “escape and relax”. The Wii game Endless Ocean comes to mind when I envision the experience that Andrew and Jane have aimed to similarly create. Andrew has worked in the computer games industry for 18 years as an animator and graphics designer and Jane has worked in the marketing industry for 18 years. Andrew has always had a passion for wildlife, in particular fish. Jane has enjoyed helping her husband with the production and marketing of the game.

“I have to be honest, being an indie game developer in our spare time is hard work.  Getting anything done takes a long time.  We don’t watch tv and we’re rarely asleep before midnight.  Driving to work in the car is our Board Room and our spare room is the office.  During the development phase we did have to pay someone to get help on the coding and we’re happy we did.  We just didn’t have time or the know how to really do that ourselves.  We’ve definitely made a lot of sacrifices but when we released the first version and started seeing some really nice reviews it was totally worth it and we knew we were onto something good.”

The game can be downloaded on the iTunes Store and you can keep up to date with updates for the app on the My Koi FaceBook page.

If you decide to give My Koi a try let us know what you think of the app in the comments.