When we drew the fish for Fish Escape we started from real species, partly because the shapes and colours are better than anything we'd invent, and partly because we kept reading about them and couldn't stop. The game names you see on the home screen — "Bubbly Tang", "Cosmic Seahorse", "Wavy Angelfish" — are random nicknames, but the fish they refer to are real. Here's who they are.
The clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris and its relatives) lives in the warm, shallow waters of the Indo-Pacific, from the Red Sea to the Great Barrier Reef. Its famous trick is living inside a sea anemone, whose stinging tentacles would kill most other small fish. The clownfish is protected by a layer of mucus on its skin, and in return it chases away fish that would nibble the anemone and brings it scraps of food.
The fact we found hardest to believe: every clownfish is born male. A group living in one anemone has a single dominant female, and if she dies, the largest male changes sex and takes her place. In the game, the clownfish is our default short fish — one cell long — because it's small, fast and everywhere, exactly like the real thing on a reef.
The regal blue tang (Paracanthurus hepatus) is the bright blue reef fish with a black "palette" marking and a yellow tail. It is a surgeonfish, so called because of the razor-sharp spine folded into each side of the tail that it can flick out when threatened. Tangs are grazers; they spend their days cropping algae off coral, which keeps the reef from being smothered. A reef with healthy tang populations is, quite literally, a cleaner reef.
Young blue tangs are bright yellow and only turn blue as they mature. We use the tang as our two-cell fish: a little longer than the clownfish, with that unmistakable flat, oval silhouette.
There are two unrelated groups called angelfish. The freshwater angelfish (Pterophyllum) from the Amazon basin is the tall, triangular, striped fish that most aquarium owners know; the marine angelfish (family Pomacanthidae) are the brilliantly coloured reef species like the emperor angelfish, whose pattern changes completely between juvenile and adult. Our "wavy angelfish" is drawn from the freshwater kind, because that vertical, wing-like shape reads clearly in a small grid cell.
Freshwater angelfish are cichlids, which means they are attentive parents: both adults guard the eggs, fan them with their fins to keep water moving, and herd the fry around for weeks after they hatch.
Seahorses (genus Hippocampus) are real fish, though they don't look it: they swim upright, have a prehensile tail that grips seagrass, and are famous for the male carrying the eggs in a pouch until they hatch. They are also among the slowest fish in the sea; a dwarf seahorse covers about 1.5 metres an hour at full tilt. They're found in shallow tropical and temperate waters worldwide, usually among seagrass or coral where they can anchor themselves.
We nearly left the seahorse out, since a fish that barely swims is an odd fit for a game about escaping. It stayed because the silhouette is so recognisable. In the tank it behaves like any other short fish — the one concession to realism is that it's the fish we most often put nearest the wall.
Pufferfish (family Tetraodontidae) are the slow, round fish that inflate themselves with water when threatened, turning into a spiky ball too large for most predators to swallow. Many species also carry tetrodotoxin, one of the most potent natural poisons known, which is why the Japanese dish fugu can only be prepared by licensed chefs. Puffers have beak-like fused teeth strong enough to crack shellfish, and the teeth keep growing throughout their lives.
In Fish Escape the puffer is the fish you'll see least often, and when it appears it's usually in a tight spot — a nod to the fact that a puffed-up puffer can't fit through much of anything.
The two obstacles in the game come from the same place as the fish. Rocks stand in for the coral heads and boulders that break a reef into corridors — exactly the kind of space where a fish's path really is constrained to a lane. The seaweed wake is more of a stretch, but it does have a real cousin: a fish bolting off a sandy bottom leaves a visible puff of stirred-up sediment behind it, and in dense seagrass a fleeing fish does flatten a temporary channel. We just made the channel permanent, because a puzzle needs rules that don't go away.
If the real ocean side of this interests you more than the puzzle side, the Ocean Facts page covers what warming seas are doing to reef fish like these, and what the game contributes towards it.
Home·About·How to Play·Guides·FAQ·Ocean Facts·Privacy·Terms·Contact
© 2026 Fish Escape · Operated by Sarthak Manchanda