An interesting cross between a soulslike and a lighthearted 3D platformer. It’s clear where its influences lie and I kinda feel it rides the line between being inspired and just copying stuff (“The Sands Between” is not very subtle for instance), but for the most part it stands out as its own thing and enjoyable

It draws from many of FromSoft’s titles obviously (specifically Sekiro with the addition of parries and a stance meter which works well enough here), but the use of shells that give different stats and special abilities added a good amount of variety to combat despite being limited to just your fork. Can also make it into a hammer weapon by attaching shells to it which was cool

Aesthetically SpongeBob comes to mind along with Battle for Bikini Bottom in how it plays as a platformer, but that’s an easy comparison to make really (even has a Mr. Krabs costume you can wear). I thought Kril was a bit obnoxious past the whole playing as a crab novelty, but the sea world and dialogue were charming enough. It’s a surprisingly sizable game too, took about 20 hours to finish

What holds it back though is mainly a general lack of polish. Mechanically it doesn’t really match the refinement of its contemporaries, combat and platforming has an ever present feeling of jank to it that just gets more noticeable the longer you play. Numerous times I’ve gotten stuck on terrain, dodges or parries can be inconsistent to register, the camera tends to bug out especially when you’re often in enclosed areas, for some reason using the hammer would launch Kril into the air sometimes, occasionally the audio would cut out entirely unless I restarted the game, etc. I’ve heard performance is rough on console platforms also, but was mostly alright on Steam Deck for me so can’t really verify that. These are all things that can be improved with patches at least, so hopefully it gets more work there over time