Video Game Review: The Aquatic Adventure of The Last Human

The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human is a Metroidvania style game made by YCJY Games. Having gone through a wormhole-like phenomenon, the player is taken over 20,000 years into the future to an unknown time. The player arrives back at Earth only to find that the planet has been covered in water. Through exploring the world and a series of creative boss fights the player slowly pieces together the story of what happened to the earth. 

Everywhere the player travels in the drowned planet is beautifully detailed and fun to explore with a wide variety of areas, like the frozen surface, the dark Abyss, and the toxic Pipe Central. Excellent visuals created by graphics artist Josef Martinovsky are fully immersive and filled to the brim with creative creatures. Interesting and quite difficult boss fights like “The Forgotten One,” “The Experiment,” and “The Defiler” unlock new tools to help navigate the world and open up previously inaccessible areas.

But beyond just the gameplay, an interesting story is woven into the background through watching holo-tapes and seeing news display boards showing stories about terrorism, the environment, how humans adapted to the flooding, and even brief looks into the life of average citizens. But of course, as a small indie release, the game can’t completely address all of these background concepts with only limited playing time. So the fate of Earth’s environment was reserved as the main theme, with the story of the humans’ downfall shown to the player by the final boss, who is hidden deep within a level known as “The Facility.” After being told about a mysterious government project referred to as “The Osiris Project,” the player learns that humans fixed themselves and were able to clean the earth but ultimately still went extinct.

The game was played on Nintendo Switch for this reviewing, but can also be played on all of the major consoles and with a Steam, Humble Games, and Itch.io subscription for anywhere from $10 to $15.