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Wow that was extremely messed up. Reminds me of this horror movie The Endless. A slowly unfolding anxiety attack. This game does a really interesting but subtle thing in terms of player agency and plot that I guess I don't want to spoil? tl;dr: thumbs up, worth the thirty minutes

Overall, I recommend. It's mostly a vibe, and while the story and text are vague enough, they combine with the desolation of the desert's sights and sounds, and the game's dog-eat-dog systems, to impart a particularly painful mood. What that might actually all mean would be spoilerful, so consider this the end of the spoiler free part of the review.

[SPOILERS]

The game opens in a town, where you are shunned by the villagers; you are not forgiven for something you've done. Then the game rewinds to show how we got here.

What's neat about this is it's the player's behavior in the rest of the game that is the reason for your shunning by the village, and it's also implied, your own guilt. You're plopped into a desert with dwindling water supplies, and you see sand-people firing blasters at each other in the distance. With the survival-game systems constantly ticking away at your water supplies, you might try to steer clear of the hostile inhabitants-- what are they fighting over, anyway?

But you see, the beauty of this games' systems is you can't steer clear of the desert-people, because you will run out of water and you will die, and there will come a point where you will have to kill to take their supplies if you want to stay alive-- all so you can carry out your precious mission. So that's what the desert-people were fighting over, huh?

I can't stress how cool that is. To recap: something like The Last of Us forces you to kill a bunch of people because the story demands it; you simply do not have any other verbs. It Comes in Waves' systems persuade you to do something optionally unethical, out of fear and desperation. TLoU shows us, but It Comes in Waves has us do.  Anyway I actually really like TLoU, I'm not trying to pick on it, but hopefully you are picking up on what I'm trying to say. This game tells a story through systems and mechanics and player actions, and I think that's neat. The text and art only contextualize the ludic themes.

All that said, I won't spoil what the true purpose of your mission is in this game; that final bit of context will probably stick around in my head for a while. I think you should play it if only so you can decide for yourself whether the mission was in any way redeemable or simply selfish.

tl;dr it's a lot of walking, but the long hike is worth the short play time

For what it's worth, I finally found the cave, after playing another thirty minutes walking back and forth along the cliff face. I think it's a bit hard to tell anything is there since it's all just kinda grey, you know?

Thanks for the tip! I've been up to those cliffs multiple times, but must have missed the cave. And no worries-- I'm sure it's my fault. Most of the Steam reviews talk about the [SPOILERS] Underworld, so I'm sure it's just me : )

Hi! I bought this game on Steam but am too dumb to progress. It's not that I haven't explored plenty and collected lots of gems, and unlocked all sorts of doors--it's that I can't find the [SPOILER] underworld area that is mentioned in the game manual, and am totally stuck. Using cheats has not helped me find this area either! Any pointers?

This turned out great, and the write up is super helpful. Any plans to post the script somewhere?