Eternity RPC Board
It’s ya girl back at it again with the reviews of the games that are definitely not new or trendy! I hadn’t been in the mood to play much recently, but then I remembered this next one hanging out in my purchases and it was great. So great that I’m writing a “...Don’t Know Butts About...” for it. Let’s go!
Title: Why Am I Dead At Sea?
Official Site: http://www.whyamideadatsea.com
Developer: Peltast Software
Initial Release Date: May 2015
Genre: horror/murder mystery, adventure
Price: $4.99
![[Image: XVJ2e7w.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/XVJ2e7w.jpg)
Why Am I Dead At Sea? is a game where you play the ghost of someone trying to deduce just that. More specifically, you are the late first-time captain of a small passenger boat, and you have just gained consciousness in your ghostly, incorporeal form. Out of your skeletal crew and a handful of passengers you’ve only just met, you don’t know who among them would even know you, let alone want to kill you.
![[Image: l9L4rNO.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/l9L4rNO.jpg)
In order to discover your murderer, you learn that you can possess the bodies of the crew and passengers. Each person you possess comes with a unique ability - one person can read other peoples’ tones when they talk to know whether they’re lying or telling the truth; another is kind of a kleptomaniac and will peek into peoples’ pockets to see what they might be carrying; and someone else can jump really high!
As you dig through thoughts and memories, you uncover that something more nefarious than you first suspected is at play on your vessel, and as the boat moves further and further from your body’s watery resting place and into the eye of a brewing storm, you’re running out of time to solve the titular question. There are multiple endings, so whether and how you answer this question depends on how good a sleuth you are.
![[Image: Vo0SuTm.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/Vo0SuTm.jpg)
Pros: I liked the aspect of possessing different people to gain access to different dialogue options, knowledge, and abilities. I don’t recall having ever played another game with this mechanic - not to say one doesn’t exist, just that I personally have never played one. This game was more emotional than I suspected; I found myself caring about the characters’ motivations and I actually cried a couple times.
The constant wavering between “this is a horror story” and “this is a depressing story” keeps you on your emotional toes and, for me, made the endings harder to unravel - was any of this real? Is it just the machinations of a crazy person? Is this boat some kind of Limbo? The music for this game was really nice, and contributed a lot to the atmosphere of unease. You get a different theme for each person you possess, and I felt that all of the music did a really great job at matching that person’s characterization: the anxious person gets manic, strobing EDM, the paranoid person gets quiet, eerie tones, and so on.
Cons: In the way that Kentucky Route 0 tried too hard to be indie for the sake of being indie, I felt this game tried too hard in some cases to be edgy for the sake of edge. Perhaps the fact that the subject matter is so dark makes this inevitable, but I found it hard to suspend my disbelief enough to accept that every single one of the characters had such a checkered past/sob story to the extent they all did except, maybe, for
For those characters whose pasts you reveal later in the game, some of the impact you might have felt otherwise is weakened by the rapid succession of gut-punches you as the player are dealt in learning about all the characters that come before. I think it would have even been interesting to have characters who are truly not involved in the endgame at all - red herrings, essentially, who know nothing about anything surrounding your murder.
Aside from this, there were a few technical glitches with the game; entering a door while someone is trying to exit, for instance, launches you into the black space outside of the playable area, and the only way to get out is to exit the game and start from your last save point. Pretty annoying. I kind of wished that the dialogue options you choose would have more impact in how the game ends, but it doesn’t seem to matter too much other than
![[Image: HCpb7Nq.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/HCpb7Nq.jpg)
My Overall Saljective™ Rating: 8/10. It was a really nice game with parts that actually made me really care about the characters and their motivations, and at points in the game I can truly say there were a few “I didn’t see that coming” moments. It was a longer game than I anticipated, which made it well worth the full price to me. I’d play through it again.
Title: Why Am I Dead At Sea?
Official Site: http://www.whyamideadatsea.com
Developer: Peltast Software
Initial Release Date: May 2015
Genre: horror/murder mystery, adventure
Price: $4.99
Why Am I Dead At Sea? is a game where you play the ghost of someone trying to deduce just that. More specifically, you are the late first-time captain of a small passenger boat, and you have just gained consciousness in your ghostly, incorporeal form. Out of your skeletal crew and a handful of passengers you’ve only just met, you don’t know who among them would even know you, let alone want to kill you.
In order to discover your murderer, you learn that you can possess the bodies of the crew and passengers. Each person you possess comes with a unique ability - one person can read other peoples’ tones when they talk to know whether they’re lying or telling the truth; another is kind of a kleptomaniac and will peek into peoples’ pockets to see what they might be carrying; and someone else can jump really high!
As you dig through thoughts and memories, you uncover that something more nefarious than you first suspected is at play on your vessel, and as the boat moves further and further from your body’s watery resting place and into the eye of a brewing storm, you’re running out of time to solve the titular question. There are multiple endings, so whether and how you answer this question depends on how good a sleuth you are.
Pros: I liked the aspect of possessing different people to gain access to different dialogue options, knowledge, and abilities. I don’t recall having ever played another game with this mechanic - not to say one doesn’t exist, just that I personally have never played one. This game was more emotional than I suspected; I found myself caring about the characters’ motivations and I actually cried a couple times.
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
Cons: In the way that Kentucky Route 0 tried too hard to be indie for the sake of being indie, I felt this game tried too hard in some cases to be edgy for the sake of edge. Perhaps the fact that the subject matter is so dark makes this inevitable, but I found it hard to suspend my disbelief enough to accept that every single one of the characters had such a checkered past/sob story to the extent they all did except, maybe, for
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
My Overall Saljective™ Rating: 8/10. It was a really nice game with parts that actually made me really care about the characters and their motivations, and at points in the game I can truly say there were a few “I didn’t see that coming” moments. It was a longer game than I anticipated, which made it well worth the full price to me. I’d play through it again.