Even as levels become progressively larger, or monsters reveal their full, gigantic size, there are generally no performance issues. Sea of Solitude uses the Unity Engine, which hums along just fine with the few action sequences that can be found during the adventure. It’s a shame, because the potential for some intriguing puzzles involving water was there, but never used. There’s no real puzzles to speak of, nor much in the way of challenge. But whereas Papo & Yo featured innovative puzzles involving moving whole buildings and playing with platforming, Sea of Solitude mostly sees the player avoiding monsters as they move in predictable patterns, and destroying evil child entities using flares. Sea of Solitude may invoke some comparison to games such as Papo & Yo, owing to both games’ surreal worlds. There’s some symbolism going on here about depression, and how it feels to overcome internal conflict, but it only ever remains an abstract representation, and so it may just fly by many gamers unnoticed. Besides jumping and maneuvering a boat, Kay’s only other action is to suck up corruption by holding R2, and occasionally merging with these spirit-looking versions of herself to align some sort of energy beam while screaming as though being cut open while still conscious. It is also occasionally used to turn on an overhead light, which can dispatch enemies. These flares automatically seek out wherever Kay is supposed to go to next. Kay is given the power to generate a flare at any time by pressing and holding L2. That simplicity is one of Sea of Solitude’s less appealing aspects. The physics of water get messed with every so often, which results in some interesting level design, even if the water itself is never incorporated into any of the game’s simple puzzles. That world is surreal as the only “real” person in the game is protagonist Kay, who is a young adult in her early twenties, and she is represented as a black silhouette, red-eyed and extra hairy for some reason.

There is an equally varied soundtrack, which features calming music in the lighter-colored sections to more tense music and audio effects as things get tense in the darker portions of the world. Environments vary from the vast, open sea to tighter, enclosed areas such as classrooms and offices. Does it deliver like other EA Originals titles before it? A Wonderfully-Realized Worldįans of cel-shaded style graphics will find plenty to like in Sea of Solitude, as the game does look gorgeous. Developer Jo-Mei has finally released their stylized adventure game which deals with depression, family issues, and other weighty topics. Sea of Solitude was revealed during EA PLAY 2018, perhaps as a reminder of EA’s small but seemingly persistent devotion to publisher smaller, indie titles.

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