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Review

Short game on a drifting boat, December 29, 2025
Related reviews: less than 15 minutes

This game was entered in PunyComp.

It has a lot of interesting elements that I would love to see more of or more polished.

You're on a boat drifting in an ocean. The setting and tone, which were my favorite parts, is dark and distressing, like a survival game like raft or subnautica where you are in danger of your life at all times.

There's a mysterious voice that comments on things you did. I was interested in seeing this expanded on, but the game ends before I could discover more. It reported a score, but no score was used in the game (so it was 0 out of 0). I found directions difficult to understand; the game used non-standard directions, and while the correct word to use was in the text, it might have been nice to have it bolded. Later, while I could leave the boat with (Spoiler - click to show)swim to debris, (Spoiler - click to show)SWIM TO BOAT or SWIM TO DINGHY to try to get back did nothing; some kind of response might be nice.. There were some whitespace issues, with missing line breaks before the command prompt most of the time.

If this game were polished more or expanded on, I'd definitely be happy to rate it higher. The concept is great and the author(s) did a good job of establishing tension and mystery, I think it just needs a little polish.

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