SeaBed

I think for the right person, Seabed can be an amazing experience, a masterpiece even… I, unfortunately, was the wrong person to read Seabed because this bored me to death. By the end, it just felt like a complete waste of my time, which is a rarity because even the most horrible pieces of media I’ve experienced have some kind of takeaway that makes it worth experiencing despite the bad.

For context, Seabed had been on my radar since the early 2020s, which I only got this year because it was half off.. Seabed had always piqued my interest for being a yuri mystery and for its synopsis. It seemed like the perfect premise for me since I love romance stories (especially yuri), especially ones with a focus on couples balancing their romantic relationship (ex. Sachiko learning to balance time for herself & time to spend with Takako so her life doesn’t completely revolve around her, Takako realizing she IS homoesexual, etc.), combined with a coastal/beach atmosphere would give Seabed a unique vibe.

I got a different vibe though which would be fine... If not for the execution.

Firstly, the writing is boring. The main problem being all the boring slice-of-life events. I like slice-of-life, but they don’t feel fun or interesting at all in Seabed. I think there are good ideas, but the narration goes into far more detail than it needs to describe everything, which does nothing for me. Really, most SOL scenes are about mundane things that are over-explained to an aggravating degree.

This wouldn’t be terrible if the SOL wasn't just filler most of the time. Most of Sachiko & Takako’s traveling stories and the workplace chatter add nothing, causing some brutally slow pacing. There were so many times where I asked myself “what did this scene add?!” That’s not to say I disliked all the SOL stuff, [Chapter 5] I actually enjoyed the Christmas Party and the moment Takako ponders with a butterfly in the room was weirdly beautiful. But it ain't enough to make up for the plentiful lows.

Secondly, I just couldn’t get invested in the romance, at all. The story doesn’t do a good job showing Sachiko & Takako being romantic together since we only ever see them being together in a relationship when either traveling or at work, neither of which really show their romance well beyond when they kiss/hug nor add anything to their romance. This feels like it could’ve been an easy fix if we saw them at home together more, going out for a date or two, and so on.

Furthermore, their dynamic with each other is just dull. Romance tends to breathe new life into a person and romance can make people show a side to a romantic partner they don’t tend to show others or even discover themselves in some ways… I never once got that vibe at all with them. It felt like they just had a friends-with-benefits relationship.

Thirdly, Sachiko is a very boring character and her side of the story is just a pain to read through. Barring the 4+ hour prologue, which is far longer than it should be, Sachiko is the introverted book-lover who isn't a very sociable/approachable person but is a sweet person on the inside even if she doesn’t always show it. I’ve seen this type of character a lot, and she really doesn’t do anything special to make her not feel bland to me. She’s also supposed to be tired all the time, but she just came off as disinterested with everything. Now, this in itself ain’t a problem and realistically affects little (especially since it’s inaccurate, Sachiko is interested in a lot of things). However, the way Sachiko comes off as disinterested to me kills the romance since it comes off as if she’s tolerating Takako more than enjoying her company.

The cast on Sachiko’s side were all mostly boring too. Narasaki was interesting at first, but her habit of over-explaining simple things & going on forever about subjects at times made it painful to read through her dialogue. The story treats Narasaki as mysterious/elusive, but it feels forced because Sachiko just… Refuses to be suspicious of Narasaki. [Chapter 2] How do you not find a doctor staying at the exact same mansion at the same time suspicious? Nanae was kind of neat, but I wasn’t a fan of the direction her character went. Kosuke was good though.

Although, I actually ended up enjoying Takako’s side of the story. I thought the Sancitorum was kind of cozy, and Sanae & Mayuki were fun characters. [Full Story Spoilers] Unfortunately, the Sancitorium was just a place in Sachiko’s head this entire time… Seabed took the only segments and characters I enjoyed and they weren’t real. The story tries to explain what matters is that they’re here, and similar twists have worked well for me, but it just… Stung here because it makes Takako’s side of the story feel meaningless. I know there is the phone call with Sachiko to justify Takako-in-Sachiko’s-head’s journey, but that’s not enough man…

Fourthly, the mystery. Or more so, the answers to it. Before the answers, the overarching mystery was actually really interesting. The story always gives time for the reader to figure stuff out on their own and it even holds itself back by not making certain reveals too dramatic. It’s neat to finish a session and think on what the story’s covered.

Although, the answers to the mystery overall ended up being weirdly underwhelming. To me, my theories made the mystery seem much grander in my mind. I was thinking: merging realities, different timelines, time travel, and etc.. So finding out it was “Takako’s Sanitorium was in Sachiko’s head this entire time” is, uh… Really anti-climatic given the scope the story implied.

Finally, the themes of moving on and grief. There are other themes, but I can't cover them all.

Moving on is the theme that left me feeling… Confused. Sachiko’s side goes somewhere with it, but feels too heavy-handed. [Chapter 3] As soon as Nanae had the twintail sprites, it felt like subtly was thrown out the window. Takako’s side feels more natural, but doesn’t feel as though it goes anywhere with the theme.

As for the grief theme, it didn’t really do much for me, although this isn’t something I can completely blame on Seabed. I just handle grief in very different ways than Sachiko & Takako. [Full Story Spoilers] Not to say I can’t emphasize with the both of them, their circumstances are tragic and grief isn’t something that just goes away in a week or two, or in years even. With better writing, I think their grief could’ve been extremely compelling for me.

And that’s about it for the story. As for the art, it was great, character designs are awesome, the backgrounds work (although there can be a clash of styles between the 3D & water-painted backgrounds, but nothing that hinders the experience), and the royalty-free music is pleasing (although a few tracks got on nerves).

In the end, I hate that I hate Seabed because it seemed so promising. Yet, it felt like everything went against it. It feels like I’m missing something. Yet, the story was easy to understand. What few praises I have for the story are back-handed compliments. And ultimately, Seabed simply wasted my time as I got nothing out of reading it.

I don’t think Seabad is a bad VN, in fact it seems to be a very compelling piece of anti-fiction/subversion for those who can vibe with it. In fact, a lot of my problems with Seabed appear to be deliberate. If this review was under a purely objective lens, this would be where the review would have a twist where I go into how Seabed is brilliant because of these things and how Seabed is unlike anything else because of it. However, Seabed was simply too miserable of an experience for me to even try.

Seabed is very much an acquired vibe, and it hardcore failed my vibe check.

feels like a spring breeze,reminds me of the time i spent in swimming pool,the tranquility and liveliness
BTW the Chinese translation on this one is god tier

I don't really believe that I'll be able to adequately describe my love for SeaBed in words, but like every game which makes me feel this way, the best I can do is try.

I put down SeaBed for an exceedingly long time when I first attempted to get through it when I bought the game back in May of 2024. I thought it'd be a great time killer for a trip that I was taking. (Kinda funny, considering how frequently travel is brought up in SeaBed.) For one reason or another, I put down the VN after my trip had concluded. I don't really think I had a good reason to. Perhaps back then I was less willing to lend an ear to stories that didn't get right to the point, or maybe I was less tolerant of things that could be considered 'slice of life'. Though I think that was also a misconception I had back then. For a story like SeaBed, even the small things are important. I was loving the story, after all, I had no reason to stop, but it was probably my horrid retention rate that I suffer from when going through *any* VN which is to blame. Much like with other games that grace my favorites list, SeaBed absolutely lived in my head for several, several months before I finally worked up the courage to restart the story from scratch and push my way through it. Dear god, am I ever glad I did that. From being funny, to irresistibly sweet, all the way to heart-wrenching, SeaBed has unquestionably taken me on an unforgettable journey.

It made me think, it made me sob, it made me question my understanding every single time something new was brought into the narrative. I have never once been more in tune with the finer details of a written story and asked myself "is that significant? Does that mean something? That HAS to mean something." Every sentence that appears on screen is dripping with deliberate wording, and it inexorably binds itself to every passage that surrounds it, whether they be the ones 10 sentences away or 10 pages away.

I feel that SeaBed is something that affected me very profoundly, and thoroughly grabbed me from the first chapter, all the way through to the very end. It is one of the most touching things that I have ever had the pleasure of reading, and it now definitively holds the title of being my favorite VN. My heart feels full.

10/10

Not everyday you play a truly magical thing like this

so good it scares me

I won't forget

It's very well written. It is the sort of mystery story where you never quite have a solid footing of understanding. Many times I had to question exactly what kind of story it even was, as there seem to tons possibilities the more you learn. It ultimately does a good job of revealing information at the right time, though, and as confusing as it can be it always seems to feel right at the same time. The story features many faded memories and half-remembered dreams, and often reading it feels the same.

It's worth it to read the story with care. It's surprising how often seemingly incidental things turned out to be relevant. It was definitely thoughtfully written, and you would be missing a lot if you tried to breeze through it.

And of course, the principal couple, Sachiko and Takako, are impossible not to adore.

possibly, the greatest visual novel ever written

I took me multiple tries/false starts to get into it, but it was definitely worth it. It's a kinetic novel - no choices - but like any good mystery it pushes you to figure things out on your own. It never really feels like you're just along for the ride. Enough clues are fed to you each chapter to keep you engaged. The story will feel disjointed, dreamlike, or even nonsensical at times. Just keep at it - it's like that for a reason.

What makes this all work out, though, are the characters. They're complex and well-written. And just as importantly, they're not just agents in the mystery, they *are* the mystery. Even more trivial moments in the story feel important because by learning more about the characters, you get a better understanding of everything.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, do play it slowly. Do not rush through the story, and it will hit so much better. I have been crying cuz i didnt want it to end but all good things come to an end.

10/10 story, really surprised at how emotional it is

this is such a wild and great ride. i come for a fluff, ended up with a trauma. everything is great, character, story (it is a slow burn story, you are playing detective with wtf is going in, especially if you hoping for certain thing to be true/not be true), world building, plot twist (fck man ... that last chapter, i cried like a little kid the whole time i read it)

Masterpiece

The lack of dialogue tags supplements the theme of dreams and memories; vague, half-forgotten and murky things, mingling and entangling with the past, future, and present, unsure of what is what, in an ever-changing kaleidoscopic shape. Don't worry too much about "who exactly is saying what." If it's not stated then it's something that is not necessary.

The most common complaint I see about SeaBed is about the pacing, and I've had issues with that with some other stuff, so I was a little worried. It actually turned out to be something I really appreciated about it. They really take their time exploring the characters and their relationships and the world and give you plenty of time to wonder about what's going on, and I never felt like it was wasting my time. For something about memory that uses dreams frequently it fits perfectly for it to be nonlinear and linger for a while on certain things while jumping right past others and maintaining that sort of hazy sense of ambiguity.

I also liked how long it took me to even decide what sort of genre conventions it was operating under. I had multiple reasonable guesses for which it could turn out to be and multiple plausible explanations for the various unusual elements and inconsistencies in different people's stories from different points of view. None of them ended up being entirely right, but it's open-ended and ambiguous enough about enough things that none of them were entirely wrong either.

I wasn't completely satisfied with the last few chapters, but I'm not really sure why or what I would've wanted more/less of or just to be different. But that doesn't mean I was unsatisfied either, just that I liked the journey a bit more than the destination.

Narasaki is my favourite character of all time.

This yuri visual novel is a masterpiece.

It has really likable interesting characters, chief among the game's central couple of Takako and Sachiko. You find yourselves caring deeply about the characters from the get-go, and then they end up embroiled in a mystery that you desperately want to understand because you care so much about them.

The mystery is expertly crafted, with each chapter of the story unveiling just enough for you to understand things a little bit more, but it keeps you reading because you often end up having plenty of questions with each piece of new information you learn. While it's a kinetic novel with no choices, it feels surprisingly interactive, because you frequently find yourselves stopping and trying to piece everything together.

It's also incredibly well-written, with an amazing translation.

I'll start by saying that I originally got this game through... other means. However, after finishing it I didn't just want ot buy it. I felt the need to.

Even after I quickly fast forward through the text to get some playtime, all the scenes, all the memories from the game came back to me.

It made me cry again.

This VN is such a masterpiece of literature. And the mystery is SO GOOD. I cannot express with words just how utterly I got played. Not just the first twist, but the second, too!

Everything from this story is expertly crafted to deal the most emotional damage. The use of stock images for its backgrounds created a feeling of melanchony (Search liminal images for more details), that kept me alert throughout the game for any type of hint.

and it did. I had a massive board of theories, and only 1/3 ended up being correct. I think part of how much it hurt was how hard I got played. ahah.

I would gladly worship the ground the writers walked on. That's how good it was.

Despite it barely even qualifying as a "video game", it's got its place as my 6th favorite game ever made

The new Unity version finally does not max out CPU usage on wine (Linux) :) Before this I had to extract game resources and use open-source krkrsdl2 to run this...

And SeaBed itself is a long and well-written story that worth reading if you have time.

Profoundly moving story; an indispensable yuri visual novel on Steam amidst a marsh of inane releases with little depth and merit.

10/10

Wonderful, mature and well-written mystery yuri novel. The slow paced buildup leading to a particular scene near the end really got to me.

Art is beautiful and the sound/ost really sets the mood for each scene. It's a fairly chill read with loveable characters.

Writing is great with my only complaint being that due to it being told closer to a proper book style, which is perfectly fine, there aren't names displayed or sprites telling who is speaking. I had lost track a few times of who was saying what line even going back to check if I missed some context. That said the few times that happened to me didn't impact my enjoyment or understanding of the story.

As of this writing I had finished reading Seabed quite awhile ago, and the PC version just got updated to include the extra epilogue scenes from the Switch version and in-game viewers for the extra story dlcs. Plus the lovely sidebars!

If you don't mind a more traditional writing style/presentation then I highly reccomend reading Seabed. Doubly so for fans of Yuri.

Easily my favourite VN and by extension book, extremely well done in terms of writing, natural character interactions and music with respect for conveying a serious story devoid of tonally inappropriate juvenile/sexual humour and melodrama typical in anime in favour of a true-to-life romance/conflict resolution which is relatable on many different levels. Overall, a memorable book I reminisce occasionally even after finishing it years ago.

Nothing like SeaBed as it's one of a kind, but these are worth checking out if you’re looking for the aforementioned qualities. Limited to 1 per medium:

• Christmas Tina
  
• Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
  
• The Founder (2016)
  
• September 11, 2001: The Day the World Changed Forever
  
[*]Super Cub

Happy Ending story

I haven't seen anyone really saying the actual story of SeaBed is lackluster, rather its often just slow and a bit mundane, and I think the relative positivity echoes that both in steam reviews and outside reviews, so rather than restating other reviews, I'll instead talk about what got me through this game.

It's always the more abstract stories that affect me the deepest. Oneshot, Omori, Signalis, Silent Hill 2, Fromsoftware's entire modern catalog, Hollow Knight, so on and so forth. Complicated narratives that draw you in from their initial surface level glimpses at a far deeper story lying within. Some are more abstract, some are less so, but the sense of mystery of "what happened here?" is far more compelling to me than most other story elements. I'm fascinated by things like that, even the simple lore of Ultrakill, spanning likely no more than a few pages, is enough to get the gears turning in my brain enough to lock down memories about it.

While SeaBed had this mystery element to it, it's incredibly far outside of the types of stories I usually consume. Me rattling off games at the top probably already gave it away, but I'm not usually one for VNs, slow-paced stories, or even reading in general- I've almost resigned myself to not being able to properly read books anymore, and I've seen few VNs that grabbed my interest, much less ones I saw through to the end. I usually just look at summaries and analyses for that kind of stuff. Even besides that, it doesn't at all seem like a genre of story I would remotely enjoy. I am a sucker for good stories though, regardless of medium, so when a youtube reviewer I watch (shoutout to Amelie Doree) said it may have changed how they thought about fiction in general, I felt like it was something I shouldn't miss. I initially, we'll say, "obtained" the switch version of the game in order to test the waters, and it was to both my shock and curiosity that the story was not only intriguing enough for me to want to continue it after purchasing on steam, but compelling enough to want to continue not even halfway through the prologue, which if you've read it yourself, is quite literally before anything major starts happening.

Something about SeaBed's writing style worms its way into your head. I'm writing this shortly after having finished it, and I have a hunch I'll be thinking about it for a long time to come. I disagree with the notion that it feels "padded", or has pacing issues. Yes, this is quite possibly the slowest-paced story I think I have ever consumed, and perhaps will ever consume. As the quoted review on the store page says, it's in no hurry to get anywhere with its writing. The writing, while slow, is so meticulously detailed that it almost seems like it leaves no room for interpretation. By the end of the game, when a place was mentioned, I often thought about it in relation to other places that came up. Characters were fleshed out in such detail that despite the story only taking me around 17 hours to read through, they felt more developed than many multi-season TV shows or 100+ hour games. Backgrounds are constructed out of filtered photos and 3d renders, and while that's something I sometimes see criticized in other VNs as feeling cheaper, it works well here. The text will reference objects in the backgrounds and the background will slightly change in lighting or coloration as needed. I've made guesses on the plot based on what I was seeing in backgrounds that turned out to be correct, multiple times.

Perhaps paradoxically, SeaBed's story is incredibly confusing at first and had me taking physical notes of multiple small details I thought might be relevant later and going back and rereading previous chapters to check if a connection I saw was really there. It's completely at odds with much of the story's writing style. The backgrounds, pace and prose all congeal together to form a dreamy yet mildly tense atmosphere I don't think I've experienced anywhere else; there are no better words for it than just "it's a vibe and a half". It doesn't neatly fit any genre, even the ones that it's marketed under, and it uses the medium well for all this. Any more textual like a light novel or book and the story would lose the often ambient, nostalgic soundtrack and sound effects that aid scenes without visuals. Any more visual like a manga or anime and you'd lose the complex descriptions that help you understand a character far deeper than initially thought.

SeaBed isn't for everyone, and it's not trying to be. There is an ending, one that I found satisfying, but a lot of events through the overarching plot are up for interpretation. There's moments, details, and motifs I wrote down that kept popping up, yet at the end of everything don't have concrete reasons for existing. In this regard, it's up to the reader to determine their importance, and I think trying to make them neatly fit in somewhere would be antithetical to the way this story flowed. If I thought something was important and someone else's interpretation ended up convincing me that it was simply being mundane, I don't think it would bother me on a lot of points; the journey of reading it still left me in an atmosphere I enjoyed in the moment, that's just the kind of story it is. If you don't think you'd enjoy reading this yourself, be it the pace or the interpretive angle, that's okay. For me though, it's a work of art I won't soon forget, and has been added to my ever growing list of fascinating, compelling, and resonant stories, which is all I ever really could have asked it for. I will now return to sobbing.