Explore a world of water
Minimalist game gets players thinking like scientists
In Other Waters
Fellow Traveler
Available on Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC
In many ways Gareth Damian Martin’s In Other Waters feels like a game from another time.
Its minimalist graphics fly in the face of much contemporary video game design that tends to prioritize visual appeal. For those of a certain age, the game’s esthetics may recall the PC games of late 1980s and early 1990s that emphasized the more technical aspects of travel — the instrumental readouts, trajectories between co-ordinates and the like. However, other aspects of In Other Waters — its hypnotic, atmospheric music and elegant text narrative — betray its more modern-day sensibilities.
It tells the story of Dr. Ellery Vas, a xenobiologist who has spent much of her career exploring alien planets in a fruitless search for life. Her fortunes change after she receives a mysterious transmission from Minae Nomura, a former colleague and love interest, asking her to come to a planet that Vas assumes has already been ruled clear of life. On the ocean-covered planet, Vas finds a thriving ecosystem situated along an expansive coral reef.
Travelling amid basalt towers, gullies and other underwater geological structures, Vas finds various creatures ranging from fungal “stalks” that communicate using spores, to creatures that resemble “diaphanous veils.” To her knowledge, these are the first forms of life to have been discovered outside of Earth.
Mankind’s home planet contains few warm memories for
Vas, who thinks of it as a dead planet, a resourceless place left to those with too little money to leave it. (From now until who knows when, expect to see more cultural objects that succinctly meld themes of climate change and economic inequality.)
Assuming the role of the AI system responsible for overseeing Vas’s explorations, players spend the majority of their time poring over a nautical chart, lining up points for Vas to travel between (which appear as little triangles on the map) and operating the diving suit’s various subsystems that handle tasks such as sample collection, propulsion, obstacle clearance and drone retrieval, i.e. fast travel back to your base.
Speaking as someone who is not exactly at home in cartography, I found it fascinating how, over time, I invested more and more meaning into those onscreen dots and squiggles that represent the various kinds of phenomena that Vas encounters. At a certain point, I had no trouble seeing a canopy of stalks in a series of dots spread fan-like over the screen.
This is a game where observation becomes an end in itself. Its simple gameplay mechanics are supported by a quiet, vibrant narrative that works to put players into the mind of a working scientist.