Octodad Game Review

Late to the party, but this is a hidden gem that I feel needs to be addressed – Octodad: Deadliest Catch is a charm to play with campy humor and insane controls that will bring a smile to the player’s face. I first played this game in 2017, three years after it’s initial release in 2014 on the Xbox 360.

Let’s get into it:

The game starts off with a wedding between Octodad and his soon-to-be-wife Scarlet. Here, you get the tutorial of the controls, in which you will be pressing the triggers quickly in order to get your character to move convincingly to the humans. After walking down the aisle, an amusing opening credits play with the lyrics of “Octodad – no one suspects a thing.” Love it.

Years past and now Octodad (we are never given a name) and Scarlet have to children: Stacy and Tommy. Morning chores commence and suddenly a crazed chef breaks down our fence to try and kill us! Oh yeah, there’s a chef that knows we are actually an octopus and tries to kill and cook us. Watch out for that.

Continuing our day, we go to the grocery store and once again, the chef strikes, this time in the back of the store as we are chased by him (don’t worry, he’s not fast, but neither are we).

Soon, Octodad’s worst fear comes to life: We are at an aquarium. Here, the game ups the difficulty by a lot by introducing marine biologists, whom of course recognize fish instantly. Y’see, the goal of the game is to hide that you are a fish, erm, cephalopod from everyone around you. If you get your “suspicion” meter too high, the game fails and you have to start over the level again.

At the aquarium, each family member splits up and you get to spend quality time with each other in their own mini levels. Scarlet begins to wonder about her husband, as she is presented with arcade prizes from you as you play mini games. Stacy, scared of the dark, has you explore the deep ocean exhibit and even helps distract a marine biologist for you to sneak past. Tommy, exploring the world of kelp, turns it into a sports-themed playground for him and a movement nightmare for his dad. Here, I found the level to be interesting and the end of the level to be quite difficult, but it was a treat that the developers put in a challenging spot for the player.

We meet Scarlet at the top of the shark tank, but surprise! It was actually a trick by the chef and he throws us into the shark tank.

Octodad has a flashback to when he first met Scarlet on a fishing boat along with the crazy chef. It’s a very sweet scene, as we return to the present and are now controlling Octodad in his natural form of a full octopus.

The chef confronts Scarlet and the kids, with Octodad having a gameface of determination to help his family.

Sneaking around the aquarium at night, marine biologists are everywhere as we get to hear humorous banter from them as we use different tactics to get around unnoticed.

Once we make it to the cafeteria, we see the chef is trying to expose our secret to our family, but Scarlet isn’t buying it. A final showdown between Octodad and the chef commences in the cafeteria as our family helps us defeat the chef.

Conclusion

This game was amazing, but, as always, I will not give it a rating or a score (those are hard to gauge anyway), I will just say this game might be super short to play, but it’s replay-ability is very high.

Right now on Steam, Xbox, & the Nintendo Switch, you can get this game for $15 and it is absolutely worth the full price. While you’re browsing on Steam, the developers also produced a student version of the game, in which you play with your family some more and it’s free!