ASCII Aquarium

A terminal-native ASCII aquarium designed for PowerShell, Command Prompt, macOS Terminal, and Linux terminals.

Features

• Smooth ANSI-rendered animation in the real terminal
• Schooling fish with hunger-driven food chasing
• Rising bubbles, swaying seaweed, and layered depth
• Multiple lighting moods (auto / night / neon / abyss)
• Rare shark flyby event for extra drama
• Interactive controls with no external dependencies

Run (no install)

If you have the project folder locally:

node src/index.js

Run with npx (recommended)

If this is published on npm, you can run it instantly:

npx asc

If asc isn’t available (or you prefer the long name), run:

npx ascii-aquarium

Install globally (optional)

If you want a persistent command:

npm i -g ascii-aquarium
ascii-aquarium

Controls

• f drop food
• a add fish
• r remove fish
• l cycle lighting mode
• s spawn shark
• b bubble burst
• h toggle HUD
• q quit

Troubleshooting

• Nothing renders / it exits immediately: you must run it in an interactive terminal (TTY). (Not inside some IDE output panes.)
• Colors look weird: use Windows Terminal / modern terminal emulator with ANSI support.
• Flicker: try a larger terminal window; very small windows are harder to animate smoothly.

Notes

• Requires an interactive TTY terminal
• Best experienced in a modern ANSI-capable terminal
• Uses only built-in Node.js APIs for portability