Fantastic.

As a short form horror game, it's not particularly long, but immediately I was struck by how tight and focused the intro was. The visuals ooze style and attention to detail.

I had just played Submersed, which was not the worst game I had ever played, but left a lot to be desired, and this game was a salve that cured my cravings for deep sea horror.

The controls are fairly basic; there is a jump included, although never necessary. I appreciated having it anyway as insurance against getting stuck on terrain or other objects while playing. Your vertical view is limited, which makes sense as you are in a diving suit, and the light you have is not super bright nor does it cover a large area, but it works. The lamp is effective in a small radius so it really makes things feel claustrophobic. But despite this, not once did I feel like I couldn't play the game properly because of visibility issues.

The water looks great and there are particulates that drift though the water, and it has that kind of turbid cloudiness that you would expect to find in deep water with a lot of silt kicked up. The art style is great and really works.

There is some limited voice acting, though most of the game you spend in silence with a few comments here and there. The voice acting is unremarkable, but I mean that in a good way. It's not over the top, nor phoned in, it sounds normal which makes sense for the game.

Music is minimalist but finely tuned to build dread at the right moments. There are some well-placed jump scared as well but not to the point of fatigue or annoyance. Just really solid.

And that's to say nothing of the rest of the great sound design. When something happens, your character will start to breath heavier to steady their nerves. You'll hear her heart pounding in her ears. it's just so good, so dialed in.

I took me 3 hours to beat, and you can grab all of the achievements in one playthough. I didn't find them that hard to get, but it does require a bit of exploring beyond if you were just racing through the game. you could probably do it in less, maybe in 2 hours because I spent a lot of time checking things out to look for logs and retrying some of the puzzles.

The game mostly uses "connect the pipes" style puzzles where you rotate nodes in a grid to allow a current to pass through all of them. It works, and some of the later ones are genuinely challenging if you're trying not to just brute force your way through them.

The story is good, it's nothing particularly novel or revolutionary, but again, it's done well, feels natural to the game, and doesn't go crazy with a bunch of extra details.

And I have to gush about this element of the story, but spoilers obviously: One stand out thing that I loved was you get logs from the perspective of the creature. I think if you're playing this you are familiar with "itchy, hungry" but this game doesn't go that route. The logs are very descriptive and compelling from the creature's point of view, and I found this to be very well written and unique.

But overall, this one is a solid recommendation. No need to wait for a sale, I think this is worth every penny. Honestly, I don't usually replay short games like this without any extra achievements, or story elements for subsequent playthroughs or anything, but I kind of want to do it again and I could see myself nostalgically coming back to reinstall this and run through it again next spooky season.