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.
I can't know for sure whether the game lives up to the advertising hype. The reason is that this demo version only allows you to play for two hours and then makes you restart from the beginning to keep playing. Given the glacial pace of this game, two hours is just about enough time to build a few houses and a resource depot. None of the features relating to the game's conceit (social policy) are remotely reachable in that time. I would have loved to get a glimpse into the class conflict that the manual and blurbs hint about. However, rules are rules, and I am obliged to rate based entirely on what I actually experienced in the game. What I experienced was a game that seemed like a first effort. Lots of little things I'd expect from a solid game seem missing. The strict adherence to the realism of scale and proportion results in all your citizens disappearing if you zoom out a bit. Even when you are zoomed all the way in so you can see what the heck they are up to, they are not selectable and have no mouseover display, so you can't even see their name or profession. The pace is also overly concerned with realism; citizens walk through forests carrying loads of goods not much faster than it would take in real life. Furthermore, the game lets you build rectilinear roads (more like slightly-worn dirt paths) instantly for free and suggests this helps their efficiency, but they seem to completely ignore roads and stick to walking along direct diagonals between destinations. These kinds of blemishes, coupled with the really quite poor game performance, make me agree when they kick me out of the game and thank me for playing their "alpha." Yep, that seems about right.
The catamaran simulation, this game's raison d'etre, is nothing short of wonderful. The chop of the sea, the storms, the way the boat hits the beach — I could practically taste the salt! At one point, my craft took an unplanned nose dive into an oncoming wave, jerking it to a stop, and I felt impatience for the wind to get me moving before the boat was swamped. Yes, the boat can actually go completely underwater. When it surfaced, my character gasped for breath. In short, atmosphere is what this game does best. What's unrealistic seems intentional. For instance, I don't believe that the wind can ever push your boat backwards. And the speed you can achieve while tacking into the wind seems unrealistic — especially for a craft with a sail made of grass! (You can upgrade the sail, but I never found the need to). Without these kinds of forgiving fibs, I can imagine that the game would have been a lot more frustrating. Unfortunately, there isn't much to the game beyond sailing and managing hunger and inventory. The crafting experience was not nearly as rich as the sailing. There are a lot of things to make, but they aren't interesting or challenging to put together, and many aren't necessary. There is some exploration, but it's neither difficult nor extensive. You visit the required number of islands per chapter, you kill monsters with your makeshift weapons, you climb the required number of very similar towers, and aside from some navigation around various marine obstacles, that's the game. I was disappointed, for example, that the hang glider you can make isn't really useful. If the effort put into the flying mechanics remotely approached what was put into sailing, maybe they could have done something with it. The rock climbing was reasonably well-executed, but it's next to useless for exploration. The veneer of a plot is also thin. That said, if you're a fan of the sea or sailing, and don't mind that the simulation is highly forgiving, think about picking this up!
