YMMV / Mermaid Swamp

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Rin and Seitaro's bickering Belligerent Sexual Tension or just companions getting on each other's nerves? Word of God seems to indicate the latter but some players interpreted it as the former.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Lots of players ship Seitaro and Rin together, due to perceived Belligerent Sexual Tension and their closeness throughout the game, in spite of Uri stating she intended for them to be Vitriolic Best Buds.
• Les Yay: The way how Rin is overjoyed and glomps Yuka both times she sees that Yuka has recovered (although the first time was All Just a Dream) and reacts in a violently protective way when possessed Yuuta hangs too much around swollen comatose Yuka, hints towards them being something more than Just Friends.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • The description of what happened to the legendary mermaid who was kept in a tank. Being kept in the swamp water caused her to become deformed and start literally falling to pieces ...and the fact that the legend was based on the Tsuchida family's fascination for keeping young women in tanks of water.
  • When a starving Rin gets desperate and eats the flesh of one of the "mermaids".
• No Yay: Yuuta with Yuka after the former becomes possessed. They start out as good friends and Yuuta expresses understandable concern for Yuka when she becomes ill. But slowly his innocent affection for her becomes increasingly obsessive and creepy. It's implied he was masturbating to Yuka while she's lying in bed seriously ill, with her whole body grotesquely swollen, and Rin later catches him standing at Yuka's bedside, staring at her and going on about how "beautiful" Yuka is and how he much he likes her being so "docile". Rin is extremely disturbed and orders him to get away from her at which point he becomes violent towards Rin. Considering the later revelation that Yuuta was possessed by the spirits of the Tsuchida men, who were obsessed with 'mermaids', kidnapping women, keeping them in water and then preserving their bloated bodies in tanks after they died, the whole situation becomes even worse, especially as it means Yuuta wasn't even in control of himself at the time.
• Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: The author has stated on her Twitter that she finds it surprising people ship Rin and Seitaro together, as she considers them to be Vitriolic Best Buds at best. In the game itself, they can unintentionally come off as having Belligerent Sexual Tension instead, due to scenes such as Seitaro running into the bathroom when he hears Rin scream, then staring at her while she's naked, and Rin teasingly suggesting they "sleep together". The pair also seem a little too insistent that they'd never be attracted to each other, and in one of the bad endings Rin outright commits suicide to be with Seitaro after he died.
• Remade and Improved: The original 2013 version of Mermaid Swamp was already well-liked and considered to be among the best RPG Maker-style horror games. The 2018 remake is considered to be even better. It doesn't substantially change the plot and gameplay, but it has improved graphics and updated artwork that adds a lot of detail and atmosphere; it also adds voice acting (with the performances being surprisingly good for an indie game made in Wolf RPG Editor) that helps enhance the characters.
• The Scrappy: Rin's dialogue mostly portrays her as a whiny, spoiled and mean-spirited brat, making it difficult for many players to like her; the fact she's the player character and so we're with her constantly doesn't help. However, she does eventually show more of her Jerk with a Heart of Gold aspects, making her less annoying.
• Spiritual Successor: To Paranoiac. The house of this game even shares similar rooms, shape, and structure to the one seen in that game.
• Squick: There are sound effects when Rin accidentally overhears Yuuta...doing things. What makes it worse was that Yuuta was thinking of Yuka...as in, Yuka in her current swollen condition. And more disturbing still, his sudden strange fascination with Yuka mirrors that of the Tsuchida family and their reasons for sticking young women in tanks of water. And also, Yuuta was Not Himself and not acting of his own free will entirely. Yikes.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The old man Tsuchida. He reveals that he felt sorry for the 'mermaids' his family had kept for years and wanted to return them, but due to the strange fascination that they have on the men of the Tsuchida family, he was incapable of actually doing anything to them, so he used the protagonist and her friends to do it for him. While this could make the guy very sympathetic to some players, the fact that it's only revealed in the Golden Ending makes it difficult to actually feel it, because one is more likely to get any of the other endings, which are all bad, first. And the fact that said old man is anything but helpful in those endings makes him less sympathetic. In the other endings, he's more inclined to abuse Rin's insane state than actually help her and kills some of the characters.
  • The Twitter comic from Seitaro's point of view, when he's possessed and tries to attack Rin he says his head is filled with thoughts about "dominating" Rin. And he will never forget the utter helplessness, misery, and lust and then he realizes that this is exactly how the Tsuchida men felt every second of their lives. No wonder he convinces Rin to spare the old man Tsuchida in the Good Ending.

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