YMMV / Shipwrecked 64

• Awesome Moments:
  • The Golden Ending of the 2023 game, when Bucky has a Big Damn Heroes moment and arrives with a barge large enough to save everyone on the island right when the volcano's starting to blow.
  • Ty Coker's performance as the Studiogrounds Husk is short, but absolutely chilling. His tone is dripping with the type of Dissonant Serenity that serves to make him sound all the more heartless.
    "Ask, and you shall receive. Let's look at the little mess you've made!"
• Awesome Music:
  • Gary Wilson's theme, "Waltz", has been widely praised. It plays in a fancy restaurant, and has the kind of instruments you'd expect there, but the key and tempo doesn't quite fit a relaxing atmosphere. Since it plays after the most violent scene in the game, you already have your guard up, but the song not easing up reminds you to keep your guard up.
  • "Bullet.N", the theme of The Studiogrounds Vandal/JD is a catchy ethereal techno piece that is strangely soothing considering it plays during very tense moments like in the Timed Mission in the Volcano or getting the batteries in the Plaza.
• Base-Breaking Character: Connor Thomas is an exceptionally troubled and deeply flawed individual, but opinions are split on how justified he is in his actions. People who sympathize with him say that he was in an unwinnable situation, being forced to stay quiet by a shady employer who he knew had no qualms with silencing people, sometimes quite violently, who had a problem with them, only acting when he had nothing to lose. People who don't sympathize with him say that's still no excuse for showing footage of murders to children under the guise of a licensed game starring a beloved cartoon character, as well as taking a lot of issue with his mocking a cancer patient just because someone he hates cares about them, and say that he comes across as caring more about having been fired than what Broadside actually did. Either way, he's so integral to the story that some people's enjoyment of the entire game hinges on how much they sympathize with him.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Brandon Lester has the unique ability to stun Bucky through an Interface Screw if he spots you by opening a browser window, which makes the game window inactive and leaves you easy pickings for either himself or his kin. He also speeds up the longer he chases you, and shares Nathan's ability to destroy hiding places.
  • Olivia Finch is also a thorn in many players' sides due to her ability to teleport Behind the Black (both figuratively and literally) and monitor Bucky from anywhere on the map. Though Blot/Rex shares that power, Olivia is far more aggressive with it.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Connor Thomas is very frequently interpreted as autistic, with his tendency towards extreme emotions (both positive and negative), lack of empathy, inability to express exactly what's bothering him, and savant-level in-universe invokedGenius Programming. His in-game counterpart Chief Wulf adds to this interpretation with how excited he is about his hobby the one time he's seen happy.
• Draco in Leather Pants: The Starlings/Dwellers tend to get this treatment because they're Tragic Monsters, with many fan portrayals saying they still have all their human emotions, including pain and regret. They're still murderous, undead monsters.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Before it was revealed that a future expansion would give more focus to his story, the Studiogrounds Vandal barely appears in the game, and his one direct interaction with Bucky isn't very in-depth, but he has quite a few fans who love his design as an Ugly Cute unidentifiable rodent thing, his mysterious nature what with being created by the other Starlings rather than a revived human himself, how one of the few times we see him speak is him being Affably Evil and streaming himself breaking into the house of someone who thoroughly deserves it, and the fact that the Greater-Scope Villain is terrified of him.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Despite Stumbler O'Hare's minigame being about him trying to impress another rabbit that he has a crush on, the most popular ship in the fandom is pairing Stumbler with Chief Wulf. This got even more pronounced when Word of God said Stumbler's crush ultimately wasn't impressed by his efforts, and subsequent supplementary material such as Wulf's Recollection and an out-of-bounds conversation with Wulf in the April Fools 2024 update cemented that they do at least care deeply about each other. This can be funny when one remembers that it's Foe Yay Shipping by proxy, with Wulf being Connor Thomas's Author Avatar and Stumbler being a caricature of Mark Mullins and his wife, even if neither of them are terribly happy about their respective origins.
• Friendly Fandoms: With KinitoPET, which was released the same month and is in the same genre. There was naturally a lot of overlap in fans, Squeaks D'Corgeh himself included. In late April 2024, Shipwrecked 64 became available in a bundle with KinitoPET, as well as Home Safety Hotline.
• Funny Moments:
  • Giovanni's reaction to Bucky failing his minigame for the first time. The other characters are apologetic and reassuring (Olive, Walter, Stumbler), or at least bemused (Chief Wulf), but Giovanni is furious. Not even because Bucky set the kitchen on fire, but because the food that came out of it was disgusting. It unlocking the achievement "WHERE'S THE LAMB SAUCE" is just the icing on the cake... or the lamb sauce on the whatever inedible horror Bucky made.
  • If you get a normal ending during 1997 Mode the credits are replaced by a humorous text crawl that frustratedly lambasts the player for deliberately ignoring the mode description suggesting them to think outside of the box before eventually giving up and hoping the player got what they wanted.
  • Though it's a tense scene, after failing a stealth mission and being thrown in a cell by the Dwellers for the first time, Bucky loses his temper, but throws in a moment of levity by dryly adding that no, he's not going to try to chew through the bars, so don't even think about it.
  • The fact that one of the puzzles involves looking up a Dr. Seuss book to figure out a code can come off as absolutely hilarious, a stark contrast to the point in the game where you need to figure it out.
  • It shouldn't be surprising that most of the additions from the April Fools update are this.
    • The new character added, Duncan Dolphin, was an inside joke talked about during development treating him as a Herobrine-like anomaly who kept showing up and having to be stamped out. Now that we actually see him, he turns out to be a Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist dolphin wearing shades with the personality of a Surfer Dude.
    • Then you have his associated "minigame". The layout of the area? The entire area of the first chapter of Garten of Banban. The puzzles in the area are also extremely easy and straightforward, which Bucky is quick to realize after everything that he goes through in the 1997 version of the game.
      Bucky: The door is open!... The door is open? No weird sketchy websites? I just... put the thing in the... Man, this sucks.
    • The two buttons you find in this area open up links to a tweet made by "HE IS REAL" which shows someone noting how the first thing they saw when they walked into their room was Duncan staring at them from their computer screen and breaking down laughing, and a video of The Scary Maze Game moments before the Screamer Prank.
    • Besides the tweet that outright tells you the code for the door, the other tweets on the account are pretty funny, especially the one tweet that breaks character with this tweet:
      "this april fools update is gonna be mad embarassing because I can't get this stupid fucking hacker john png off my banner"
    • Duncan warns you about "the wretched" before sending you to his "minigame". However, a board that has the word "lore" on it has a lore-relevant note written by the wretched in question that lets you know it's on holiday vacation and that the island sucks. It ends with "Fuck you Duncan".
    • Bucky has some choice words if you interact with the board that reads "cow fingers".
      Bucky: I... I've got no words. I hope you know a grown man wrote this right? An adult wrote this. Someone who is old enough to drive wrote this. God dam it, man.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • It's quite cute how excited Chief Wulf gets about being able to find sheet music for his piano on the Internet.
    • Funny moment: The audio for that log in the game's files is called "wulfbeinganerd.ogg".
  • In this video, Stumbler, Wulf, and Olive sing "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" to the viewer. Nothing spooky about it; the three are genuinely enjoying themselves, and even the normally-sorrowful Wulf is smiling and laughing.
  • On January 15th 2024, 14 days after the game's full release, Stumbler's email got plenty of requests from many players, and an update on his "A Helping Nub" website shows he is absolutely grateful for the overwhelming support he has gotten.
    "WOW.. you guys gave me LOTS of suggestions! Thank you all! I will be getting them to you soon! I'm not sure if I can take more requests right now, but, if you ever wanna chat, you can still send me an Email! I've made more friends these past weeks than I have in my WHOOOLE life! Thank you, friends!"
  • In one hidden audio file obtained from The Plaza, Giovanni confesses to Bucky that part of the reason he's so hard on him all the time is to push him to be better.
• Jerkass Woobie: Is Connor a jerk? Yes. Has he done some very wrong things? Also yes. We really only see him at the worst time in his life. His only paying client in years turns out to be a serial killer and, practically, a necromancer, and he has to keep quiet about it — not only for much-needed income, but because after learning what Mark is capable of, he's terrified of what Mark might do if he defies him. The guilt is eating him alive. And it was all for nothing, since Mark cancelled the game; a fatal mistake, as that meant Connor now had nothing to lose. And in the end, he paid with his life for it as well. He's also a single parent (due to being left at the altar) of a child who was at the time twelve years old, so there's that pressure on him as well.
• Love to Hate: Mark Mullins is the one character who hardly anyone stands up for, being the embodiment of Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse. He's a Tragic Villain, yes, but still completely unforgivable in his actions. And he's very memorable for it.
• Memetic Mutation: "Heh.. what a night.. hiya again!"^note A line intended to be used in a scrapped section involving a Nightmare Sequence. Someone making a trolling Game Mod kept having a glitch where that line popped up randomly and frequently, and left it in because it fit the spirit of the mod. Some players also took note of how... suggestive it sounded at times.
• Memetic Psychopath: Giovanni Goose is an unapologetic Jerkass even in canon, so fans like to crank it up and joke about him being a Card-Carrying Villain.
• Moral Event Horizon: Especially among people who know the outside lore, Mark resurrecting his former boss Rex Broadside — who even in life was a tired old man who hated what his company had become and only wanted to rest — just for a harebrained scheme to make the dying company potentially stand a chance against the Disney juggernaut was his absolute worst action. The evil of just what he's done is driven home by just how hard Rex Came Back Wrong. He looks and sounds like he's in serious agony even by the standards of the other Starlings... who were, by the way, killed in the first place in pursuit of the goal of bringing back Rex.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The Dwellers always track where you are. Always. Even when you're in hiding. Without any kind of timer or cooldown to forget where you are. As a result, far, far too much time is spent being completely still and turtling in a barrel, which can sometimes take more than fifteen minutes.
• Signature Scene: Gary Wilson's very brutal death from getting his head repeatedly smashed against a microwave before getting his face burned off on a burning stove can be considered the point where the game shows its true colors to the player.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Inputting the keycode to open the cell door in The Plaza instead of hitting Respawn is the moment Bucky finally snaps at the player, delivering a "The Reason You Suck" Speech before resigning himself to his fate.
  • Mark Mullins got a new character arc and motivation in the full version, turning him into a Tragic Villain. His company crashing and burning as he tries to figure out how to avoid laying off his workers is bad enough, but at the forefront of his mind now is that he's facing the one kind of hardship that no amount of wealth and power can fix: the imminent death of a loved one.
    "I'm throwing the exact same amount of money I'm paying for Harley's medical bills into this FUCKING GAME STUDIO!"
    • Stumbler O'Hare released a video on his guide channel addressed to him, trying to comfort him after Harley's death and giving him a space to grieve where he won't be judged, despite knowing about and being personally affected by his crimes. It says a lot about Stumbler's character that he can be that compassionate.
  • One of the possible endings, the True Ending, is a massive Downer Ending. Bucky is Driven to Suicide, and he makes the player help him. Not to mention what happened with Connor.
  • An out-of-bounds conversation with Chief Wulf in the April Fools update is a shockingly sincere and bleak moment in an otherwise very silly part of the game. He starts off by revealing he's upset about his status as Connor Thomas's Author Avatar, thinking he doesn't matter to anyone and nobody will remember him; even the person he's an avatar of hated him and the world he knows. He then reveals that he's stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop with the game, and has to watch the person he cares most about — Stumbler — die over and over again, which is taking a toll on him. He then tells the player to stop pretending YOU care about him, taking the fact that you went out of your way to hack the game in order to have this conversation in the first place as evidence that you, too, see him and his world as an expendable plaything.
  • The reveal that the head of the team restoring the game was the son of the deceased Conner Thomas can be a real gut punch.
• That One Level:
  • The Plaza is the most iconic area in the game... and the most polarizing. Many players find it difficult to concentrate around the Dwellers, who swarm them like bees and linger around Bucky's current hiding spot for far too long.
  • The Volcano at release was widely panned due to its unforgiving platforming uncharacteristic of the game up to that point. A total rework was quickly planned for the first Downloadable Content update.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Connor Thomas can come across to some as too petty and cruel to root for. While nobody's siding with Mark, and Connor had more than enough valid reasons to be upset, his Kick the Dog moments still rubbed a lot of players the wrong way.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: All of the "live-action" elements — every human, every corpse, every Creepy Mascot Suit — everything is CGI. Most people can't tell and assume it was done with actual suits and makeup.
• The Woobie:
  • In the full version, Bucky Beaver himself. He's very friendly and trusting when you first meet him, befitting of a happy-go-lucky cartoon character like himself, but that soon changes. He just wants to save his friends and go home, but instead he's being dragged by someone he thought was his friend but is in reality some outside force making him act against his will through a distressing rabbit hole of a mystery that he wanted no part in, where a thing that's taken his form has committed several murders and his creators are complicit in it all, and on top of that, horrifying creatures are after him who have taken the form of the friends he's trying to protect. He's also The Scapegoat for the humans in the backstory as a symbol of the corrupt Broadside corporation, and learning about the full extent of this breaks him, which ultimately kills him. A far cry from the monster his Starling counterpart is, he's a victim, too; it's little wonder he has outbursts at the player, the sound of his own voice is the only thing he has left that makes any sense to him in this nightmare.
  • Stumbler O'Hare, an Ironically Disabled Artist who tries to stay positive and helpful, but frequently slips into melancholy. He tries to laugh it off, but it's still abundantly clear he's upset. Not only were his forearms torn off by a rabid wolf, the injuries he has are bleeding with protruding bone, even in the 2023 version. And as a cherry on top, his easel lost its back leg, so he can't even pursue his one passion without outside help. Also, it's revealed near the end of the game that his entire character concept was just to cruelly mock a woman dying of cancer and her grieving husband. He doesn't even have any problems with the people that he knows he was specifically created to hurt, trying to console them instead at one point, and judging by his responses via the Fourth-Wall Mail Slot, he's very sensitive about the subject. And to top it all off, he's dead in the canon ending.

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