Recent reviews by Thamus_Knoward

I have a love-hate-relationship with this game.

Love:
- The core gameplay loop of fishing, deep sea exploration and serving sushi is great.
- The artstyle is an interesting blend of pixel art on 2D or 3D assets. It's a bit hit and miss for some environments but mostly very pretty in my opinion.
- The cutscenes and the humor hit the right marks for me.

Hate:
- The ever expanding array of other systems and chores to take care of, without any meaningful automation in sight killed the joy of the core gameplay for me.
- The game especially in story missions throws new gameplay mechanics at you just for the sake of novelty. They lack depth and felt unfocused. Some, more than others really killed the pacing.
- It's hard to stay focused in the game, it's almost like it want's you to be distracted as much as possible. There's an ingame mobile phone with ingame mobile apps, and countless of side-missions, side-characters, random encounters, etc. It felt a bit bloated really.

In other words, you get a lot of bang for your buck with this one.

It's more of an underwater rogue-lite Stardew Valley, than a Subnautica.

I bought this for the art-style and stayed with it for the enemy and level variety until I got a bit too overwhelmed with the hectic gameplay. The brief story segments between the levels are a nice touch. I'd recommend it to anyone who loves bullet-time shooters, the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater franchise and the pixel perfect movement and timing from Dark Souls, but it was ultimately too difficult for me.

Wow! This game oozes character and creativity. It's short, albeit a lot of fun! I guess you would add 2 hours of playtime if you cared to explore every nook and cranny. Climbing and rappelling feel great, and the versatility of the environments kept me in awe. The vistas kept getting grander and more fantastical.

The world, as abandoned as it seems, is full of life and lures you in with a rich, heartfelt history of people adapting to a new reality.

Highly recommended!

The game's message about climate change and human mistreatment of the environment should weigh heavy on everyone's shoulders. It is conveyed very nicely both through subtle and overt changes of the background scenery and short action set pieces that play out while you can move around freely.

I felt that the gameplay loop of balancing foraging for your pups with the discovery of this dystopian world was satisfying. Towards the end of the game, when all areas are discovered, it lost a bit of it's original intrigue for me, but luckily the game does not overstretch it. The mix of 2D movement in a 3D world felt fresh and was really a joy to behold.

Animation, artstyle and atmosphere were great, but I felt the main story did not have the emotional impact that it could have had, if it had focused more on the animal characters rather than shifting to humans.

I can recommend it regardless, but do get it on sale!

The art style is amazing, the art direction is amazing, the music is amazing, the animations are amazing, the game mechanics are fun, the puzzles and dungeons are fun, and the world is interesting. Alas, this game is also a massive slog with terrible pacing and a convoluted story. And that is super sad! This could have been a great game if it had been a little more streamlined and had tried to be less bombastic.

I still recommend it, because beating electric snails with a frying pan feels great. However, do get it on sale, and be prepared to loose all motivation to play about half-way through.

What the hell did I just play?! I was intrigued by the H. R. Giger artstyle and the premise of exploring a totally alien world where bio-mechanical technology was ubiquitous. But what I got was a sado-masochism simulator both in its themes, its pacing and in its gameplay. There were some incredible vistas along the way with a really incredible sense of scale but, alas, a cryptic ending and some explicitly crass content too.
I did like observing and then learning to use some of the alien tech, but I felt disgusted having to actually use it. The puzzles, atmosphere and grand visuals overall where OK but they were scarce, much like the ammo and health.

I give this 3 out of 5 puréed homunculi.

It looks good, but just doesn't feel right. The control-response feels off, the pacing is tedious and I had a hard time even getting a basic understanding of the story, or even a bit of a sense of mystery. There was not a lot despite the gorgeous graphics to keep me going. I cannot recommend it.

This game is special. It's stunningly beautiful, it's easy-to-learn yet incredibly hard-to-master, and the story is equal parts alien and deeply human. I loved the thrill of narrowly escaping some monstrosity chasing me down.

But, the story is not easy to come by. From Software has a tendency to hide all the lore in item descriptions, in this game the developer makes you take items to a special place in the world to even access their descriptions. And each trip is a good hour minimum if the random game world lets you.

I recommend playing this if you have a lot of free time - when you can explore the game at your own pace, and you have the time to experiment and observe the world. If you are interested but don't want to commit upwards of 100 hours, do it like me: Get a mod that simplifies the movement, another to be able to throw spears in all directions, tweak the game's remix parameters to your liking and then read a guide to learn how to go through the regions in a sensible order. I admit, I also ended up reading about the lore on the wiki, whenever I found new items.

I would love to explore this game some more as there are regions I still have not seen, and I honestly consider getting Downpour, because the core game play loop is thrilling.

Amanita Design has created many beautiful, story-rich, high-detailed point-and-click games. This is not one of them.

It was meant to be more light-hearted I suppose, but it didn't really land with me. It is also really short.

I played this projected onto the wall in our living room with the entire family gathered around to watch. At first, it seems like it's a bit of weird one because the gameplay goes back and forth between sleuthing to solve gruesome crimes, solving increasingly stranger puzzles and lot's of walking in between. However, it's all worth it. The writing is great, the game is beautiful and the pacing is just right.

It's totally worth it, although a bit short!