Water You Doing? Review

A Boat That Wants to Sink, and a Crew That Wants to Laugh About It

Water You Doing? drops a small crew onto a rickety boat and asks them to survive a river journey full of sea mines, waterfalls, jellyfish, falling rocks, and hallucinogenic mushrooms, without ever taking itself too seriously. It's a physics-driven co-op comedy in the mold of RV There Yet?, and the comparison comes up constantly in its reviews — reviewers describe it as "RV There Yet? but boat" so often that it's practically the game's unofficial tagline. Developer and publisher DiSolve Studios builds the entire experience around the idea that simply reaching the destination should be an ordeal: the boat leaks, breaks, and drifts on its own accord, and keeping it moving forward is as much the point of the game as anything else on the itinerary.

Crew responsibilities split naturally across a group. Someone steers, someone fishes, someone gathers wood and scrap for repairs, and someone fires harpoons at obstacles, mines, and puzzle mechanisms scattered along the route. Progress unlocks additional harpoon types and gear, and side activities — fishing for money, hunting down a recurring mystery involving a character called Laba the Frog, and exploring optional side areas — give curious crews reasons to wander off the direct path. Eating the game's mushrooms triggers a warped, hallucinatory visual and audio filter that multiple reviewers single out as one of the most convincing "trip" sequences they've seen in any game, treated as comic relief rather than anything serious.

Chaos Built for Friends, Carried by an Active Developer

The game is at its best in a full group. Ragdoll physics amplify every mistake — someone getting knocked into the water, the boat spinning out at the worst possible moment, a harpoon shot going wildly off target — and reviewers consistently describe those failures as the game's real product: not a smoothly executed voyage, but a chaotic, memorable disaster story to laugh about afterward. A Golden Fish mechanic that can revive fallen crewmates keeps things moving even when someone gets knocked overboard, and reviewers who played in duos or small groups repeatedly describe multi-hour sessions with friends as genuinely great fun, several finishing the roughly 8-hour campaign in a single evening.

Solo play works mechanically — steering, fishing, repairing, and exploring all still function — but reviewers agree it loses most of what makes the concept distinctive, since much of the humor comes specifically from unpredictable human co-pilots rather than the systems themselves. On the developer side, DiSolve Studios draws consistent praise for staying active in Discord and shipping hotfixes quickly after launch; several reviewers who initially struggled with checkpoint bugs specifically call out follow-up patches for fixing the issues that had frustrated them days earlier.

A Genuinely Rough Launch: Bugs, Performance, and a Boat Too Fragile to Trust

Set against that goodwill is a launch that a large share of reviewers describe as unfinished. Performance is the most common specific complaint — even capable PCs report poor framerates and stutter, particularly with motion blur or higher graphics settings enabled, and several reviewers say they had to drop settings significantly just to get a playable frame rate. Bugs run the gamut from cosmetic to progress-threatening: items floating in midair, fish disappearing or duplicating, players teleporting into walls or getting stuck in geometry, and checkpoint resets that occasionally erase real progress rather than simply returning players to a recent save. A handful of reviewers report a farming exploit where reloading a checkpoint refills starting resources indefinitely, trivializing the game's supply pressure entirely.

The boat's fragility draws particular frustration. Numerous reviewers describe hull damage occurring from barely perceptible contact with rocks, shorelines, or obstacles, undermining the intended tension between piloting carefully and simply making progress. Inventory and item-handling design also comes in for repeated criticism: crew members can carry only one item at a time, storage space on the boat is limited and oddly organized, and several reviewers point out clumsy multi-step interactions, such as having to drop bait before using it, or drop a caught fish before picking up and stowing the fishing rod. A number of reviewers also flag a low-visibility lighting problem at night and in caves that made progress difficult before an early patch improved it.

An In-Game Plea for Reviews Didn't Land Well

One detail shows up across several critical reviews and is worth flagging on its own: some players report the game displaying an in-game message during early access to launch week play sessions asking them to leave a positive Steam review, with wording suggesting the project's continuation depended on it. Reviewers who encountered this message reacted badly to it, several citing it explicitly as a factor pushing them toward a negative review rather than away from one, seeing it as a pressure tactic rather than a genuine appeal. A few reviewers also note that some of the game's texture and asset work appears to have used AI-assisted tools during development, though they describe it as unobtrusive and not something they would have noticed without it being pointed out.

Verdict

Water You Doing? is a promising, frequently very funny co-op physics game buried under a launch's worth of bugs, poor optimization, and an unreliable, fragile core vessel that undercuts its own tension rather than building it. Played with a full crew of friends willing to tolerate some jank, it delivers the kind of emergent, ridiculous chaos its RV There Yet?-style premise promises, and its low price makes that trade-off easier to accept. But solo players, anyone expecting a polished technical experience, and anyone put off by an in-game nudge toward positive reviews should wait for further patches before setting sail.

Pros:

• Genuinely funny, chaotic co-op physics comedy that shines with a full crew
• Harpoons, fishing, and exploration side content give the voyage variety beyond steering
• A distinctive, well-received hallucinogenic mushroom effect used for comic relief
• Cheap price that reviewers widely consider fair even accounting for its rough edges
• An active developer shipping hotfixes quickly in response to community feedback

Cons:

• Poor optimization and frequent stutter even on capable hardware at launch
• The boat takes damage from barely noticeable contact, undermining intended tension
• Numerous bugs, including item duplication, teleporting, and checkpoint-related progress loss
• Clumsy inventory design limits crew members to carrying one item at a time
• An in-game prompt pressuring players for positive reviews drew notable backlash