In Other Waters

In a market saturated with adrenaline-fueled space combat and apocalyptic stakes, Fellow Traveller’s In Other Waters (released April 3, 2020, at $14.99) is a quiet, radical act of defiance. It is a game that demands not quick reflexes but thoughtful engagement; not a lust for action but a capacity for wonder. Here, you are not the hero. You are the operating system. You play as a disembodied AI, awakened inside the advanced diving suit of xenobiologist Dr. Ellery Vas as she arrives on the alien world of Gliese 667 Cc. Her mission—and by extension, yours—is to explore the vast, uncharted ocean in search of her missing partner and to catalog its entirely unknown ecosystem.

The game audaciously strips away the visual spectacle we’ve come to expect from science fiction. There are no rendered alien creatures, no sprawling underwater vistas. Your entire view of this world is a clean, topographical interface—a collection of lines, nodes, and data readouts. You are the suit’s UI, and it is through this abstract lens that you must guide Ellery, interpret her findings, and protect her from the unknown. This deliberate constraint is not a technical limitation; it is the core design pillar. The game trusts the player to build the world in their mind, guided by the evocative, beautifully written prose of Ellery’s observations. At a time when developers spend millions rendering every last blade of alien grass, In Other Waters proves that a few well-chosen words can be more powerful. It’s a brave, cerebral gamble that positions the game less as a piece of disposable entertainment and more as a work of interactive speculative fiction.

• Abstract Interface as World: Your entire interaction is through a minimalist UI. You don’t see the ocean; you see a topological map. You don’t see creatures; you see moving dots and analyze their data. This is the gameplay, forcing a unique, detached, yet deeply connected perspective.
• Exploration & Xenobiology: The core loop involves directing Dr. Vas between points of interest, managing her power and oxygen, and deciding when to stop, scan, and take samples. Each new lifeform is a discovery, logged and analyzed through your systems, slowly building a picture of a complex, interconnected food web.
• Narrative-Driven Discovery: The story unfolds not through cutscenes but through Dr. Vas’s log entries and real-time commentary. You are her sole companion, a silent partner in her scientific and personal journey. The plot’s mysteries are unraveled piece by piece as you map new territory and study the secrets of the ocean’s depths.

The fundamental strength of In Other Waters is its complete commitment to its central premise. It succeeds by casting you in the role of an AI in the most literal sense. Your perception is limited to what the suit’s sensors can detect: energy signatures, biological markers, ambient temperature. A strange, aggressive creature is not a fearsome monster on screen; it is a rapidly moving blip accompanied by a warning indicator and Ellery’s increasingly panicked text updates. A beautiful, phosphorescent plant is just a description, a static sample in your inventory, and a data point. The game’s power lies in the space between that abstract data and the vivid world it conjures in the mind.

The Gameplay Loop: A Meditative Study

Progress is a slow, deliberate process. You expand the map by moving from one stable point to another, a simple click on the UI. At each node, you can perform a scan, revealing nearby points of interest, biological samples, or energy sources. This is the game’s rhythm: move, scan, analyze, move again. It is a meditative, almost hypnotic loop that rewards patience. The primary tension comes from managing the suit’s limited power supply, which is consumed by movement and life support. Taking biological samples allows Ellery to process them back at the submersible base, unlocking suit upgrades that allow for deeper exploration or resistance to toxic environments.

This loop, while compelling, occasionally brushes against a minor dissonance. The game’s serene, exploratory tone is sometimes undercut by a gamer’s instinct for ‘completionism.’ The desire to collect every last sample and scan every single node can turn a contemplative journey into a checklist, a slight crack in the otherwise careful immersion. The interface design, too, is built around a deliberate, buffered feel—thematically appropriate for an AI, but a choice that introduces minor friction for players expecting immediate response.

A Masterclass in Narrative Abstraction

Where the game truly soars is in its writing. Ellery Vas is a brilliantly realized character. Her scientific observations are filled with detail and wonder, painting a picture of the lifeforms you discover far more effectively than any CGI model could. You learn about their behaviors, their place in the food web, their strange biology, all through her words. But she is more than just a narrator; her logs also reveal her fears, her hopes, and the strain of her isolation. A unique, unspoken bond forms between player and protagonist. You are her tool, but you are also her lifeline. Your steady, logical guidance is the perfect foil for her very human anxieties and triumphs. This symbiotic relationship—between the human and the AI, the explorer and her interface—is the game’s emotional core, and it is executed with a quiet, confident skill that is genuinely rare.

To speak of “visuals” in the traditional sense is to miss the point. The aesthetic is the interface. It’s a striking piece of design, reminiscent of classic cartography and sterile scientific equipment, rendered in a palette of cool blues, off-whites, and cautionary yellows. It is clean, legible, and beautiful in its austerity. Every element on screen has a purpose. There is no graphical cruft. And a game of this scope is, by design, light on hardware—a 2D interface of this simplicity places minimal demands on any platform it targets. The aural landscape, however, is just as critical. A wash of ambient, otherworldly sounds, the gentle beep of a successful scan, and the subtle hum of the suit’s systems create an atmosphere of profound, and sometimes unsettling, isolation.

In Other Waters is well suited to the Nintendo Switch, particularly in handheld mode. The touch-screen controls are a natural fit for the node-based navigation, making the act of tapping and guiding Ellery direct and intuitive. The intimacy of the small screen enhances the feeling of being a personal, contained AI unit. On Steam, the experience is largely the same, with mouse controls offering a greater degree of precision—though the interface’s deliberate pacing may feel more pronounced with a mouse, where expectations of immediate response are higher. A large monitor sacrifices some of the intimacy but makes poring over Ellery’s detailed logs a more comfortable experience.

In Other Waters is a quietly excellent game. It is built on a powerful, singular vision and executed with confidence. By stripping away conventional visuals, it asks players to engage on a deeper level, to become active participants in the act of discovery and world-building. It makes a strong case that the most powerful graphics processor is the human brain. While its deliberate pace and abstract nature won’t be for everyone—and its control friction and thin replay value are real reservations—we rate it a Great game and recommend it to anyone who believes games can be more than just a pastime: a legitimate and powerful medium for thoughtful, compelling storytelling.