I always thought that the most stressful moment from Finding Nemo was the part where Gill and co executed their plan to escape from the dentist’s office—it was probably too much suspense for a three-year-old to handle in truth. Well I’m in luck because now I get to relive that childhood stressor all over again with Barely Breathing.
On the surface, Barely Breathing sounds like a horror game, and yes, it may bring back some stressful memories from my childhood but it’s really a very fun and charming 3D platformer. You play as a little fish with big dreams: reaching the ocean. But to get there you need to parkour your way around an apartment, tipping over glasses, swimming up storm drains, all while using the seemingly infinite pots of water scattered around the house.
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There’s only a demo available to play right now, with the full game releasing sometime later this year, but I really had the time of my life splashing around for about 20 minutes.
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Starting off in a fish bowl which was much too small for a big dreamer such as myself, I leapt out, soaring into the sky and landed slap bang in a glass of water. From this point onwards you can use any available liquid to help you traverse the house. You also have the option to splash some of the liquid to make puddles to help you close gaps. But these puddles will dry up after a short period of time, so you need to be quick.
The premise is simple, but the platforming is done surprisingly well—it’s challenging without being impossible. At one point I was faced with getting past a working fan. My first attempt was laughably bad as I got caught by the spinning blades and launched across the room, landing on the dry floor and quickly blacking out—that’s Finding Nemo’s bad ending. But you can’t keep this fish down. After reassessing the situation it was immediately clear that I don’t have the dexterity to launch myself through the swirling blades, so I had to come up with another way.
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On further inspection I found the switch for the fan lying nearby on the floor. After splashing some water down, I made my way to the switch, flopping around until I turned it off. Then I used a nearby water bowl to launch myself back up to where I started on the table.
With the fan turned off, my job was infinitely easier, and instead of trying to jump through the blades, I flopped onto the static fan and then jumped over to a nearby shelf. No mountain is too high, or valley too low for this fish.
The demo was over soon after this point, which was unfortunate as I was really starting to get a hang of playing hacky sacks with a fish’s body. But the good news is that we hopefully won’t have to wait too long to continue the adventure towards the open sea as Barely Breathing is set to release sometime this year. In the meantime, I’ll be heading back into the demo and perfecting my fish trick shots; this fish’s owner won’t know what hit them by the time the full game releases.
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