The Ocean is not Water

The shark remembers every patch. This is the one where the game learned to tell you the truth about itself. 2.1 is on the default branch, and the demo is updated alongside it. Steam updates you the next time you launch; the title screen should read v2.1.0 in the corner. A first-time player recorded thirty-eight minutes of the 2.0 demo for us. They loved the atmosphere, and they could not tell what half of it did — with good reason. The game's own words were wrong about sonar, stances, jellyfish, the brood and prestige. A whole family of upgrades changed a number and nothing else. And the very first screen told them they had slept for seven minutes. 2.1 is the answer to that recording: every sentence the game says is now true, and every purchase does something you can see. Your saves come with you No reset this time. 2.0 saves load in 2.1 as they are — progress, collection, cosmetics, all of it. One thing will look different if you are still in your first run: your shark will be smaller. In 2.1 the shark starts life as a pup and grows over the first run, so its size now follows how far that run has gone. Nothing is lost and nothing about the hunt changes — the bite reaches exactly as far as it did — and it is full grown by the time you can Molt. Sonar finally does what its upgrades say "Sonar power" was a readout with nothing behind it. Every Sonar upgrade, study, relic and reward — Echolocation, the first upgrade you see, included — raised a number on the Status panel and changed nothing in the water. A pulse grabbed a single fish at a crawl, and chasing with the mouse was strictly better. Our playtester worked that out, and they were right. Now each doubling of Sonar power adds fish, reach and pull — steep at first, flatter later, so no Sonar purchase ever goes inert. Echolocation's first level takes a pulse from three fish to four. And the ring is the grab: fish are taken by the ring sweeping through them rather than pulled from anywhere on screen, so where you pu...

The shark remembers every patch. This is the one where the bottom stopped being theoretical. 2.0 is on the default branch. There is nothing to opt into and no dropdown to find — Steam updates you the next time you launch. It comes off the experimental branch with its pacing measured rather than hoped at, and to everyone who ran it there and told us where the climb sagged: thank you. You are the reason the numbers below are numbers. Before you launch: 2.0 starts you over That is deliberate, and your 1.2.2 run is not deleted. The economy was rebuilt from the seabed up. Every value in an old save was earned against a ladder that no longer exists, and there is no honest way to reinterpret it inside the new one. So 2.0 does not read your old save at all. It writes to its own files, in its own namespace, and leaves the 1.2.2 files exactly where they are, at the hour you left them — not migrated, not converted, not overwritten, not deleted. Even "delete all saves" inside 2.0 refuses to reach across into them. What you will see on first launch is a fresh set of slots and a note on the title screen saying why. Start there. The first hour of 2.0 is not the first hour you remember. The game can be finished now This is the change everything else serves, and it is worth repeating for everyone who did not read the beta post. 2.0 got a rebuilt simulator — a deterministic clock, an agent that plays competently rather than optimally, and a probe that measures what a fully-bought economy actually earns. We pointed it at the endgame to tune the pacing. It came back and told us the endgame was not reachable at all. Every scaling path stalled 25 to 32 orders of magnitude short of the first Submersion gate and then sat flat for the rest of a simulated thirty days. The softcap system, the Pressure rites, the weakening relics, the entire late-game constellation — all of it was carefully modifying a wall that no economy could reach in the first place. Four hunt abilities shipped unreachable...

The shark remembers every patch. This one it would rather you forgot, and then saw fixed. The game can be finished now Here is the thing we found and could not un-find. 2.0 got a rebuilt simulator that is a deterministic clock, an agent that plays competently rather than optimally, and a probe that measures what a fully-bought economy actually earns. We pointed it at the endgame to tune the pacing. It came back and told us the endgame was not reachable at all. Every scaling path short of the first Submersion gate and then sat flat for the rest of a simulated thirty days. The softcap system, the Pressure rites, the weakening relics, the entire late-game constellation, all of it was carefully modifying a wall that no economy could reach in the first place. Four hunt abilities were shipped and unreachable. The ladder had rungs above the ceiling. So the wall moved to where play actually happens, and every gate got re-anchored to a measured number instead of a hopeful one. All three play styles now complete the full Submersion ladder. The first gate is roughly twelve to thirteen focused hours. Each depth after it is a real climb rather than a decorative one. That is the change this branch exists to test. Everything below is in service of it. How to opt in Right-click The Ocean Is Not Water in your Steam library Properties → Betas Select experimental from the dropdown Steam downloads the 2.0 build. To go back, pick None from the same dropdown. Read this before you click 2.0 starts you over, and that is deliberate. The economy was rebuilt from the seabed up; there is no honest way to reinterpret a 1.2.2 run inside it. The experimental branch opens a fresh set of save slots. Your existing save is not touched. It is not migrated, converted, overwritten or deleted. 2.0 writes to its own files and does not read yours. Leave the branch and your run is exactly where it was, at the hour you left it. We built it this way specifically so that trying the beta costs you nothing. What...