I 100%'d the base game (no DLC). I think it's worth about 20 bucks, definitely not 40. I got it on sale for 8 bucks. I didn't rush and it took ~11 hours to 100%.

I don't remember what other shark game I played as a kid, but this game scratched that itch I didn't know I had. So, if the thought of playing a shark and swimming around killing stuff sounds fun, then I'd recommend the game. If you need more substance than that, then this game will probably be a disappointment.


The game progresses from region to region by accomplishing the main story missions. The story is framed as a nature documentary following a shark and hunter. You play as the shark and grow by eating... a lot. That's basically it.


It's a goofy game that doesn't try to be realistic. It's fun and satisfying to play as a shark and to be a menace to society. I think the shark animations are great and the game looks good.


These will contain minor spoilers about game mechanics, missions, objectives, and evolution/mutations. It won't contain spoilers for the main story.


There are three types of collectible objectives in each region (with one exception). The collectibles come in three flavors: license plates, caches, and landmarks. They all boil down to items that are just sitting there waiting for you to swim up to them. There is nothing complicated or fun about collecting them.

The most "complex" ones are found in the underwater pipes. This requires you to navigate narrow tunnels with one or two paths. It's hardly challenging or engaging.

They also block some of them by placing them very high up or behind grates with age locks. These require you to get bigger before coming back to collect them. They're not interesting and just create a bunch of backtracking or fast traveling later in the game as you revisit the same regions to clean up the objectives you couldn't get before.

I wanted something more. Simple puzzles would've been nice. Just something to make it feel like I was interacting with the world rather than just swimming until I reached a destination.


There's very little variety. There are missions to eat humans, eat 10 fish of a given type (e.g. catfish), kill an apex creature, and watch cutscenes. I think that's basically it.

There's boss or "apex" creature fights that are essentially the same enemy as the normal variant but with more health, a higher level, and a fresh set of paint. I would have liked to see unique moves or stages in the fight to make them feel more important. They didn't feel any different from a side mission.

There's also main missions where you are required to kill a certain amount of creatures. I think there's three per region. You can be 8 hours in, at the level cap, and as big as possible and the game is like, "hey go kill 10 parrot fish lol." Garbage. In the beginning when we are growing, sure. Maybe this could be framed as us causing harm to the environment as well as fueling our growth. Instead it lasts throughout the whole game! WHY?! The "challenge" of these missions is that the fish you are required to kill have body guards (aka sharks and things that would normally be eating them). So you have to kill the few normal enemies then eat like 10 nearby fish. Fun... In the last region of the game, all three of these missions were the exact same. Go kill 10 hammerhead sharks being guarded by whales. They didn't even have the decency to change the fish you have to eat 10 of. It's just so lazy. Offensively so, in my opinion.

Part of it being a game is that you essentially play as a shark with the mind and intellect of a human. I would have loved to see the story play into this. Especially since we grow and develop so quickly and are clearly the odd one out when it comes to marine life. It would have been really interesting to have some complexity in the missions beyond eating things. For example, maybe we could have disrupted society in some way like turning off power for the city, or outsmarting humans trying to capture us. Oh well, I can dream.


There's only three sets of upgrades you can choose from. That's shockingly little in my opinion. There's the bone, shadow, and electric sets. That's it. I would have like to see more options. I felt no real incentive to mix and match either. I just put on what I could when I unlocked each piece from the set I cared about and that was that. There's no creative builds here.


My wrist would have snapped or I'd have a jacked right arm if I played this game as intended. There is a thrashing mechanic where you have to quickly move your mouse left and right to kill your food. They really need an accessibility option or something. It's immersive to feel like your violently tearing apart your enemy... at first. Then it becomes super repetitive and tiring. I ended up using AutoHotkeys and a macro to move my mouse with a button click. I would have dropped the game after a couple hours without this macro.


The humans and marine life are just sacks of meat for the player to eat. That's all. Humans will scream, but generally make no effort to get away from you as you eat their friends and family. It really doesn't seem hard to program more urgency into them getting away from the shark that's sitting firmly on land eating someone right in front of them. I'm literally flopping around on land eating one after another and the most they can do is casually stroll away screaming.

Fish are basically the same. You will never have to chase down a fish. All fish are comfortable with death and have made their peace with dying. They must believe in fish god or the fish afterlife because they make no effort to escape the shark eating half of their school.


The story is framed as a documentary and you therefore have a narrator the whole game. I thought it was fine. I didn't care one way or another about it. It's clearly a goofy world where people would rather die than miss out on their beach time. I think it would have been cool to get more of this story framing in the game. Something like wild or goofy interviews with locals so that we could understand why they must swim.

There's borderlands style intros for some hunters that are very... weird. It's like the studio wanted to add some character to the enemies, but that's where the character ends. Plus the intros have almost no sound. It's odd. I'd expect them to be grunting, for their gadgets to make noise, or something even if they aren't fully voiced. It's very odd, like some kind of uncanny imitation of another successful franchise.


I definitely have more to say about what I didn't like and what I hoped for, but ultimately it was fine. It was worth what I payed for it and a little bit more. Although the more I write this review, the more I'm questioning why I chose to 100% this game. I think it had something to do with the desire to turn my brain off and just do repetitive tasks until I see 100%.

Maybe due to budget or management, this is what the game ended up as. But, as a player, I was hoping for more variety in almost every facet of the game. I would have preferred half the playtime and a focus on more variety. Who knows. Maybe they did what they could under their constraints and just copy-pasted until they felt like it had enough play time.

It was entertaining enough, but I have no desire to revisit the game just to play it again. I may get the DLC on sale eventually just to 100% it as well, but I'm not on the edge of my seat waiting for that moment.