THE GOOD PARTS
The game is actually fun to play, it’s REALLY challenging (which for me is good, although I definitely see it being TOO hard for some people [particularly for a jam entry]), the background music is superb and does the job well; the art fits the game’s atmosphere too and I didn’t get to find any bugs in my playthrough.
Also, I liked the humor of the game; it was a clever use of the word “fish” because if you’re a fish with a fish brain I doubt you could think of anything else but FISH.
However, there are some game design decisions that made me raise an eyebrow while I was playing this so…
THE BAD PARTS
- The narrative side of the game has pacing issues; I honestly think that the game could live without your instructor talking to you so much because at the beginning I was doing nothing else but wait for the instructor to finish their lines (which are timed [it seems?]. I didn’t try to skip them because it was the first time I was playing the game so it didn’t make sense for me to skip content). I know the tutorial can be skipped but, again, I wanted to get the full experience.
This also happens after you lose the first time, and after you lose a couple of times more. It makes sense from the narrative perspective (I guess?) but from the game design perspective it introduces friction because I just want to try again and not wait until the instructor speaks about how dumb you are for not completing the tasks and installs an ad-blocker that doesn’t actually work on your computer and makes this section of the game completely useless; it’s blatant padding.
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The File Explorer minigame is downright unfair; you’re faced with a bunch of folders and subfolders that you have to explore to search for a single file and when you DO find it, it has a password. I’m thankful because the location of the files doesn’t change so once you find it in one playthrough you can just focus on searching the code in the next one, but the fact that it’s very unlikely to complete it on the first try without it being evident it’s kinda sussy to me. Not necessarily a BAD game design decision but just something that made me go “Hmmmm…”.
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I don’t see the theme in this game AT ALL. I don’t think “when you lose, you have to try again in an infinite loop until you win” is a valid interpretation of the theme because that’s basically the rule for all games (save a few exceptions like “One Shot” or “PetBuddy” [by the creator of Inscryption]). I’m sure many people were waiting for the “LOOP” theme to pop up somehow but that didn’t happen and it was a bummer.
CONCLUSION
In general terms it’s a fun game to play and it kept me entertained for the time I spent playing it and we have to give credit where credit is due: it set the bar really high for the other games I’m going to be reviewing in terms of quality and fun factor but, sadly, misses the jam theme COMPLETELY and I think that’s a big deal.
