In other waters, by Gareth Damian Martin

Playing
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So, I’m playing In other waters in my Switch, and I don’t understand why is not being discussed here, or why it does not have a file at IFDB.

I just wanna say: I love it, and everyone should play it.

It is a text adventure about cave crawling under the sea, about cataloging alien species: flora, fauna, and fungi. And looking for someone missing.

It is a very clever interface to hide that this is a traditional Adventure game :wink: :wink: :wink:

I wonder if this is a case of success, I can’t find the total number of reviews on steam.

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I quite liked it, and I agree that it can easily be grouped in with traditional adventure games. It feels closer to an old-school graphical “point and click” game, rather than a text game per se. Navigation is map-centric. Most of the content is textual descriptions of things that you click on the map.

I played it around the same time as “Still There” (https://stillthere.ghostshark.it/); it’s an interesting pairing.

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But, if you change the GUI for a CLI, the you have an only-text adventure.

Anyway, this reminds me that the promised future Inform 7 update will allow to use it as an engine for graphical games a-la In other waters. Commercial games taking advantage of the I7 variable text, could be awesome.

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And if you print all the text on paper, it’s a novella. :)

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Well, the same paradigm can be implemented in several ways. So, ok, I’ll accept that In other waters would do a very nice point and click adventure :wink:

Don’t mind me, I’m just following the trail since the debate about IF Economics.

I think In other waters is really really really a clever idea. Since the clones of Lifeline are somewhat exhausted, creating text games with a wrap of a GUI or a Machine interface, sounds to me like a good trend to start.

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Remember that the author entered Salt in IFcomp 17, it ended 30th.

I liked In other waters too, and yes, it’s IF-adjacent enough to be of interest here. The tactile sensation of manipulating the computer interface is nothing like IF and very satisfactory, but other than that, the whole gameplay could probably be reimplemented in a text-only fashion without losing (or even changing) any mechanics. It’s closer to IF than Failbetter’s games and Inkle’s most recent.

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I remember Salt… nice piece.

I’m glad Gareth is thematically in love with the sea :love_letter:

Also, I like how he makes a lot of variations through “Twisty little passages all alike”, where the text still feels fresh and varied. I mean. The whole-hella game happens in caves under the sea, and there is a gazillion of locations, but still, descriptions are not derivative or repetitive. I will mark this as a resource to build labyrinths, or forest, and repetitive locations of the same nature.

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