In the "Other Waters" review-a marine sanctuary for meditation explorers • iGamesNews.com

Pressing the space bar will make a wailing sound, and the triangular waterway is full of triangular waypoints and colored dots, flying or forming undulating patterns-creatures are indifferent in life, and troubled diving humans click a waypoint in the middle To scan it, this is a short but evocative description in the expanded panel on the right. Press one of the larger buttons to set that waypoint as the destination, and the six-pointer locks the entire view when clicked. Press another button to engage the set of thrusters, and then press the space when you arrive to rescan your surroundings.

This is the heartbeat of In Other Waters, a unique and fascinating exploration game from Jump Over The Age, set on an alien planet. It's a rhythm that takes you from shallow, sunlit waters to waters full of toxic microbes, from pollen-filled pillars to deep abyss full of terrible secrets. Nothing beats the rhythm-no opponent in the game can defeat, and only a few tools (such as laser cutters) can open areas that were initially inaccessible. Even occasional terrain hazards, from stinging veils to corrosive saltwater pools, are more like encouraging people to move forward than threats.

The ritual of scanning and setting up the route sounds tedious. During the first hour of my eight hours playing the game, I was worried that the cetaceous whistles and clicks of subtle adjustments to the interface might start to shake, and repetitions might entice me to browse important text. This temptation is most intense when you are wandering in toxic water, with your eyes sliding between the diminishing O2 reserve on the left and the leisurely unfolding comments on the right. But once your panic has cooled down, these oppressive areas can cope-your clothes can metabolize the organics in the debris to get oxygen and energy, and the only penalty for exhaustion is to be recovered by the drone and recovered The area must be restarted.

After some time, you realize what the game is asking you: not only curiosity, but also reflection and some method, just like a thoughtful scientist, willing to sample a little ocean at a time. You also realize that what you are doing while weaving and scanning is weaving two life forms together-a foreign body biologist Dr. Ellery Vas is looking for these undiscovered people in these undiscovered Waters, and a strange AI unit found on the reef. .

Ellery can't operate the set on her own: instead, she sets broad goals by region, and it's up to you to decide how to achieve those goals and you'll investigate throughout the investigation. Her agency in this area includes reviewing and writing down the creatures and things you find. You can't communicate with her except to answer "yes" or "no" to very rare questions, but the act of exploration constitutes a dialogue, a flow of back and forth between the visualization of AI and the ability to describe and analyze humans.

Symbiosis played by players promotes a rhythmic, argumentative story that tells the story of coexisting with non-human life and opposing the raging of interplanetary capitalism. Ellery is an employee of Baikal, a company that divests the entire world's resources. Working for this entity is the price she paid to escape the Earth, whose oceans have been damaged by climate change. She was a survivor at the time, but she was still a scientist, and Gliese 581c (actually an exoplanet that may have inhabited it, previously visited by the Alien vs Predator franchise) was everything that Earth had lost. You will encounter dozens of fascinating life forms, using a tool similar to a shutter-operated camera to collect fragments of plant leaves or shells and store them in a laboratory found early in the game.

The laboratory itself is a delightful specimen. It is like a slide under a microscope. It is a delightful specimen. It is the center of a chapter break. Here, you can analyze the collected samples to populate the database, and Ellery's initial observations and speculations have quickly developed into a great nerd for predation and reproduction. The game's chief designer and writer Gareth Damian Martin is a fancy stylist, but he and his co-authors have achieved a balance between Rhapsody and clinical precision in the game balance. Collect enough data and you will unlock the sketch of the creature, this is the AI ​​postcard of Ellery World.

These creatures, like everything else you can't find in the game, are weird just because they mourn the creatures we're destroying their habitat, which exacerbates this fear. I will try to avoid destroying them, but there is still a long way to go for video game essentials like sharks. There is a strong emphasis on interdependence: each organism can be achieved by interacting with another organism, whether it is turning a larger organism into a habitat or cultivating bacteria as food. In fact, some creatures are as entangled as Ellery and AI.

It's fascinating, but as a mechanic, the taxonomy system feels wayward. The progress of the game is roughly defined by the database completion percentage, which is visible in the save file. Maximizing the percentage is a sign of crueler, more aspiring fantasy than in other waters-it conflicts with the gentle tone of Ellery notes, which often end with more questions. Accepting the mysteries of the planets rather than trying to solve the final puzzle is part of the game's ecological message, so the sense of completionism seems inappropriate.

But it was a small mistake, but you forgot the second you risked returning to the water. The colors of the game are surprising, creating an atmosphere that most open-world blockbusters can only dream of. In addition to the radiant turquoise and frozen sherbet yellow, you can also see the red and green dazzling stew, and the sunken pits, where the map shows the traces of bones exposed from the midnight blue. Amos Roddy's contemplative electronic sheet music makes this atmosphere more elegant and complements the evolving plot. Some of the major theatrical beats are closely related to the melody, and when you click between the lines, they play one note at a time.

You can't seem to "escape" in the "other world" interface and explore the naturalistic three-dimensional landscape implied by Ellery's sketches-annoying-of course, I would love to see a 3D interpretation of a particular colonial biological form- But this is the missing point. Artificial intelligence perspective Yes In reality, its collaboration with Ellery has created a world. This concept of co-production as a result of continuous interaction and acceptance is the abomination of the version provided by Baikal, which cynically divides existence into humans and what we use. This is a concept in "other waters", because the ocean you envision is as illusive and fragile as our own, so it makes you live, scan one by one, and one waypoint.

Disclaimer: In other waters, creator Gareth Damian Martin is a former contributor to Eurogamer.