There were many times during my playthrough of Thalassaphilia when I was deeply, pleasantly surprised. What I thought would be a fun and flirty fix for my Mass Effect addiction has an engaging mystery at its heart, one that manages to pack in several twists despite its short length. The characters are engaging, and I felt personally torn between being drawn into their friendly group or maintaining my professional detachment. (Spoiler - click to show)One, or all, of them might be murderers, after all.
On a nitty-gritty level, the story is well-paced and the choices are engaging; I would maybe have liked some more close-calls and potentially "wrong" choices to add to the tension and feeling like I was trying to get the crew to like me. The character portraits, while good, are a little bit more sexualized than necessarily fits the tone and setting, which is part of what led to my surprise when the story revealed itself to be a fairly tense mystery.
Overall, the game is exceedingly well-written and well-presented. I'm playing the next chapter the moment it comes out.