In the enchanted underwater City of Glass, what will you sacrifice for immortality? Love, memories, freedom? Will you take freedom from others to win your heart's desire? Dive into a world of mermaids, mermen, and other merfolk, where every character has secrets, and nothing is what it seems!
"The Sea Eternal" is an epic interactive fantasy novel by Lynnea Glasser, author of "Creatures Such as We" and "Coloratura," winner of the 2013 Interactive Fiction Competition and numerous XYZZY awards. Your choices control the story. It's entirely text-based--283,000 words, without graphics or sound effects--and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
The whales have granted the merfolk eternal life, and asked you for so little in return. Defense against the giant squid. Secrecy from humans. But when a rogue mermaid tries to destroy the gift of immortality, ancient secrets rise from the depths, and the delicate balance of society rests in your hands.
Will you fight to protect your immortality, or surrender it for a higher cause? Will you choose sides in the neverending war between the whales and the giant squid? Will your undying love save the City of Glass, or destroy it?
• Decide what being a hero means to you, with over 10 unique endings
• Choose your own mer-self, with multiple gender and orientation options available
• Play alongside similarly diverse characters
• Romance human visitors to the underwater city
• Earn the trust of nuanced characters
• Break their trust
• Pick up the pieces of your shattered relationships
this was probably the first time a 1 star review made me want to download a game. seeing how some people were annoyed by the "forced sociopolitical agendas" or whatever i immediately knew i needed to read the story and oh boy i was not disappointed. as a non-binary individual it is so incredibly rare to see representation of myself anywhere in games or have the option to chose a non-binary character. thank you so much for giving me that option here.
on top of all that the story line and writing are genuinely incredible and absolutely worth buying the full version. the only thing i wish i had was artwork to go with the story.
I had high hopes...
The game started off fantastic, really. I was excited how the rest would go.
But then (SPOILER ALERT) once the player’s first love interest turns into a merperson, it’s all downhill from there. You feel like you don’t even have a say in what direction the story goes anymore!
Then there’s the ending. Way. Too. Sudden. It just rushes into the conclusion, which is super dissatisfying by the way.
Come on guys, you can do better than this!
The ending is not what I played this for
The ending doesn’t hold you accountable for any of your actions and made me feel bored with the story because it was all leading up to something too short. I played multiple times but never felt satisfied with any ending. My hope was that the author was working on part two or something but nope
Treally subpar
I support LGBTQ and am someone of color but this story pushes it so much that I instantly got bored. The choices are forced and it gives the average reader no real “choice”. It’s for a very niche group of people and I do not recommend this game at all. It was exciting at first, but quickly became a load of hogwash.
Love it!
I am a long long time fan of these games. I’m also transgender. I almost never find trans people in games when I specifically look for them, let alone stumble upon them. Everyone saying it is bad probably has an agenda :/
Really liking it
A lot of the bad reviews are conflating "has any characters who are trans/queer/a poc" with "shoving politics down our throats." It's really good and well written and worth spending some time and money on!!
this review probably has spoilers but
i don’t really see the problem some people had with the diversity? i mean, Tamru being black and Faye being trans just made the story more inclusive and, no, the author wasn’t shoving their political views down your throats. for me, the idea that Tamru was getting hate when he was human for being black just showed how long he had been an immortal for.
<okay here come the spoilers>
the ending i got was that Tamru and i went back to the land. it was such a sweet ending that i couldn’t bring myself to replay to see each different ending (but i probably will later). it felt short for me but that was most likely because there was so much else that i skipped to achieve this ending.
<okay spoiler’s over>
thank you, author, for writing this. i really enjoyed it.
CoG is starting to disappoint.
After years of some cool games, it seems as though CoG’s once benign gender neutral policy for its stories is morphing into something malignant. This story felt like a screed on the author’s own sociopolitical views. The politics were unavoidable but what was far worse was that the story was just bad.
Give it a pass. Check out Choice of Robots, Alexandria, or Choice by Gaslight for stories that have a sociopolitical view...but tell a good story along the way.
I Really Wanted to Like It, But. . .
I really wanted to like this game as it had a very intriguing premise, but it really gets too bogged down in being an author filibuster with their "message".
This game is called a "choice" game for a reason, but there were many situations wherein I was unable to express my real feelings (and therefore 'choice') on how to respond to a matter, which quickly destroyed any sense of immersion this game had for me.
I get it, the author wanted to tackle racial/gender/etc. matters in this game, but it came through in such a ham-fisted manner that this ended up reading less like an interactive story and more like a railroaded author tract.
Not worth $5.99
Disappointed. No real choice or opinion in the game, just what the author wants to cram down your throat. Not worth $5.99.
