#Slice of sea game how to#
#Slice of sea game full#

Huge and lonely it may be, but the setting is anything but empty. (That’s to say nothing of “Let Me Go Home,” the superb end-credits song by Cat Jahnke.) Unsurprisingly, the soundscape is equally superb, bringing the vast locales to creaking, windblown life as you pass through. Synth tones like whistling sea breezes mingle with forlorn chimes and keening train whistles, while certain tracks call to mind a forgotten Victrola record, with croaking horns backed by whispering percussion like distant rain. The sublimely haunting score by The Thumpmonks hangs over everything, seeming to embody and express both the barrenness of the dunes and Seaweed’s own loneliness. Every space, no matter how apparently deserted, feels alive-like you’re simply passing through somewhere that once played host to other stories and will continue existing long after you’ve left. The thick lines and exaggerated dimensions of the backgrounds are reminiscent of Gahan Wilson, while the bizarre characters with their feathery brushstrokes and impressionistic watercolor features might have been lifted from Quentin Blake’s nightmare journal. The environments have the style and character of a forgotten picture book. Something happened here, and the game never comes close to explaining what it was still, the more you explore the more you’ll find yourself feeling that you’ve almost grasped it. People live here-or creatures that resemble people-but most of these are wanderers too those few who appear at home where you find them seem nonetheless suspicious and anxious. Sand is everywhere, gumming up the works and slowly obscuring the borders between civilization and wilderness. Everywhere are crumbling mechanisms and stilled engines beached ships, derailed train cars and busted machinery dot the landscape, long-abandoned by whoever it was that once maintained them. Seaweed’s world is big, open and lonely, and each screen gives the impression of a once-bustling world whose gears have long since come creaking to a halt. This means that, movement aside, you’ll sometimes feel less like you’re playing as Seaweed than as an omniscient observer helping them out on their journey. Interestingly, Seaweed doesn’t have to be physically near or even able to access a hotspot for you to interact with it via the mouse if you, the player, can see it on screen, you can click it or use an object.

Right-clicking opens your inventory, from which you can drag objects to use in the environment. Occasionally a particularly inscrutable hotspot will come with a caption to explain what it is, but more often than not the cursor change is all the indication you’ll get. Your mouse cursor is shaped like a fancy pen nib, shifting to an open hand when you hover over a hotspot. You control Seaweed using a simple keyboard/mouse setup, with the arrow keys or A and D moving you left and right along the horizontal plane, the up/W key (or spacebar) dedicated to jumping and the down/S key letting you enter doorways and passages. The game trusts you to figure out the rest. Promotional materials name our protagonist Seaweed, but even that information is superfluous to the experience you are who you are, you’re where you are, and there are things to do around you. That’s all the setup the game provides you, and you’ll get no more context for it until the very end.

#Slice of sea game full#

You’re a sea creature in a mechanical suit that lets you walk on land, and you’re wandering through a vast, sandy region full of decaying train cars and dormant machinery in an effort to get … somewhere.

#Slice of sea game how to#

How to explain that this dialogue-free journey through a watercolor dreamscape-the staggeringly complex work of solo developer Mateusz Skutnik-is one of the best adventures of the year? The only way to do it justice, I fear, would be to take your hand and walk you through scene by scene, pointing at all the little things that make it work and periodically looking over to go “See? See?!” Absent that possibility, I hope you’ll take my word for it: this is a one-of-a-kind excursion into a strange and fascinating world like you won’t find anywhere else, and even with a few caveats it isn’t to be missed. It’s such a singular experience that there’s hardly a basis for comparison. I’ve spent eight hours with Slice of Sea, drinking in its otherworldly landscapes, mingling with its bizarre inhabitants, carefully digging through its environments to figure out my next steps, and I still feel basically helpless to tell you about it.