Panthalassa

Panthalassa is a point-and-click puzzle-narrative game that puts you in the seat of an anthro-robotic submarine that is autistically fascinated with fish. The puzzles are cool, and the narrative is bizarre(in a very, very good way) and the fish are funky. With as little spoiler as possible, the game will give you puzzle after puzzle that expects you to engage with the world around you, sometimes in obvious ways, and sometimes in odd and esoteric ways. It will expect you to engage with the systems it presents, and use some real-life tools to help make sense of the gibberish it spits out(once again, in a very good way,) such as calculators, note-keeping, sometimes taking screenshots to help you remember something. But the thing about Panthalassa, is that it knows that it's expecting you to need these tools, and then will create puzzles that expect you to manipulate your tools in a way to figure out the solution. Once again, with little spoilers, there's a puzzle in the game that elicits a powerful 'a-ha!' moment, when you realize you need to look at the screenshots you took in a different way than it may initially seem. In puzzle games, this feeling is crucial to me, and got me locked into the game HARD afterwards. As with the puzzles, Panthalassa's story expects you to keep a mental catalogue of the themes and oddities it pulls out on you. The story starts simple, and slowly increases more and more themes that may make it seem chaotic or jumbled, confusing and esoteric, before pulling them back in and introducing that one final 'click' that helps them settle into place, like a jigsaw. Most of(if not all) the story is presented in the form of text, so be ready for a lot of reading. Artistically, the game never strays far from its visual presentation, opting to stay with the low-fidelity, almost ps1-era graphics. At times, it will play with perspective to make your mind fill in blanks on what you may be looking at. Most of the game takes place from pre-determined camera angles(à la Resident Evil), giving the game a very cinematic feeling at times, knowing when to play with your perspective, while also knowing when to keep it simple. The soundtrack is bloopy and enjoyable. I personally really liked it. The UI is funky and esoteric, and even took me a little while sometimes to realize something was a button. Do not be like me--click around! The few downsides of Panthalassa is that, I feel, the game can feel a little short. Once you get into the swing of the puzzle solving, and figure out the 'main' mechanics, it becomes easier to traverse the world and knock down what stands in your way. The narrative picks up the slack, in my opinion, but if you're not super enthused by it, I can imagine the last fifth of the game feeling like a bit of a slog. I think, though, that if you find the story interesting up to that point, it won't be a worry. Lastly, there's a 'traversal' portion of the game that feels tedious no matter what you do. It may be to give an 'aimless' feeling, and it -does- do that, but it also...IS aimless. And if you don't get all the content in them, having to backtrack is especially painful. After you get to a landmark, you no longer need the traversal method to return there, so that's at least good. I'd like it a LOT less otherwise. Overall, the game is SOLID. If you enjoy introspective, philosophical queries that apply to your immersive mind and your real-world mind(think SOMA), along with puzzles that can be tricky, and dialogue that is constantly charming and leaves you wishing for more when it's over, then Panthalassa is REALLY worth a shot.

trans(humanist) as hell. fully recommend

Panthalassa has an incredible aesthetic! It gives Hypnospace Outlaw vibes but even stronger, it's very committed to the vibe. I love the dialogue from the various characters, and the worldbuilding is moderately interesting. However: The puzzles lack substance, mostly revolving around "remember this thing presented without context from earlier? if you want a reminder, it'll take a minute to walk back to where you saw it!", and can often be brute-forced as long as you know the right general format (and you'll save a lot of time by taking notes + screenshots). There's an especially egregious example of this in [spoiler] the magenta tunnel, where a character tells you "oh, the answers to the three doors are all numbers!" The intention is for the player to stumble around the maze until they find all three observatories, but you can also just try every number 0-9 in each keypad in much less time. [/spoiler] It's also a very short game, taking me about 2 hours to roll credits. Overall, I would consider it a mixed bag: I enjoyed my time with the game (hence the positive review), and it's a useful design study, but it is far from perfect. I think you'll know if it's for you based on the store page.

Технически это пойнт-и-клик квест, но на деле намного больше: визуал, интерфейс, музыка и атмосфера просто потрясающие. Геймплей довольно разнообразный для квеста, тут тебе и стандартные пойди-принеси, и паззлы, и лабиринт и энциклопедические факты про рыб. Все это подается в совокупности с дизайном под веб 2.0, днб саундтреком, философскими рассуждениями и назойливым компаньоном (хотя последнее для кого-то может быть и минусом). Игра не очень длинная, 4-6 часов, проходится на одном дыхании.

Oozing with style and personality, this underwater expedition will have your mind wandering and your heart fluttering. Every second spent with [i]Panthalassa[/i] is well worth it - do yourself a favor and dive in.

I'm no wordsmith so I'll keep it simple. The game is beautiful. In every sense of the word. The music, the puzzles, the visuals, the writing and story all hit me in a way I honestly wasn't quite expecting. I very quickly became addicted to the game's atmosphere, a strange sense of aquatic "utopia" with an underlying sense of melancholy. I was also rather pleased with the puzzle and level design. Generally with games like this, I personally will frequently run into the issue of needing help after spending hours trying to figure out my next step. Here? Things were generally pretty smooth sailing. Even in cases where i was confused as to what to do next, I was able to figure things out after a bit more wandering and thinking. Overall, I can't recommend the game enough. There really isn't anything to lose with an experience like Panthalassa.

amazing looking and very fun point and click game! highly recommended

Stuffed with spectacular Y2K vibes, PANTHALASSA had enough substance beneath its heaps of style to satisfy me. You play an amnesiac robot point-and-clicking its way across an undersea research facility's many tactile interfaces, solving puzzles that provided me less friction and frustration than I feared. The soundtrack's great, the writing's genuinely thought-provoking and funny, but it's the apps, files, and customizable wallpapers of its little Fake OS desktop that truly won me over. Make sure you go download the free tie-in zinelet that accompanies this!

incredible visuals and sound, this soundtrack actually got stuck in my head. the narrative about this AI struggling with where the thoughts, memories and feelings of the former inhabitant of their body end and their own begin is really fascinating. only thing i can say is that i wish this was some full blown TUNIC puzzle solving with the zine providing hints, but i liked what i got out of this.

I don't usually leave reviews, but I feel this game deserves to be played by more people. I'm not usually a fan of point-and-click games, but Panthalassa's gameplay format, especially its use of old electronic device interfaces, immediately drew me in. Combined with the puzzles and the story it presents, this game is truly a hidden gem. From what I've seen, there's also an ARG associated with the game, and I'd love for more people who enjoy these kinds of mysteries to join the search and help uncover its secrets.