In Other Waters

This is a pretty cool visual and audio experience. Very neat sci fi interface, interesting story and eerie environment. I liked it !

As you can tell from the screenshots, the graphics of this game are minimalist. Don't be fooled, though: It creates a very strong atmosphere regardless, using different colors and shades, as well as animations of the basic symbols which represent the various creatures of this alien ocean. More importantly, the game is highly effective in using its sound effects, ambience and soundtrack to draw the player in. I would separate the game into two major parts: The surveying of the alien lifeforms versus the main plot. If you truly want to immerse yourself in this world, you'll need to do a lot of reading on the various creatures encountered and analyzed. While each creature comes with an unlockable sketch, your own imagination is absolute key here. Meanwhile, the main plot is intriguing, but primarily serves to move the exploration of new biomes and lifeforms forward, as you visit different parts of the ocean to uncover what exactly happened to the ecosystem before your arrival. Lastly, the gameplay itself I would describe as an exploration/light puzzle game, with some resource management: There's no free movement through the ocean, but pre-defined and often branching paths. As you move from point to point along these paths, you slowly explore the current sector. You need to collect numerous different samples, which are both needed to unlock the detailed analyses of the lifeforms and to keep exploring: Sometimes, the path to the next point in line is blocked by an obstacle which can be temporarily overcome with a specific sample. Sometimes the environment drains your oxygen or your batteries quickly, which forces you to consume an appropriate sample to restore the respective supply. While this is serviceable, the gameplay is neither particularly complex nor interesting, but it does help to give each biome its own distinctive challenges to overcome, varies things up a bit and contributes to the feeling of exploring an alien world. Great atmosphere - and a very fair price!

I'm a huge fan of the search for and possibilities of xenobiology, so I wanted to like this game, but its execution is not as interesting as I'd hoped. The writing is the most interesting thing about it, as your human passenger describes encounters and becomes more familiar with new species, but it could have been done as a short story with better effect. It's well-written by someone who has a passing familiarity with biology, so it's minimally plausible. I liked the main story line well enough, but I didn't feel like it had much to do with me or my choices, and again, it would have been better as standard fiction. The static art drawings of each underwater alien species is also decent. Technically the game works well, but that shouldn't be surprising, as there isn't a whole lot going on that could break. The interface looks attractive, which I think is the main gimmick. However, I don't think the actual gameplay would have been interesting even 50 years ago, let alone today.

Behind the great atmosphere — with superb music and sound design — and the minimalist UI aesthetic, there’s unfortunately not much real depth to this game. The gameplay quickly becomes repetitive and linear, and the lack of visual representation of the environment (the in-game database contains only a handful of illustrations) makes the exploration feel abstract and disconnected. It’s a shame, because the game shows real potential. At times, it hints at becoming an immersive journey through the unknown world of oceanic life — occasionally even a suspenseful survival horror with a compelling storyline. But ultimately, it falls short in all these areas. All in all, it feels like a great concept that needed a bit more time, thought, and development to truly come to life.

I haven't read this much in years and it genuinly interested me. The story was compelling and the creature logs were interesting. Definitley worth it for the price and really cool UI.