The sea’s a reasonably tousled place, ain’t it? An unlimited, practically-bottom expanse of mom nature’s weirdest and deadliest experiments, piled in collectively and advised to work all of it out themselves. A brief, pay-what-you-want launch from devs Maceo Bob Mair and Nicolás Delgado, Swallow The Sea (out there on Itch) captures that horror by following a hapless bundle of eggs simply attempting its greatest to be born.
Truly, heartwarming. Disgusting, sure, however heartwarming all the identical.
You’re performed Feeding Frenzy, or Agar.io, or one thing of the like, yeah? Start out small and nippy, consuming away till you develop and may tackle the large boys you used to worry. Standard arcadey stuff, aye? Swallow The Sea’s pitch is to place that each one into grotesque context. “Yes,” it explains, “it could certainly be terrifying to be a drifting sack of eggs in an ecosystem that sees you as prey.
Swallow’s world is correctly horrifying, too. An underwater world the place every thing is deeply, worrisomely mistaken. Spindly eels lash at you from behind rocks, despondent urchins drift lazily into your passages. Vile worms snap at you, pulling at their very own pores and skin to tug at your membrane with their naked cranium. But hey, they’ve all acquired cute names like “Ubb” and “Nooty”. It ain’t all unhealthy underneath the ocean.
Worst of all is Orro, a menacing deep-sea Nidhogg launched on the unlikeliest second. With a smile and a flip, he vanishes briefly, earlier than making a very menacing return. Like Resident Evil 2‘s Mr X, he’s a continuing presence – unstoppable, unavoidable, a persistent thumping of bone in opposition to tooth tailing you thru ever-narrower passages.
As you drift additional into the caves, it’s clear the world is dying. The monsters chasing you decay and sag, the passages tinge crimson with rotten flotsam and foul vents. You’re nonetheless rising, however now you see what precisely you’re rising into – and it’s simply as contorted and unusual as the remainder of this weird ecosystem.
But nonetheless, you eat away. Then, unexpectedly, you might be born.
