In Other Waters

What if world-building was the gameplay?

Why

Why Not

Impressions

I briefly wanted to be a marine biologist when I was a kid, mostly because I thought dolphins were cool (they are) and I liked the idea of being away from my family for months at a time (I now live in Japan). In Other Waters lets me live out that dream, but as the AI assistant of a marine biologist on an alien planet rather than the fleshy, vulnerable human themselves. It's not Citizen Sleeper, its more famous sibling from Jump Over the Age, but you can definitely feel the same DNA in the chill, thoughtful gameplay and clean visual style.

The distinction is mostly for narrative purposes though, providing a justification for dialogue which would otherwise struggle to exist given our human friend's status as the only member of that species on the planet. Other species abound though and it's these, along with a solid unfolding mystery, which kept me going through an ~8 hour runtime of clicking and reading. Gameplay mostly consists of zooming around the seafloor in your dive suit, methodically scanning then moving to study the local flora/fauna, take samples of it for analysis at base or progress toward your current objective.

Those objectives deliver the slowly building plot as our pet human goes from a fresh arrival overwhelmed by the explosion of unexpected life to uncovering the impact her former lover, her mother and their former employer had on this abundant ecosystem. The plot is fine, pretty standard stuff well told, but the real star here is the ecosystem itself.

Inspecting enough of a particular species unlocks its 'Observations' page back in the lab, while hunting down and collecting elusive samples will reveal the 'Behaviours' and 'Theories' page before finally revealing whether the sketches match the mental image you've pieced together. Piecing together how all the creatures of this world interact in vaguely plausible sounding ways was a satisfying experience, especially as each observation in the field drip feeds you a bit more information, allowing you to draw your own conclusions before the answers are revealed back in the lab. The minimalistic visuals also do a surprisingly great job of conveying the ecosystem with various sizes of dots/clouds set over a topographical map with occasional lighting changes.

There are dangerous sections of the underwater world you'll explore, but I definitely wouldn't call them difficult. Extraneous samples can be fed to your suit to replenish spent oxygen or power, and even without that you'll rarely be in danger of death. Rather than the usual feeling of accomplishment from beating a tough enemy or making it through a platforming gauntlet, the dopamin hit here comes from figuring out the world you find yourself in. If that sounds like your cup of tea you'll have a great time with this game; I certainly did.