BigMood’s indie adventure The Edge of Water avoids mechanics of environmental exploitation for gameplay systems built around stewardship, multi-species kinship, and ecological harmony. The game works most visibly by defamiliarizing our relationship with water and marine life, offering a serene but also notably romanticized experience of human-nature relations.
The game’s lore states that long ago, humans lived deep underwater until they betrayed Su, the life-giving spirit of the sea. As punishment, humans were cast out and ‘cursed’ to only walk upon the water’s surface, forever cut off from the deep ocean womb. This functions as an effective eco-critical metaphor for human alienation from nature, symbolizing how our mistreatment of the planet has severed our intuitive to the ecosystems that sustain us. While many games tap into Thalassophobia, cultivating a widespread, often subconscious fear of the (deep) ocean, this game continues the framing of water as humankind’s ‘true’ habitat prominently explored in films like Avatar: The Way of Water.
Despite this separation, humans and marine life are bound by a once-in-a-generation great migration. The protagonist, Hedi, must guide her floating village alongside a massive fish migration to reach more bountiful, habitable waters. Human survival in this context is dependent on the health and movement of the fish, shifting the dynamic from human dominance to radical (inter)dependence. Again, a well-known motif like fish migration (often associated with salmon) is defamiliarized to represent a form of ‘kinship’ or connection between human and non-human animals. On a related note, instead of using a rod or net to catch fish for resource accumulation, the player’s primary objective is guardianship and ‘herding’. As Hedi, players must track down different marine species scattered across peaceful shallows, volatile volcanic flows, and dangerous reed fields. By calling out to them, Hedi can convince them to join the pilgrimage, acting as a companion and protector rather than a predator.
In a few instances, the game challenges players to think within the framework of a food web rather than just fighting obstacles. In an early area of the game’s demo, the path is blocked by a swarm of aggressive, territorial piranhas and, instead of fighting them directly, players need to use a sound cue to attract a predator, a large shark, guide it toward the piranhas and scare them away, clearing the path for the herd (though in other instances, fish can be fought with a boomerang and stick).
Hedi’s movement mechanics are explicitly ‘natural’ and fantastical, being able to walk on water rather than using boats and traversing the world using a multi-functional kite that acts simultaneously as a surfboard, a sail, and a parachute. The game’s highly reactive water physics enable the player to constantly adjust to wind currents and wave ripples, thus ‘forcing’ (or at least encouraging) them pay attention to and and work with rather than against the ambient movement of the ocean to get around efficiently.