It's hard to talk about this game without spoiling so be wary of that, I'd also recommend playing through this game with subtitles off and voice volume off, I'll explain shortly after a quick intro.

You play as Kay, a 20 year old struggling with family and relationship issues, the game’s visuals are an expression of the ups and downs of her own and other peoples emotions literally displayed by the level of the water sometimes and the monsters manifested from her thoughts and the monster versions of her peers in their toxic states.

For me, this game has some glaring issues, mainly to do with how it plays its metaphors and symbolism along with its sub-par script and voice acting. These two tend to go hand in hand in bringing the experience down. The game seems to struggle to know what it's aiming for and there seems to be conflict between creative aspect.

The game has some moments where visual storytelling shines through and I really enjoyed these moments, a great is example is when you're climbing up the skyscraper, it's clearly some kind of office building and the sound effects coming from the fire exhaling vents sounds like a man screaming, you get to the top where another monster has a wedding ring on that is visible when it's grasping its head, is breathing fire and seems very stressed and resentful. You can totally infer that it's her father who works in an office and is very overwhelmed and offloads his issues onto others in a toxic manner however Kay (and other characters) can't seem to shut up about stating the obvious, yes the prior states is spelled out for you unfortunately the first 20 minutes of the game I was screaming at Kay to shut up to let me experience and infer rather than her saying what had just happened or not letting me figure out for myself.

Even from the get-go if you fire a flare into a wall Kay states it cannot go through when you can clearly see it explodes on impact and doesn't go through. Flares being a guide to the next location or objective you need to go to. Also when interacting a light copy of herself to aim at a monster Kay is clearly screaming and it's hurting, when leaving the copy Kay states "that hurt so much" in the fasted, blandest delivery possible; not out of breath, not exhausted, no emphasis at all to just what happened.

This is worsened since in some points of the game you need to listen to audio cues that are voice lines when chasing the brother in his bird form he tells you that you are too loud and you can infer that the boat is being too loud and you need to walk up to him, which is actually harder due to this being a moment in the game where you can't swim in the water due to hands that pull you under (consistent when "Sunny" Kay's brother is around) being a moment where you actually get to figure something out for yourself for once which is infuriating since that (along with the fact that there are some long pauses that allow for dialogue) does make that recommendation of playing without any voice lines present a little harder but I believe the dialogue brings the experience down a lot.

On top of this the voice acting isn't great. As stated prior some lines are delivered very poorly, especially in context to what's going on in-game. If it wasn't for the stating of the obvious annoyance I would recommend just playing with subtitles for context; but unfortunately, the mix of bad voice acting with the less than ideal script leaves dialogue feels fake and forced. It makes Kay come off as more annoying than relatable with her issues, since she just comes off as incomprehensible.

I know I've just bashed this game but I still have a soft spot for it, the visual style is amazing, it really shines and overall I enjoyed the story and the way it was told. The mechanics and gameplay are very simple but pleasing, typically consisting of the red light green light system for a lot of interaction with monsters and minor puzzle-like aspects. There are moments where visual storytelling is used to a very admirable degree during the game, and if I just ignored how what I just discovered was repeated to me I was enjoying how I was learning about Kay's story and what everyone was going through.