great hex-based endless/random islanders-like under the sea with corals and a match-3/merge element, so closer to match village and the like.

place 3 or more level 1 corals next to each other to create a level 2, and so on. fertile tiles need fewer to merge, dead ones need cleaning by attracting fish with level 5 corals. quests occasionally appear, and while they're just 'place a level x coral here', player xp is only awarded for quests and some higher level merges, which I found a tad restrictive. also not sure about the particulars, re: merge xp, it happened sometimes. regular matches grant extra cards and points, of course. quest markers don't rotate with the camera, numbers are only visible from one angle, an inconvenience for sure. there's a tooltip there and if it showed the actual value instead of 'the indicated level', problem solved.

leveling up yourself means choosing a reward like remove kelp (it blocks tile generation), shuffle, put a coral or all of them back from the map to your deck, etc. it also means further mechanics, like coral farms and shockwaves destroying unconnected corals after a number of turns. honestly, I expected something a lot more basic, good stuff.

there's an optional tutorial (shame about the typewriter effect) and 3 game modes, infinite, hexagonal and random shape. limited space in the latter two that expands on level-up. one has a hex-shaped area to start with and needs 150 points in infinite mode to unlock, the shape of the other is different every time and needs 300 points in hexagonal to become available, but only if you don't lose any corals to shockwaves. unnecessarily harsh but doable. you can also run a custom game in any mode and toggle shockwaves and other features, even enable a timer if you're a masochist, but playing like this doesn't unlock stuff.

mouse, keyboard and gamepad all work for controls, which are rebindable and there's only single-step undo/redo and only hotkeys, no icons, nor are they mentioned in the tutorial, so one might not even find out without exploring the settings. there's also an in-game wiki (not the lazy 'open your browser' nonsense) with info both about the game and corals in general, so there's some educational value here, really cool. and you can save anytime over multiple slots too.

looks and sounds nice and done exceptionally well with plenty of settings, available anytime. separate volumes, resolutions, windowed mode, v-sync, framerate setting, anti-aliasing, ssao, gamma, brightness, saturation, contrast, vertical and horizontal axis flips, camera speed (separately for mouse and for rotation), edge scrolling toggle with a speed setting(!), some languages, camera angle setting, custom cursor, toggles for screen shake, mouseover action, tooltips and auto-hiding region outlines, plus a bunch of stats and graps and in-game representation of achievements (again, not just lazily pulling up the steam overlay).

a hand-made campaign was planned but never happened. I don't think the game would've generated enough money for further development had it been paid, but I'd rather pay for something done with this much care and attention than all the lazy trash (or overpriced non-trash like dorfromantik) flooding the market.