Derrick the Deathfin

I have a soft spot for games that feel physically made, and Derrick the Deathfin is one of the rare ones where that instinct pays off immediately. Every fish, every oil rig, every flaming tire you jump through was constructed from actual folded paper and card, then photographed and scanned into the engine. The result is a side-scrolling underwater world that looks genuinely unlike anything else on a PC storefront - somewhere between a handmade zine and a Saturday-morning cartoon, with little comic-book "KRAK" and "PUFF" bursts when you eat something unfortunate. The setup is beautifully daft. Derrick's parents were processed into shark fin soup by the aptly named M.E.A.N. Corporation, so now he's touring four continents - Americas, Asia, Africa, and the Arctic - destroying oil rigs, toxic waste ships, and whatever else the corporation left lying around. Across 32 levels spread over 11 environments, you swim left to right, eat fish and the occasional oblivious diver to fill your hunger meter, collect purple diamonds, and leap through burning M.E.A.N. tires to unlock progression. The controls distil down to move, eat, dash, and a turbo boost that launches Derrick into the air for those tire jumps and aerial snacks. There are three level types: the main survival runs where hunger is your constant enemy, timed speed races that strip that pressure away and ask for clean routing instead, and a small handful of light puzzle stages where you nudge bombs into oil drills. That last type is genuinely fun and there are frustratingly few of them. The hunger mechanic is the game's personality and its biggest argument. Derrick's metabolism is comically punishing - eat constantly or die, full stop. On the survival levels this creates a wonderful push-forward tension that keeps even slow players moving at arcade pace. On the larger, more labyrinthine stages though, it tips from tense into cruel, especially when enemies do not respawn mid-run. The out-of-water controls for tire jumps also drew consistent criticism at launch and the years since have not fixed that - expect a few deaths that feel owed to floatiness rather than error. Per-continent boss fights exist but are lightweight, designed more as punctuation than challenge. Honesty check on length: a single playthrough sits around two to four hours depending on how often the hunger meter catches you out. Completionists chasing gold medals and every tire and gem will double that, but the game's own collectible-gate unlock system - holding progress hostage until you replay levels for quotas - is the blunt instrument it has always been. The papercraft aesthetic and the dry, very Northern English sense of humour in the loading screen tips carry a lot of goodwill. Fans of early 2D Sonic games or the score-attack rhythm of something like Ecco the Dolphin will feel the DNA immediately. It is charming in exactly the way a two-person studio with genuine craft instincts can be charming - even when the underlying loop runs slightly thin.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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