This is a short and cinematic game where you dive into a pro swimmer's childhood memories. The vibe is magical realism. The gameplay consists of being a magic cursor which can select objects and move them around. You interact with things by doing mechanical motions in order to advance through a series of scenes.

It's like someone made a movie, but between each scene they added friction. I actually enjoyed this friction more than I was expecting to. Some of the ways you interact with stuff is pretty amusing and satisfying. There were a lot of of small moments of random joy in something I was expecting to just be tedious. It's interesting how much this toy-like interactivity actually adds to the experience.

I was having 2 experiences: watching a series of creatively presented scenes obsessed with non-verbal story telling, and going through the motions of interacting with things. The latter prevented me from getting so bored that I stopped appreciating the former. To be clear, this was a danger because the story was pretty boring and uninteresting.

I can respect the intent of the story, but the real strength of the game is the diverse presentation of it's scenes. Some of the ways the trivial interactivity is implemented is neat. I repeatedly noticed an interesting bit of cinematography or scene construction and exclaimed "that's clever".

I love all the ocean & water imagery. Water is pretty technically difficult, especially for a small team indie game like this. Massive respect for all the shader and technical art work that was done here.

Reviewed on May 17, 2023


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