Trailer Drawquarium has moments that easily make creators see themselves in them: once excited with each drawing, then sometimes wondering how much that effort is still appreciated.

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The gaming industry is going through years of uncertainty. According to GDC's State of the Game Industry 2026 survey, conducted with more than 2,300 people in the industry, 28% of participants said they had been laid off in the previous two years.

Among the group working at AAA studios, two-thirds said their company had cut staff. At the same time, 52% of respondents rated generative AI as having a negative impact on the gaming industry. These numbers are not enough to attribute the layoffs to AI, but reflect the uncertainty of workers in the face of ongoing changes.

Gamers are also increasingly interested in how images in games are created. Black Ops 7 has been criticized for cards that suspected the use of AI images, while the game's Steam page confirmed that it uses generators to support the development of some resources. Battlefield 6 also encountered controversy surrounding a sticker depicting a double-barreled gun, although the AI ​​origin of this image is still questioned by the community. These reactions show that the introduction of technology into production is also related to players' expectations about quality and care for the product.

In the midst of that context, Drawquarium appeared with a very cute idea: players draw their own fish, put them in the tank and then take care of them. But the more than three-minute long trailer of this indie game spends the first part telling about a person's relationship with drawing. From childhood scribbles to the emergence of AI image creation tools, the film raises a close question: what makes us still want to create a picture ourselves?

Drawquarium game trailer

From the strokes on Paint to the artist's worries

The trailer opens with an old Paint interface and an orange cat drawn with simple lines. That image easily evokes the feeling of playing with drawing software for the first time, choosing a color and then dragging the mouse to see what will appear. It has the same innocence as the joy of watching Mario jump and make coins appear: a small gesture of the hand can make interesting things happen on the screen. At that time, drawing often started with curiosity, before worrying about whether I had talent or whether the painting was beautiful enough or not.

Over time, more emails, educational choices, and traces of adult life appear on the screen. It's still the same computer, but there are more and more things that need to be solved. The narrative through software windows makes change seem natural: a hobby can gradually recede as people have to devote time to work and other concerns. The drawings are still there, they just haven't been opened for a long time.

The appearance of AI gives the story more weight. The elaborate images created through a few keystrokes expose the viewer to a change in the way images are made. For those learning to draw, it can be a confusing feeling when looking back on years of practice. For people who make a living from their job, the worry also goes into each quote, each job opportunity and the question of how their skills will be perceived.

That is also the reason why the story in the trailer can reach the artist. A person can still love their job, want to spend hours adjusting lighting, finding colors or perfecting character expressions, and at the same time worry whether that effort will help them continue to make a living. The love for the profession is still there, but the words of encouragement to "keep passionate" are hardly enough for them to feel secure in sitting down to draw when their work becomes increasingly unstable.

Rediscover the joy of a doodle fish

From those concerns, Drawquarium brings viewers back to a simple joy: drawing a creature and watching it swim in an aquarium. The drawing that was originally lying still on the screen began to move, becoming something the player could take care of and sit and watch for a while longer. The game also supports importing PNG images, allowing you to import existing drawings into the underwater world. Thanks to that, the emotions evoked by the trailer are followed by the gameplay experience itself, when the artist has another way to bond with his work.

That idea originated from a close desire of Kaleb, a developer who is a 3D artist in the film industry: to bring children's drawings to life. One can imagine the joy of a child when the fish he just drew suddenly swam on the screen. For adults, that moment can also recall the joy they once had with drawing, when they look at their work with affection, without hastily considering how beautiful it is or what needs to be fixed.

The details of the words "AI" open up to "Art is back", then "Art is human" also connects to that emotional circuit. After the images that evoke insecurity, the way the text changes feels like a person has just found a reason to open an unfinished drawing. A painting may contain colors associated with a memory, an expression that has been edited many times, or a clumsiness that the artist wants to keep because he finds it adorable. Through those details, the trailer focuses attention on the people behind the work and the joy that makes them want to continue creating.

As a gamer who is open to AI, I still especially appreciate the artist's mark in game images. The Midnight Walk is a recent example that I really like: the MoonHood team created clay shapes and then 3D scanned them into the game, preserving the textures and handcrafted traces of that world. Knowing that someone has picked up and adjusted each model makes the creatures become closer. Drawquarium evokes a similar sentiment through the experience of drawing something with your own hands and wanting to keep it with you.

A trailer is difficult to solve the employment problem or the controversy about AI in the gaming industry. Artists still need income, opportunities and conditions to continue working. But Drawquarium brings a close sympathy, recalling why creating used to make them happy. For those who have only opened software to get work done for a long time, sometimes drawing something for themselves, just to satisfy their imagination, is also a necessary break.

Perhaps what remains after the trailer is the feeling of remembering the first days holding a pen in art class, or the first time opening MS Paint to draw a house on the computer. The roof may be crooked, the windows may be big, some may be small, and the paint will bleed out, but after drawing it, I still like it and want to call someone to come see it. At that time, the simple joy was seeing what I had just thought of come to fruition. Drawquarium evokes that feeling of letting clumsy drawings begin to swim in the aquarium. Players can sit and watch for a while, then draw another one, so they can enjoy their creativity without needing approval from customers or urging deadlines.

However, thinking a little further reveals a somewhat ironic possibility, who knows, maybe one day, images shared from projects like Drawquarium will also become AI training data. If that happens, the squiggly fish will have an unexpected job: teaching machines how to imitate the very joy of holding a pen that humans are trying to rediscover.

Drawquarium is expected to release on November 13, 2026 on PC via Steam. Currently, players can download a free demo to experience first.