Why Am I Dead at Sea is an adventure mystery game, wherein you play the role of a ghost who has no recollection of who they are, how they died, or why they were killed. Throughout the game, you are set upon the task of finding out the answer to each of these enigmas, and in doing so you will also learn much about the passengers and crew aboard the ship. I've been waiting almost a year to finally play this title, so needless to say I was hoping that I wouldn't be disappointed; I definitely got a lot more than I expected out of this experience.
The game plays out like an incredibly gripping novel, and at any point it's overwhelmingly difficult to put it dow for even the briefest moment. You will want to continue playing through until the end, so that you can unravel the questions that were roused from the beginning. You will initially start off by getting to casually know the people aboard the vessel, but as you progress throughout the four chapters you will get to know their most intimate details and innermost thoughts. The character building, and the relationships that are formed between them, are key points to the success of Why Am I Dead at Sea; many of the details that you will learn later on in the game, and especially what lies in wait at the end, will have many players on the Feels train, headed full speed towards Feelsville.
So as you may be able to determine, the title relies heavily on dialogue. That being said, the actual gameplay is minimal; as a ghost, you are able to possess the other people on the ship, as well as use their unique special abilities. These special abilities range from extremely beneficial, such as Donnovan who can highlight interactive objects, to utterly useless, like Darryl who can walk faster but at the disadvantage of having the screen become disoriented. Needless to say, you probably will not utilize of most of these special abilities, despite possessing the characters multiple times. To fully understand the story, and to uncover your "true" self as the ghost, you will talk to everyone around the ship at least once on every chapter, and at some point you will also be tasked to investigate every room aboard the liner. These are not incredibly daunting or time consuming tasks, as the boat only has three floors and ten passengers.
Once you get to know a character completely, you are then free to fully possess them; doing so enables new dialogue options to appear at certain stages of the game. Once you reach the end of the fourth and final chapter, you then proceed on to unlock an array of different endings. While the endings are somewhat diversified, there is in fact one true ending in the mix; however, you are still left to piece together, yourself, many of the riddles that the game presents. This is a nice change of pace, versus games that feel the need to explain their outcome in excruciating detail; it also leaves an air of mystery to the title, and one that is open to interpretation.
As a final note, I will say that the soundtrack by Bill Kiley is an absolute masterpiece. I never found myself getting tired of the amazing retro, Sega Genesis styled bytes that were infiltrating my ears; from the downright creepy, to the dubstep influenced, to the upbeat. The only gripe that I do have is that each letter of dialogue makes a sound, and it overtakes the background tracks. These sounds, however, can be easily bypassed by pressing the action key; although it would be nice to have the option to turn it off completely. It's also worth noting that if you enjoy retro soundtracks, the one for this game can be downloaded for free, or pay what you want, at Bill's Bandcamp page.
Why Am I Dead at Sea is one of the best mystery games on Steam at this point, and it's unfortunate that it's severely underrated and often bypassed. As of now, this will be the 55th review for this game. The depth of the characters is really where this game shines, without that element, Why Am I Dead at Sea would not be the diamond in the rough that it is. The only way that the experience could've been improved was if the ship was a little larger, and the story a little longer. With talking to everyone, obtaining all of the endings, and earning all of the achievements, I clocked in at a little under 5 hours. Since the time that I initially posted this review, this title has seen a significant price drop, and the current price of $5.49 CAD is very fair for the amount of content that you get. If you can nab it on sale, it's one hell of a steal for a must-play title.
Rating: 4.0/5.0 - Excellent, highly worth playing.The Horror Network
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