Swallow the Sea is, at heart, a spawn of Spore. Maxis' overhyped and underdelivering 2008 flagship title left a bitter taste in the mouth of many who played it expecting a gaming revolution. Yet the core idea of gamifying evolution persists, the meme is still appealing enough that some still harbor the dream of being able of going from the most humble form of life forms to something much greater. Determined, ambitious, or just straight up stubborn (mostly inexperinced) designers would attempt to make "Spore, but good", with titles like Revolutionary Games' Thrive and Wickworks' Crescent Loom. The result are projects that have been in development for years and have little hope of being completed. The process of designing the very systems of life itself becoming a neverending series of stumbles through the darkness. Some might even call it a nightmare. How ironic that the game that most strives to be one would be the only release to see the light of day.

Swallow the Sea works because of its laser-focused approach, that of a survival horror experienced through the lens of Spore's most compelling early gameplay loop: being a small, slowly growing cellular creature that goes from scavenging scraps to become the "big dog" leaving such scraps behind; from hunted to hunter. It helps that the setting is a positively rotten seascape inhabited by a fauna that strikes a delicate balance between cute and horrifying.

What separates Swallow the Sea from the rest of the pack is its willingness to explore what it means to evolve beyond just gameplay mechanics. It employs a grim (and almost comically unsubtle) commentary on the cycle of life, which is only reinforced with its ending. Did evolving actually make us "better"?

Does it even matter?