Style & Story
The visuals strike a carefully irresponsible balance between stylized charm and alarming realism, all bathed in physically based lighting so convincing it occasionally causes other games to feel self-conscious. This is, we are told, the sort of thing fancy games with millions of dollars do.
Characters and creatures arrive preloaded with a mix of kawaii and chibi proportions, wildly enthusiastic color palettes, and just enough trippy psychedelia to suggest that something strange is happening behind the eyes. (The big secret, which is not a secret at all, is that they are aliens. Yes. Obviously.)
Underwater environments are built to feel lush, colorful, and deeply relaxing to explore, while still retaining the polite chaos of real nature. Think soothing, but in an “everything is alive and watching you” kind of way. Artfully composed, yet cheerfully untamed.
Oh - and silliness. A great deal of clever, deliberate silliness, woven lovingly into the entire aesthetic, in the vague tradition of that Douglas Adams fellow. Look him up. Read the first two books. Skip the movie. And possibly the television experiments from the 1970s.
The UI, icons, and text lean hard into an iconic retro ’70s Japan vibe, while delightful music and sardonic voice-overs carry the story forward, punctuated by moments of gleeful absurdity that children, adults, and confused extraterrestrials will be writing home about.
Artsy Things
The fish, for reasons known only to itself and possibly a mildly confused committee of plankton, had never intended to become involved in any interstellar affairs…
It had plans, modest ones, involving toasted seaweed snacks and a cozy rock.
Unfortunately, the universe has a long-standing habit of mistaking “no strong opinions” for “ideal candidate,” and so it was, that several highly advanced aliens - who had mastered faster-than-light travel but not the concept of subtlety - arrived to inform the fish that it was, against all logic and with minimal consultation, the planet’s best hope for survival.
The fish responded in the traditional manner of fish everywhere: by blinking slowly, and wondering whether this actually counted as a “bad day.”
Sciency Facts…
Lumpsucker fish are splendidly named animals; their roly-poly bodies appear to have given up on most conventional shapes and settled enthusiastically on “almost a ball,” complete with colors and patterns so mesmerizing they seem to have been applied during a moment of cosmic whimsy.
The “sucker” portion of the name refers to the fish’s pelvic fins, which evolution has repurposed into a heart-shaped adhesive disc after deciding that swimming alone was not ambitious enough. The other fins function less like fins and more like tiny, hopeful arms. Many species are further decorated with bony, wart-like tubercles scattered about the body, and their skin may be opaque or translucent, changing colors and patterns at random, apparently just to see who’s paying attention.
Fish Evolved…
