CREEP TANK
I love fish. Seriously, I love them. If you ask me about my fish tank, it will absolutely make my day. I’ll take any excuse to talk about fishkeeping, so when I spotted Creep Tank at Geek Fest West this year, I beelined straight for it—and immediately launched into fish talk with the devs.
Creep Tank is a cozy fish-collecting game by Short Leg Studio, the folks behind Plant Therapy and other beautifully weird, relaxing games. This time, they’ve channeled their signature style into an aquarium full of creepy, otherworldly fish. You summon fish using spells, raise them from adorably disturbing baby forms, decorate your tank, and enjoy all the chill vibes of fishkeeping—with none of the fear of losing your precious fish. (Seriously, I asked.)
My favorite part was summoning as many fish as I could to swim through magical portals that opened right into my tank. Each little weirdo starts as a baby, and it’s up to you to feed, care for, and grow them into their adult forms. Watching them evolve was very rewarding—I became a very proud parent to a whole squad of zombie blobfish. Technically, you can sell your fish to earn money for new decorations and plants... but I couldn’t bring myself to part with any of mine. I was too emotionally attached to the little guys. That said, raising monster fish does earn you rewards and useful resources, so there's plenty of incentive to keep experimenting.
Beyond the fish themselves, there are literally hundreds of decorations and plant species to discover and collect, allowing you to fully personalize your tank. Once it’s all set up, you get to enjoy the best part of fishkeeping: simply sit back and let the tank do its thing. Watching my creepy-cute aquarium come to life was exactly the kind of chill I needed.
Creep Tank is scheduled for release this October and is shaping up to be the perfect game for players who love quirky, creative design, and creepy-cute charm. Keep an eye out—the Steam page is coming soon!
Puppet: This is Puppet, and I am interviewing one of the developers of Creep Tank. Can you tell me who are you and what are you working on?
Jennevieve: My name is Jennevieve Schlemmer, and our studio is Short Leg Studio, and we're currently working on a couple new games, but one specifically is Creep Tank, which is a cozy and chill fish collecting game where all the fish are kind of creepy and a little weird.
Puppet: I love it. Yes, when I first saw this, I was like, “That's my game. I love it so much.” Yeah, so go ahead and tell me some of the other games that you're working on too.
Jennevieve: Okay, our first game is Plant Therapy. That's a free game on Steam, but we have a ton of DLC, so if you like playing the game, you can add lots of other content. We're also working on Plush Rangers, which is a sort of a Vampire Survivors meets Care Bears sort of scenario. And that's now to wishlist on Steam, and then Creep Tank we have, hopefully coming out this October, is the plan. So a very quick release.
Puppet: Yeah. Wow. You guys are busy, yeah.
Jennevieve: We’re prolific, and we like to work kind of in silos, and then we help each other, and then we play test constantly. And then we all go off and work on our things, and then we come back and we just keep working and working and working.
Puppet: What a beautiful life.
Jennevieve: It's great.
Puppet: You must love your work.
Jennevieve: Yeah, we love our work so much
Puppet: That's so great. So who else is on your team?
Jennevieve: My husband, Trevor Redfern is one of the lead programmers, but he also does all the sound and music for all of our games. And then Randy Larson is another lead programmer, and he's primarily working on Creep Tank and Plant Therapy. And then we brought in a couple contractors so far that are helping us with art or UI and stuff like that, yeah.
Puppet: That's good, yeah, wow. So, still a small team?
Jennevieve: Still small. Yeah, very small. And we can make changes quickly, and we don't have to have a lot of meetings.
Puppet: You sound like you've had some experience?
Jennevieve: Yes, absolutely.
Puppet: Well, speaking of which, how did you originally get into game design?
Jennevieve: I came up with the idea of our first game because it was a pandemic, and Trevor was we were living in Brooklyn in a little apartment, and he was sent home to work at home, and he took over my studio, and I had to work in our living room, and all I had was a desk, so I couldn't do… My background is sculpture, and so I couldn't really do any sculpture or painting or big fiber art. So we'd always wanted to do video games, so I just started taking online classes and like, oh, let's do this. So we just took off from there.
Puppet: That is such a cool story. That's amazing. I also come from the arts, and I've ended up, you know, in video games. So it's really cool to meet another artist who kind of, there's so many similarities, aren't there?
Jennevieve: Yeah, I feel, actually, with like, a degree in sculpture, it really gets me ready for this, because I had to work with teams. I have to think in 3d I have to organize or think how I'm gonna make a big sculpture, right? And video game design is shockingly very similar, that you have to work with other people and coordinate, and you have to visualize things, writing them on paper, and visualize what they are going to look like 3d or in people's heads on a video screen. So it's actually given me a lot of preparation for it, and then I can also just think up things and draw them like on the fly immediately and explain my ideas pretty easily. So it's been nice. The other kind of quirky thing is, like, I have a very particular style, and I'm not gonna change it for video games. So like all the games that we have, they have a very distinct look, and it's just not gonna change. And I can't do the pixel art or the kind of low-poly art that's really popular. So we're just sort of in our own little niche, where we're just kind of stand-alone.
Puppet: Yeah, actually, that's what drew me to you. We interviewed you about Plant Therapy, and that's what drew us to your Plant Therapy, because it's like a story, but in a cozy style.
Jennevieve: Yeah, we really like the cozy style, because for me, it's all about accessibility that I want anyone to come and play it and be able to just jump in, or be attracted to it and not be worried that it's going to be too hard, or say, Oh, I don't like that type of game. Or, you know, so I want kind of the graphics and the feel of it to draw people in so they just want to play.
Puppet: Well, it worked. It did, yes. I also noticed after, while I was demoing the game, that this is a really wonderful mental health focused game. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Jennevieve: You know, well, Plant Therapy was our first game, and we really wanted it to be chill, but it kind of got a little bit exciting. And there was lots of stuff going on and, like, just, you could go shopping and do all this stuff, and then we started to dial it back, and we're like, how can we make a game where you're really just focusing on your fish help. They might be creepy, but they’re still fish that need food and love, and how can you just relax and take the time, and there's no rush, and there's no penalties, and you can still do something that was really our goal.
Puppet: Yeah, that's good. Yes, we need more games like that, you know. Alright, let me check my little list, and oh… What in Creep Tank in particular: What are you most excited about?
Jennevieve: I'm most excited about just seeing how people decorate, like every time I see someone play it, they get different fish they keep, because it's random which fish you get, because you're casting a spell, but then you can sell the fish off. So it's just interesting to see what fish people keep, and then how they decorate and how they want to style and make their cozy little space. So for me, people start thinking of things I've never thought of, or then give us other ideas, like, oh, we should do that, because look how that person's playing it. So we really, the most exciting thing for me is just seeing how other people take it and what they do with it.
Puppet: Yeah, very cool. I had a hard time selling my fish, so I wanted to keep everyone.
Jennevieve: Yeah, and you can name them so you can get attached, and it's okay. I mean, the demo that we have here today just has one tank, but we're gonna, the full version is going to have quite a few different tanks, so you can have lots of tanks that you cycle through, and have different fish in and different varieties, so you don't ever have to sell them if you don't want to.
Puppet: That’s so wonderful. Yes, I noticed, though I kept summoning, I summoned like 300 or something, all at once, and I got stuck because I had so many fish, and I didn't want any of them to die, so I'm constantly feeding them.
Jennevieve: Well, little trick, they actually don't die. They just won't produce. They won't grow. If you don't feed them, they'll just take a long time to grow. So you don't have to worry. They won't again. We don't want to have the stakes where people are stressed or that, like the plants don't die in Plant Therapy and the fish aren't going to die in this game.
Puppet: Oh, that. I wish I would have known, I was stressing so much.
Jennevieve: Creepy fish deserve love too. So.
Puppet: They do. Yes, yes, we love our creepy fish. Um, okay, so this game, Creep Tank. Can you tell me about your process when you first decided to start making this, like, why this game?
Jennevieve: You know, we've been looking at again, like we had talked about in Plant Therapy when it wanted this cozy aspect and we cozier aspect, and we kept talking about adding a fish tank to the game, and then we're like, oh, and then you could zoom in and have a bigger tank. And then finally, we were like, Oh, well, maybe we should just make a fish game. And then I went and looked at other fish games, and a lot of them were just copying real fish. And so they all started to look the same to me. And I'm like, Well, how many salmon can you get, or how many trout, or whatever? And I like to draw weird things. And so then it just, sort of, once it just hit on me, we're gonna call it Creep Tank, where there was no discussion ever. I was like, we're gonna call it Creep Tank. Everyone agreed. And then it was just off to the races. How can we think of neat, weird animals? And then the weird plants. And, you know, it just snowballed from there.
Puppet: Yeah, beautiful. Okay, last question, if you could go back in time on this game in particular and in your experience in general about games, and if you could change one thing or give yourself some advice. What would that be?
Jennevieve: I’ve answered this question before, and I'm gonna do the same answer, is I would tell myself to just go for it. Like there's too many gatekeepers and there's too many people around that say, oh, you can't do it or you're not ready enough. And it's like, Who are they to say that? You can just go for it. And we published Plant Therapy a little bit, maybe before it was, quote unquote done, but then we got so many people playing it and such amazing feedback, that in the end, I think it's a way better game than if we had waited in what we thought was done, and we really wanted the collaboration of the community to help us figure out which way to go, because we don't know everything about gaming. And the people that play our games know a lot more about gaming than us sometimes, and so it's really about trust your gut, go for it, and listen to your community.
Puppet: That is so brave and so beautiful. I love that. Is there anything else you want us to know about the game or about your studio in general?
Jennevieve: We love our players. I can't say that enough. We have a very active discord, and if you join our Short Leg Studio discord, you can find it on Plant Therapy, you can find it on Plush Rangers, and then Creep Tank will have a Steam page soon, and we're gonna have opening them up to play testing so that we can have play testers and feedback really soon. So it's a really great way to get involved. Play a game, see the nuts and bolts and then help us make the best game possible.
Puppet: That's wonderful. Well, thank you so much.
Jennevieve: Thank you.
