While it has a solid premise and I liked the core experience, In Other Waters strikes me as underdeveloped in some crucial aspects while simultaneously detracting from its core strengths with unneeded additions.
On the gameplay side things are fairly simple. You are traversing a 2d plane going from point to point and scanning your surroundings for local plant and animal life. Your scans give you new information which will provide greater and greater insight into the planet's ecology as you progress through the game. But while the info itself is interesting, the process of obtaining it gets boring quickly. The game makes some attempts early on to keep navigation interesting by having harvested resources impact the environment (for example, there is an item that retracts nearby reeds when deployed thus allowing you to pass through the area) but it’s never used in a particularly interesting way. It’s never a puzzle for what to do but rather a straightforward 'Do X to proceed' instruction. And this system is never used again past the first area anyway which left the game feeling less complex as it went on. Beyond that first area, the only function of the inventory items are to scan for research and to replenish the (already very generous) energy and oxygen meters. Aside from that, the gameplay is simple enough that it's not outright bad but also doesn’t contribute much.
While on the story side, the game has a solid core. Exploring the unknown planet and learning about its ecology is an interesting experience. It’s unlike any other game I've played and the writing does a solid job of making the world feel both fantastical and believable at the same time. But while I can’t go too deeply into it thanks to spoilers, I do think the storytelling takes a dip whenever humans or the suit AI is involved as the former is unoriginal while the latter is inconsequential.
I have to give the game credit. It’s unique in its core concept and does a good job when it sticks to that stuff, but there are plenty of other points where it fails to impress. And for such a short game, the amount of good content here doesn’t end up being all that much. I can’t be too harsh here since this does seem to be a pretty small creator, but I don't want to let leniency get in the way of honesty either.
But despite the game's shortcomings, I do think it’s worth playing. It deserves significant credit for its originality and while it does stumble at many points there is enough of interest going on with the atmosphere and story that I certainly don't regret the time spent playing.
On the gameplay side things are fairly simple. You are traversing a 2d plane going from point to point and scanning your surroundings for local plant and animal life. Your scans give you new information which will provide greater and greater insight into the planet's ecology as you progress through the game. But while the info itself is interesting, the process of obtaining it gets boring quickly. The game makes some attempts early on to keep navigation interesting by having harvested resources impact the environment (for example, there is an item that retracts nearby reeds when deployed thus allowing you to pass through the area) but it’s never used in a particularly interesting way. It’s never a puzzle for what to do but rather a straightforward 'Do X to proceed' instruction. And this system is never used again past the first area anyway which left the game feeling less complex as it went on. Beyond that first area, the only function of the inventory items are to scan for research and to replenish the (already very generous) energy and oxygen meters. Aside from that, the gameplay is simple enough that it's not outright bad but also doesn’t contribute much.
While on the story side, the game has a solid core. Exploring the unknown planet and learning about its ecology is an interesting experience. It’s unlike any other game I've played and the writing does a solid job of making the world feel both fantastical and believable at the same time. But while I can’t go too deeply into it thanks to spoilers, I do think the storytelling takes a dip whenever humans or the suit AI is involved as the former is unoriginal while the latter is inconsequential.
I have to give the game credit. It’s unique in its core concept and does a good job when it sticks to that stuff, but there are plenty of other points where it fails to impress. And for such a short game, the amount of good content here doesn’t end up being all that much. I can’t be too harsh here since this does seem to be a pretty small creator, but I don't want to let leniency get in the way of honesty either.
But despite the game's shortcomings, I do think it’s worth playing. It deserves significant credit for its originality and while it does stumble at many points there is enough of interest going on with the atmosphere and story that I certainly don't regret the time spent playing.