Played a bunch of Ace of Seafood
During the Steam Summer Sale, I picked up Ace of Seafood, a 2016 plane-combat-parody-game??? where you play as a fish who is trying to conquer the ocean. I haven't played a lot of fighter jet combat games like Ace Combat, but I've played enough to recognize the joke. The UI makes it pretty clear what kind of game this is supposed to be:
Humans are gone from this world, but fish remain, and they've adopted human methods of warfare. Fish can shoot lasers and torpedoes at one another. Some fish are, actually, surface warships and aircraft carriers and human submarines. A Kagerou-class warship counts as a "new life form" you can "breed" while hiding in a reef.
This is one of those games which is deliberately complex and hard to puzzle out - the menus are strange and difficult to navigate, and you can spend a lot of time trying to figure out what options are available to you.
However, it balances this out by making the combat extremely easy. I think more games which are deliberately deliberately trying to seem confusing should look to this game for inspiration! If the real mystery of your game is "figuring out how to play it," it really helps for the game to be easy and fun once I figure it out. Here's me absolutely blasting an enemy sardine with a fuck ton of homing missiles:
I'm still discovering things that different fish can do - I won't spoil them, but there's entire categories of verbs that I didn't realize were in the game until I started playing as a different type of fish.
I also really appreciate the loading screen text:
People once dreamed of their bodies shining and emitting light. Their dreams became a reality.
Ancient records claim that sardines took on a ball-like structure. A simple error, or is there some secret behind it...?
I've now conquered over a third of the total reefs in the sea. I could screenshot this game forever. I have heard from a friend that it's a good game to leave on a television at parties, which makes sense. It's baffling, visually delightful, and not particularly difficult. I have no idea if I'll finish it, but it cost me only $3.59 USD, so I'm already satisfied.