This is... unbelievable. Actual alien life... how could Minae have kept this place a secret?
In Other Waters is an Adventure Game developed by the London-based Jump Over The Age and distributed by Fellow Traveler Games. Released in April 2020, it is available for Nintendo Switch, as well as Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh via Steam, GOG.com, and Humble Bundle.
Xenobiologist Ellery Vas has been called to Gliese 677Cc by her former lover, Minae Nomura. She finds an abandoned base, an ocean of secrets, and a malfunctioning diving suit piloted by an unusual AI (the player).
Diving into the sea together, they find, not the sterile environment that has been found on every other planet, but a thriving ecosystem. Exploring in search of Minae, they find that Gliese 677Cc holds a lot more secrets than what happened to one missing xenobiologist...
A tabletop Role-Playing Game set after the video game is under development by Lone Archivist, titled "In Other Waters: Tidebreak".
Tropes found in "In Other Waters" include:
- Ability Required to Proceed: There are areas blocked off until the Equipment Upgrades are obtained. In addition, shrillsacs will cause stalks to retract, opening up new areas and soothespores will cause them to extend, potentially blocking off strong currents.
- Alien Sky: Even though it cannot be seen directly, Gliese 677Cc is frequently described as having three suns.
- Anti-Frustration Features: If there's a particular sample you need to progress forward (shrillsacs, for example), they will typically be found between the nearest entry point and where you need them.
- Apocalyptic Log: Dive recorders are found with a few lines from someone there before the bases were reclaimed.
- Artificial Gill: The rebreather can supply Ellery's oxygen needs, unless she's in an area with low oxygen availability, in which case she draws on the oxygen tanks.
- Benevolent Precursors: The Artificers, who were in charge of the ecosystem.
- Can't Stop the Signal: At the end, Ellery sends out the report on what has been found on Gliese 677Cc, and what Baikal did. The epilogue reveals that Baikal did everything they could to tamp down on it, but were ultimately unsuccessful.
- The Chessmaster: The Artificers have powerful quantum computers in their shells that let them evaluate potential future events, giving them near-prescience. Humans are an unexpected problem, but are dealt with eventually.
- Deadly Euphemism: "Erasure". Destroying the evidence of what Baikal did, including their ship and all bases.
- Distant Epilogue: The "Study of Gliese 667Cc" DLC is set thirty-eight years after the game.
- Equipment Upgrade: A series of them to allow the player (and Ellery) to explore new areas: increased strength to support deeper dives, a thrust pack to cross the rift, and a cutting torch to cut through blockages.
- False Friend: Minae used Ellery to get a data core from Baikal, then ran off with it, leaving Ellery to take the blame.
- Fish People: The Artificers live underwater.
- Forbidden Zone: The Bloom, a place overrun with an explosively growing kind of algae, which colors the place a dark green from the outside, allows almost no light to penetrate into the inside, and leaves it low on oxygen. The suit's oxygen reserve is constantly draining while you're surveying it, giving you your first taste of a serious environmental hindrance.
- I Know You're Watching Me: Journal entry 6 starts with, "I know you have been reading these."
- Interface Spoiler:
- The control panel shows that there will be some Equipment Upgrades, as there are still two extra unused slots after reaching the first base.
- There are spots for 8 journal entries.
- Last of His Kind: In the finale, Ellery and the AI discover an Artificer deep inside the Oceanic Mind. Knowing what happened to the rest of its kind, it soon flees.
- Justified Tutorial: When Ellery asks the player to start maneuvering, if the player doesn't understand how to work the (not exactly intuitive) interface, she starts a tutorial.
- Meaningful Rename:
- A meaningful naming; after discovering Minae's mother with notes about the suit AI, Ellery asks if Oki is the AI's name. The AI can accept this or not.
- The scientific name for the Shimmer Bloom, a quasi-flower, is Solcultor Minae.
- In the epilogue, the planet is given the name "Minae", and the reef where the game starts is named the "Vas Reef".
- MegaCorp: Baikal, which sent the earlier expedition.
- Missing Mom: Minae's mother was one of the people lost when the bases were destroyed. She also, in a way, is the mother of the AI (the player).
- My God, What Have I Done?: Constantin, the leader of the Baikal research project, realizes this after the tanks at Site 2 are breached.
- Organic Technology:
- The Artificers rewrote genetic codes to create a mutually-beneficial environment.
- Minae tries to splice her body with Artificer remains in order to survive a free dive into the deep ocean. It works, but not in the way she intended.
- Precursor Killers: Baikal's attempt to terraform killed almost all of the Artificers.
- Rapid Aging: Mentioned in the epilogue; humans on Gliese 667Cc age faster than they do elsewhere, for no readily apparent reason.
- Reclaimed by Nature: Baikal's sites, especially Site 1.
- Robot Buddy: The player is an AI built into a diving suit by Minae's mother.
- Terraform: What Baikal was attempting to do. Despite the planet having the first non-terrestrial life found by humanity.
- Self-Destruct Mechanism: What happened to the arcology. "Erasure protocols" are activated, with exits sealed and all hands present.
- Speculative Biology: A good portion of this game is about studying and categorizing a new world with unique forms of life. The DLC book even serves as an encyclopedia about what you saw and what you missed.
- The Faceless: The Artificers are never given a taxonomy page or drawing, though the Epilogue shows an image of an unknown creature, "drawn from memory" by Ellery.
- Underwater Base: Bases and ROVs give spots where Ellery can re-enter the water from the base, and get maps of the area to allow drone retrieval.
- Underwater Ruins: The arcology and the other Baikal sites.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Minae sprouts into...something that is accessing the computer and asking for Ellery, but this isn't brought up.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Baikal toward the Artificers. They aren't certain that they're alive, and feel that they're just a resource that Baikal has the right to use as they please.
- Working with the Ex: Ellery and Minae were in a relationship on Kepler-62f.
