Recent reviews by Pengin

I completed the game in about 16 hours. I don't normally write reviews, but I wanted to in this case because I could feel the love that has been put into this game.

I have some limited experience scuba diving, and was amazed by how well the game captures the experience. The diving/swimming animations for the main character were done through motion capture, so they look realistic and natural. The sound design was also exceptionally well done. Things tend to sound different underwater (louder and closer, and less directional) and the developers captured this feeling exactly. The sounds of sea life in the environment, the way you hear yourself breathing through a regulator, the bubbling noises, everything worked perfectly together and was extremely immersive. (There was also this dual sense of freedom and claustrophobia, which basically captured how I felt diving as well).

Things I loved:
- The sound design, including both the music soundtrack (it's REALLY GOOD), the ambient environmental noises, etc.
- How immersive it is
- The small details that help create immersion like being able to play the guitar as a mini game, or pull faces in the mirror
- The dream sequences were extremely well done, the combination of land/sea things into one scene especially the first one with the whale swimming in the "sky" was beautiful
- The story. It explores the feeling of loss in a way that feels very personal. The final choice felt heart-wrenching. There's another part that made me feel very powerless/sad/angsty as well
- The fact that the devs made changes based on feedback (for example, it was requested that the mini map icons disappear after you pick up a collectable so you can see which ones you had already picked up and which ones were left to get- this patch happened while I was playing and was SO much better)
- The free camera worked amazingly well. Really cool to be able to see all the diver animations in detail and explore the environment freely.
- The environment design. It's really good, down to the varying visibility, the light/darkness, the sea life, the landscape (seascape?), everything. Just an absolute joy to look at.

Things I liked less/minor quibbles:
- Unsure if this is a bug or a mistake on my part, but I went around cleaning up all the weird oil blobs as soon as they appeared because they were freaking me out, and then when I got the job to clean them up the following day, there weren't enough blobs left for me to clean or something (I cleaned all the ones I came across during the mission, and it showed as ticked off, but it never went away from the quest listings and I didn't get the achievement for doing all the jobs. Whoops)
- I was actually terrible at driving the submersible ... let's just say this is a skill issue but it would be nice to be able to turn down the sensitivity on the controls a bit to adjust maybe. Not a big deal. I played with controller and definitely recommend doing so over keyboard/mouse.
- A couple of lip sync issues with the dialogue when you're looking at the main character's face. This is so minor it was a non-issue. Really scrambling for things to say in this section.

Issues/bugs (mostly for the devs if they read this):
- The game crashed once after exiting an area on I think day 16. No big deal, it had saved at that point so I didn't lose any progress.
- Encountered a couple of bugs that required me to exit to main menu and resume from there (for example, once on day 17 I stopped being able to move my character when trying to move between two rooms in the admin facility). They did not persist after restarting from menu so it wasn't a big problem.

tl;dr This is a game that has had a lot of love put into it and you can feel it. I would absolutely recommend this.

The game is simple, but iimmersive. It's well written and the characters have depth; you find yourself empathising with the moral and emotional struggles they go through.

Most importantly, it's not a dating sim! (Although I guess you could kind of play it like one). You aren't forced to try to "conquer" the characters, just interact with them in a way that feels natural and reflects the way you're feeling about what you discover/read. You don't have to make choices based on what you think the characters want you to say; doing so won't necessarily lead to a "bad" ending.

If you're looking for a game that will sometimes make you feel conflicted, sad, angry, curious and happy all at once, I recommend it :)

Basically, wouldn't say it's "the best game EVAR" but definitely worth a play if you're into the "style" of game that involves a lot of reading/story and decision making; as part of that genre it's a gem.

Terrible.

Played for like 15-20 mins and still no actual options/"choices".

To sum up the experience, felt like reading terrible fan-fiction accompained by pictures and music.

If that wasn't bad enough, there were spelling mistakes >.<

The girls are so two dimensional it's like the author has never spoken to an actual girl.
... Actually the whole game was kind of like that. Cringe-worthy/awkward.

Summary: Struggle to call this a "game" due to lack of interactions/"choices", very cringe-worthy in most respects.