Indie Game Spotlight: Mythic Ocean (@paralune)
What would you do if you were friends with the gods? Mythic Ocean is a narrative exploration game, in which you discover an underwater realm and influence the gods living there. Your choices will guide the branching story and ultimately shape the creation of a new world.
We spoke with Darren Malley, who does the narrative design, writing, sound, and music for Mythic Ocean, about gods, gameplay mechanics, and more! Read on!
The Mythic Ocean looks like it’s home to a lot of different animal friends and gods. What kind of characters can we expect to meet?
The gods are all over the map, personality-wise. For instance, Amar, the multi-armed sea otter, loves to party and take it easy, but they have trouble taking on big responsibilities. The Twins, Ketri and Esti, can be affectionate or moody, depending on how things develop, and they’re prone to misbehave if they don’t have the right guidance. And Lutra, the strange little larva, is curious and eager to learn about the world but is also very much ruled by its instincts. All these traits come into play as you make choices during the game—especially at the end when one of the gods is chosen to create a new world.
Aside from the gods, you’ll meet plenty of other endearing sea creatures. There’s a swordfish who really hates dolphins, a metalhead pufferfish...and did I mention the breakdancing crab?
What type of gameplay mechanics are in Mythic Ocean?
Mythic Ocean’s primary mechanics are swimming and talking. You swim around the underwater world, exploring it at your leisure and meeting all the characters in whatever order you like. Most conversations allow the player to make dialog choices that will cause the characters to react in various ways. When speaking with the gods, your dialog choices will have a big impact—affecting how much they like you, how they feel about each other, and how they view the world.
The player also has some additional powers that help facilitate social interactions: a sonar ability that lets you find characters more easily and a teleporter that instantly takes you to gods you’ve already met.
What types of decisions can players make in the game, and how does it affect the overall story?
This is where the game’s simple mechanics become more complex. The plot unfolds in the form of short stories, called Fables, that have their own narrative arcs. The player progresses through Fables by making dialog choices to give the gods advice and help them decide how to interact with one another. This causes their relationships to develop in different ways—gods may end up getting along because of the player’s advice, or perhaps they’ll come to dislike one another. There are a lot of potential outcomes.
The earliest Fables are all available at the start of the game, with more unlocked as the player completes them. When you choose to begin and finish each Fable, and what you say to each god, can all have an impact on what happens later. You know where everything’s headed—the game always ends with one of the gods being chosen to create a new universe. But getting there is different every time, depending on your choices along the way. And there are so many possible endings, it would take you dozens of playthroughs to see them all!
Which character do you most identify with?
Aw, that’s really tough! But, if I have to pick just one, I’ll go with Rosetta—one of the little garden eels from the Eel Kingdom. The way this character uses music as a metaphor to make sense of life is something I find myself doing a lot lately. The ideas of harmony and dissonance, major and minor…the happy, triumphant moments of life are just as important as the somber and saddening ones. It’s the mix of all these things together that makes the stories of our lives so compelling.
Mythic Ocean is available now for Windows PC on Steam and Itch.io, and there’s also a free demo of the game called Mythic Ocean: Prologue on both sites. For updates on platform releases or anything else, make sure to check out their Tumblr!
