~ Top-Level Design ~ Fanciful Fish! An Interactive Guide to Healthy Aquarium Living Featuring Sigmund, the Fancy Goldfish! detailed and designed by Julie A. Burge The premise of Fanciful Fish! An Interactive Guide to Healthy Aquarium Living is to provide new aquarium owners with all of the information they need in order to give their new aquatic friends a healthy, happy home environment. This CD is designed for a broad spectrum of users, primarily families with children, as they will love the games and activities lead by Sigmund, the Fancy Goldfish that provide fun ways to play and learn about fish as well as instill responsibility in caring for pets. Apartment dwellers, educational institutions such as high school science and biology departments, and the elderly living in facility settings will also enjoy this interactive aquatic experience. The objectives of this interactive CD-ROM are: o Instructing on proper aquarium set up, focusing on the health of the fish o Matching just the right fish community with your family type o Adding plants and healthy tank toys to your fish s environment o Promoting health tanks with an emphasis on disease prevention We begin this interactive journey with Sigmund, the Incredible Goldfish who in all his beautiful orange iridescence complete with flowing, swishing fins and tail leads his guests through his animated aquatic world while showing them vast examples of fish and other water life on the other side of the glass-the ones out in the real world! With attitude, humor, and charm Sigmund points out all the landmarks along the way to a healthy, happy, environmentally safe and sound aquarium community. Sigmund starts it all off with the basics of aquariums by showing new owners what equipment they really need and what they should leave at the pet Fanciful Fish! An Interactive Guide to Healthy Aquarium Living page 1 of 5
store, how important good water quality is, making sure the fish you ve tanked up together will all enjoy the neighborhood, and lastly, Sigmund s favorite topic food! Sigmund, never one to pass on a challenge, will then go onto the more advanced information of how plants play a part in an aquarium and what kind of environment you want to create for your aquarium by adding backgrounds, shells, colored stones, driftwood, and a variety of tank toys. Sigmund s most difficult part of the journey is making it through the treacherous waters of aquatic illness and disease. This CD-ROM stresses proper tank maintenance and prevention of disease but also has an extensive section detailing the various illnesses and syndromes that are common to fish and aquariums everywhere. As this eye-popping interactive experience of all thing fish draws to a close, Sigmund seems not to be tired from his journey but is energized and seems to be picking up speed. Off, Sigmund swishes to play! Join Sigmund as he introduces the children s Virtual Aquarium. This is the centerpiece of our learning by play environment in which children can create their own aquarium environment with any fish they dream of or desire. The Virtual Aquarium is full of games, learning and fun for the entire family to enjoy! This wonderfully informative, beautifully designed and featured CD-ROM has a perceived simplicity that will appeal to all users, young and old. It will offer choices in the way it is used based on the audience who is viewing it. The bulk of information will be broken down into modules regarding: initial aquarium set up, water quality, fish selection, plants and toys, and illness and disease. Users may either view mini movies of melded animation and photographic film styles, or they can click the subject titles to view text based information. The text-based views will come complete with hypertext links to many educational and recommended products websites that will bring an added dimension to the already amazing amount of information. Adult users may choose to view and play and acquaint themselves with everything at the same time, or access only the introductory, basic components while they are setting up the aquarium and getting it ready for use. This would depend on how many small children are dancing around their feet excitedly asking when the can add the water and put the fish in! Fanciful Fish! An Interactive Guide to Healthy Aquarium Living page 2 of 5
Adult Features: o Appeals to many different learning styles by offering either mini-movies for viewing or clickable text-based information o Hypertext links connect users to various educational and product websites that enhance the already vast database of information o Special sections for more experienced aquarium owners that provide advice and information on advanced topics such as saltwater reef tanks, and breeding your own fish o Special circumstances sections for users in an institutional setting o Extensive photographic database comprised of detailed information regarding each species and type of fish: expected growth, suggested communities, and susceptible diseases o Downloadable wallpapers and screensavers for an adult Virtual Aquarium! Sigmund and his randy band of community fish lead young users through games and activities such as, Treasure Hunt in which Sigmund asks his new human friends for help in finding a Pirate s lost gold and other treasures. Children can also set up their own Virtual Aquarium in which they can select and give names to all the kinds of fish that in reality would be far too difficult for the family to care for. This will bring a sigh of relief to all those parents who have to listen to repeated requests for a fish like Nemo and the more advanced saltwater tank that comes with him. The Virtual Aquarium plays a big part in the education of our young audience by having multiple features that draw them in for play and fun learning. In the Virtual Aquarium, children can set feeding time schedules for their virtual fish and print these schedules out as a reminder to the whole family when it s time to feed all the fish-both real and virtual. The Virtual Aquarium encourages children to paint their selected fish any color or pattern they choose with the Virtual Coloring Book. For those children who prefer crayons and markers, there is also a Virtual Coloring Book feature in which they can print out scenes from their own Virtual Aquarium or select pictures from pre-set coloring books to fill with color. To tie the family s actual aquarium to the experiences gained by playing with the Virtual Aquarium, children can also play a seek and find game to search out all the types of fish they have in their real-life tank. These actual photos that the kids can choose from are drawn from the grownup s photographic database of all types and species of fish. They can display pictures of the types of fish complete with names the children have chosen for them. This Fish Family Photo can be Fanciful Fish! An Interactive Guide to Healthy Aquarium Living page 3 of 5
printed out and displayed next to the feeding schedule to remind youngsters that fun is to be found by both tanks-real and virtual. Children s Features: o Encourages learning through play on a variety of subjects: learning responsibility for the care of animals, experiencing the joy that can be found in watching fish grow and interact with each other, and the value of individual choice and creativity o The Virtual Aquarium allows children to create their own aquarium environment complete with all of the kinds of fish they choose, painted the colors they want. o Treasure Hunt is an interactive animated game in which Sigmund asks his human friends for help in finding a Pirate s buried and lost treasures o A variety of printable media, such as Virtual Coloring Book pages, Fish Family Photo pages, and feeding schedules can be generated In Summary, this CD-ROM is both amazingly informative and wonderfully entertaining. It is comprised of beautiful still photographs and films, overlaid with stunning animation. The structure and features allows each user, no matter their age or level of interest, to customize their experience in a way that bests suits their learning style. They can delve deep and gain the full wealth of information this product provides them, allowing them to maintain several large tanks each with separate types of communities and systems, or they can choose to touch only the surface enough to start up a small tank with a few fish and keep it healthy. For each of the users above and all those in between, Fanciful Fish! An Interactive Guide to Healthy Aquarium Living hopes to bring the joy of having a beautiful tank full of healthy aquatic friends - home. Fanciful Fish! An Interactive Guide to Healthy Aquarium Living page 4 of 5
This CD-ROM is rich in graphics and video and sound, so the PC or Macintosh platform it is run on will require advanced graphics and video cards to be installed. 24MB RAM and 40MB of additional hard drive space is recommended for maximum performance. Fanciful Fish! An Interactive Guide to Healthy Aquarium Living page 5 of 5