I like what the game is angling for, but it feels like it's missing something. I think the devs were a little too afraid of scaring people off to let the horror come out and play properly--the game is slightly too on the level about its own mechanics to be particularly scary beyond, say, the second archipelago or so. The plot is conceptually interesting, but the writing is pretty workmanlike video game text, so the story never really sunk its hooks in me unfortunately.
That being said! the gameplay loop is pretty fun, which is what sells it for me. The hodgepodge of survival-crafting progression, a classic fishing minigame fleshed out into the central mechanic, and Resident Evil inventory management puzzle was surprisingly addictive. Admittedly I think the balance is slightly undertuned? Unless I missed something there's not really any use for the final tier of upgrades and the actual gameplay is quite easy to optimize to a point that you're never cash starved, but I had fun with it regardless.
The other main appeal to me was just the joy of discovery in finding new fish and new messed up fish variants, which honestly never got old. It scratched a certain Pokémon itch of sorts for me, of just wanting to be introduced to more and more weird little dudes to catch, and to find out what sorts of weird monster evolutions they have. I honestly think i will go back and try to at least complete the standard fish journal because it's genuinely quite fun.
An aside--it has the strange feeling of being a game made by people whose main interests and inspirations are other video games. The writing feels like an attempt to write in a video-game style, in the specific manner of what it chooses to ignore (how is a fisherman dredging up a single loose belt buckle from the bottom of the sea for a greiving father?) versus what it chooses to focus on (getting magic powers to fill out your action wheel is described prosaically several times.) Every mechanic in it feels like it's based on something from a different game--the fishing is every fishing minigame you've ever played rolled up into one, the inventory management is Resident Evil and Tetris, the game world is constructed exactly the way the solar system in Outer Wilds is constructed down to a very obvious Dark Bramble ripoff. None of this is to say that I think the devs are unoriginal--in fact I think the mixture of many of these elements is quite novel--but I think the "thing that's missing" is a certain dynamism that I think having a wider range of influences would have brought.
Overall though a pretty cool game--if it sounds interesting to you it probably will be.
That being said! the gameplay loop is pretty fun, which is what sells it for me. The hodgepodge of survival-crafting progression, a classic fishing minigame fleshed out into the central mechanic, and Resident Evil inventory management puzzle was surprisingly addictive. Admittedly I think the balance is slightly undertuned? Unless I missed something there's not really any use for the final tier of upgrades and the actual gameplay is quite easy to optimize to a point that you're never cash starved, but I had fun with it regardless.
The other main appeal to me was just the joy of discovery in finding new fish and new messed up fish variants, which honestly never got old. It scratched a certain Pokémon itch of sorts for me, of just wanting to be introduced to more and more weird little dudes to catch, and to find out what sorts of weird monster evolutions they have. I honestly think i will go back and try to at least complete the standard fish journal because it's genuinely quite fun.
An aside--it has the strange feeling of being a game made by people whose main interests and inspirations are other video games. The writing feels like an attempt to write in a video-game style, in the specific manner of what it chooses to ignore (how is a fisherman dredging up a single loose belt buckle from the bottom of the sea for a greiving father?) versus what it chooses to focus on (getting magic powers to fill out your action wheel is described prosaically several times.) Every mechanic in it feels like it's based on something from a different game--the fishing is every fishing minigame you've ever played rolled up into one, the inventory management is Resident Evil and Tetris, the game world is constructed exactly the way the solar system in Outer Wilds is constructed down to a very obvious Dark Bramble ripoff. None of this is to say that I think the devs are unoriginal--in fact I think the mixture of many of these elements is quite novel--but I think the "thing that's missing" is a certain dynamism that I think having a wider range of influences would have brought.
Overall though a pretty cool game--if it sounds interesting to you it probably will be.
AlexTheGerman
9 months ago