Highwater review: A flood of friendship

Demagog’s newest game, Highwater, feels like a spiritual successor to Golf Club: Nostalgia, its previous project. Highwater takes the themes of capitalism, climate change, and nihilism like a baton and runs with them to the finish line. It’s a darkly entertaining journey anchored by a solid turn-based combat system.

Keeping your head above water

Highwater envisions a world destroyed by floods, decimating the population as the remaining humans fight for resources. However, the wealthy have gathered in the city of Alphaville as they plot an escape to Mars. We step into the shoes of Nikos, a man whose environmentalist parents died during a protest before the game’s events. As the Earth becomes inhabitable, Nikos hatches a plan to escape the doomed planet.

Highwater proudly wears its strong themes on its sleeves. While the setting alone invites a conversation about climate change and our constant failure to take proper action against it, nearly all of the game’s collectibles and ancillary reading revolve around politicians quelling concerns about climate disaster, corporations prioritizing profits over human life, all of which parallels headlines we frequently see in the real world.

While the world of Highwater is aggressively bleak, Demagog finds humor in the nihilism of it all. Many of the game’s NPCs have fully come to terms with the impending doom and have decided to simply keep living life on their own terms. Throwing parties, binging TV shows, and kicking back while the world falls apart around them.

I found Highwater’s humor to be a much-needed injection of levity into an otherwise grim experience, but the game’s dialogue doesn’t always land for me. In many cases, characters feel like wisecracking robots rather than humans, and the onslaught of nihilistic humor does grow tired after a while.

Waterworld

Many of the people in this post-apocalyptic world either wish to do you harm or stand in your way of fleeing the planet, and there’s only one way to deal with them. Highwater’s turn-based combat uses a grid system, with each character getting a movement and action on their turn. Based on a character’s weapons and attributes, they can use various abilities that either deal damage or inflict enemies with status effects. It’s a straightforward system that’s easy to understand.

In several combat instances, you’re tasked with objectives other than simply defeating an enemy. This includes retrieving items from the battlefield and/or moving characters to specific locations before a number of turns run out. It’s a decent change of pace that provides unique challenges outside of the standard model.

Yacht rock

While I wasn’t too fond of the writing in Highwater, the game does some excellent storytelling through music. There is a recurring radio station playing on your boat as you travel the water, with new segments airing between the main quests. These segments are often accompanied by a song that perfectly captures a moment in the story.

The game’s music made me enjoy the quieter moments as I wandered away from main quests and explored the world. There are numerous islands to be explored, many of which are marked as homes to side quests.

Highwater has an impressive catalog of original tunes that I genuinely hope are made available on streaming services or physical media at some point in the future.

The next wave

Highwater is an excellent adventure game that puts a magnifying glass up to the growing issue of climate change and the ambivalence that humans can have towards the state of the environment. While the story is bogged down by inconsistent writing, I found plenty to enjoy in its combat system and its ancillary storytelling.

This review is based on a Steam code provided by the publisher. Highwater is available now for PC, PS5 Xbox Series X/S, and Switch.

Donovan Erskine

News Editor

Donovan is a journalist from Maryland. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokémon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge film fanatic and will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_