The Lachlanverse Episode VI: The Cop To Mermaid Pipeline!
Help! I’m Turning Into A Mermaid! Review
Platform: PC (Reviewed), Mac, Linux
Developer/Publisher: Lached Up Games
Lached Up Games Discord – Steam
The Lached Up Background
Before getting started here, I have a bit of a history lesson to go through. Help! I’m Turning Into A Mermaid is the latest game from developer Lached Up Games, the one-man development studio of Lachlan Snell.
Since the early 2010s, Snell has been creating transformation fantasy games, many of which have been deleted or abandoned, but the first title of note was the overly ambitious Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme (2015). The title featured multiple playable characters, dozens of endings, and a level of ridiculousness that only seemed to grow with each new route. It’s not great, but as with most projects where the creator was in over their heads, it has charm for days.
It’s also not canon anymore, despite characters and settings from the original game appearing in Snell’s later works. Basically, Snell handed over the rights to that game to the project’s artist, DKDevil as the tax filing situation was too complicated. Simple as that, no bad blood or drama to look into.
Max’s Big Bust – A Captain Nekorai Tale (2017) was slightly rough, and a bit jank, but nevertheless solid TSF buddy cop visual novel adventure game that I’d still recommend. It also serves as the functional starting point for every character, plot point, and concept seen across every subsequent game.
Alluna and Brie (2019) saw a genre pivot to a lifesim RPG with a fairly bonkers feature list for such a small scale project. Though, issues with the co-developer, the Pakistani FRAG Games, and the ballooning scope left the game in a less than ideal state at launch, and it did not do too well. Since its initial release, Snell went back and did an extensive overhaul of the game with Alluna and Brie: ReTentacled, reworking various systems and general balance. I really should tackle it one of these days.
Max’s Big Bust 2 – Max’s Bigger Bust (2021) was a not-necessarily-direct follow-up that jumps ahead two years and serves as a bigger, better, and zanier follow-up to Max’s Big Bust that improved on just about everything. Well, barring a layer of general polish. Still, much like the first its predecessor, I would give it a full recommendation.
My Mad Scientist Roommate Turned Me Into Her Personal Robotic Battle Maiden?!? (2023), or RBM, saw Snell return to the RPG lifesim concepts of Alluna and Brie via an interquel. While I thoroughly enjoyed the characters, writing and overall story, the fine details underlying these systems never seemed right to me, and certain things simply did not work as they were supposed to. Despite this, I still found it to be a pretty fun time.
After 2+ years of development, Snell returned in January 2026 with Help! I’m Turning Into A Mermaid, or Hitiam, a visual novel adventure game with lifesim elements. Functionally and canonically, it’s a sequel to Max’s Big Bust 2, but featuring a new protagonist, a slightly greater emphasis on puzzle solving, and a storyline that’s somehow wackier, more unhinged, yet more cohesive than what came before it.
I have a lot to say about Hitiam, but to make a long review short, I’ll just say that Hitiam is Snell’s best game yet and a thoroughly entertaining ride from start to finish.
Part 1: An All-New* Standalone Adventure
Set a few months after Max’s Big Bust 2, Help! I’m Turning Into A Mermaid! switches the protagonist mantle over to Hunter, a freshly employed de-escalation officer and newcomer to the wacky wild world of Axon City. Almost immediately upon arriving, he is given a face full of what this city has to offer. A population of thousands of “monstergirls” hailing from a subterranean domain known as The Frakk. Magic using humans ranging from witches to casual magic enjoyers, transformation enthusiasts, and so-called Goddesses with mastery of the elements. And a population that, at this point, is probably 25% men who were permanently turned into women, catgirls, or some other femme critter-person.
If that all sounds like a lot for a setting, that’s because it is. Hitiam is a game built on a decade of stories, mythos, and events. However, it is also being sold as a “stand-alone title,” and it more or less is. Hunter is positioned as a fish out of water to give a new player the ability to understand details about this world, and there are plenty of explanations for new players, and refreshes for returning ones, to follow along.
You just need to accept that, by playing this game alone, you won’t be able to learn what every character’s schtick is and that the game will throw some complex recurring character backstory your way. Such as how the fairy queen’s sister is actually a robot and used to be the roommate of a mad scientist catgirl terrorist. However, even as someone who has played most of these games, I have to admit that Snell lays things on a bit thick. This world has so many dozens of characters and important events that it really warrants a fan wiki. Or a creator-made wiki.
Case in point, stepping off the train, Hunter is immediately paired up with Ember as part of the Axon City Police Department night shift, with Ember being a hotheaded police officer turned flame goddess from MBB1. Together, they work under Thomas Nekorai, a thinly veiled self-insert of sort for Snell and staple competent leader who also happens to be a “male catgirl.”
To assist them in their police pursuits, they have a pair of catgirl scientists running the lab. The deranged, borderline psychotic, slime-cat-girl Dani, who may or may not be the same person behind the “Boobpocalypse” at Siren’s Point and the development of transformation serums on the surface. And Tabitha, a kind yet determined catgirl from the Frakk who finally gets a full backstory in this game, and it’s easily one of the most gripping parts of Hitiam. That not being enough, there’s also the hyper-competent Kitty, Nekorai’s 12-year-old daughter who’s basically Hunter’s secondary partner given her tendency to tag-along on investigations. …And that’s just the principal cast.
Following the establishment of Axon City as a setting, and some initial puzzle gameplay, the game reveals its true hook. Following an attack by the Galtissian fleet, a group of anti-monstergirl genocidal fascist pirates, Axon City is magically transported away from the coast of Queensland and to the bottom of the ocean in the center of the world, known as The Bite. This serves as the main setting of the game, with the prevailing mystery and conflict all centering around this new location, a sunken city, and the political tensions that grow as Axon City seeks to expand into this new economic frontier.
With hope in their heart and a desire to do the right thing, it’s up to Hunter to figure out what’s going on here, work with his allies to uncover the secrets of The Bite, and the true reason Axon City went underwater. …While also dealing with a whole new gender being thrust upon them, because of course they turn into a girl after a few hours. It’s in the name of the game!
…On that note, I should clarify that this is not really a mermaid transformation game. Hunter, and everybody else, can turn into a mermaid at will via “Mermalator” devices, and just use the form to explore the deep sea, and that only happens, like, four times in this 25-30 hour hour romp.
Part 2: A Silly Yet Structured Story
That’s all the gist of what Hitiam is, but what makes it truly special to me is how incredibly silly it is while still being fully committed to telling a story. Hitiam is an absurd game in an absurd world where, every hour, every couple of minutes really, it will hit you with another crazy idea that probably would not get through if there was any real oversight.
You’ve got crabgirls with laser cannons prowling across an ocean. Fusion casually being a thing that people can do in this world if they have enough magical power. RPG jargon and stats being baked into the universe, with characters just dropping stats and levels like it’s nothing. Characters occasionally smacking up the fourth wall because some of them are canonically aware that they are game characters. And the more you slice it, the more absurd everything about the very setting of this magical world full of monster girls and big boobs becomes. It has zero shame, zero reservations about what it is, and is confident in its pursuit of rampant silliness.
Character work in general is particularly strong, juggling a truly intimidatingly large cast of dozens with a level of finesse and consistency that left me thoroughly impressed. The script is routinely funny, regularly getting audible laughs from me as characters banter or play off of the craziness surrounding them. And after writing, at this point, over a million words for his games, building his brand for over a decade, Snell knows what he’s about, what he wants to write, and he delivers consistently.
This confidence applies to the plot, which despite the silliness surrounding it, remains compelling from start to finish. While ultimately a flavor of save the world story, it’s one that routinely build upon itself with new intrigue and revelations. I wanted to know about this ancient society, the factions biding for power, and the immense political corruption playing out without the slightest bit of subtlety.
However, despite the city-wide, even global, stakes, the story never gets too focused on the machinations of powerful people. It’s ultimately a story about the people on the ground, trying to do the right thing as disasters plague their home every quarter. All of which is further enhanced by the returning characters and plot threads, providing resolution to character arcs, the expansion of plot points, and an advancement to the overall state of the world.
With a game like Hitiam, you come for the silly, but stay for the plot.
I thoroughly enjoyed the story, loved the characters, and think this is by far the most compelling and engaging story Snell has ever written. If I had to criticize anything, and that’s kind of my job here, it would be the shades where the story has aspirations to be a bit more. There are plenty of specks of cultural commentary throughout Hitiam that are meant to be real world parallels, but they don’t really graft onto its more absurd setting.
The game tries to mirror the cost of living crisis plaguing the world at the moment. However, this is an alternate universe where the crisis comes from the fact that magic radically transformed all areas of the economy, especially construction, and dead people are being resurrected and looking for homes. Fascism is presented as an “over there” problem with the Galts and their overt desire to eradicate all monstergirls, when contemporary fears of fascism tend to come from homegrown fascism.
Hunter’s role as a de-escalation officer is less an indictment or criticism of the contemporary policing structure and more a gameplay mechanic, character trait, and cause of friction between other members of the police department. While the prison reform plot point… is honestly, mostly just an excuse to recycle characters who have been playing bit roles since 2015. It gives characters more legs and gives the cops more things to do.
However, I will say that these things, while not always implemented the most directly, they help ground the game, keep the stakes high, and balance out the comedy with something more relatable.
Part 3: Is Hitiam A Good TSF Story?
So, I just finished gushing about the story and writing in general, but how does Hitiam fare as a TSF story? Well, if you are looking for a serious analysis of gender, how it affects one’s place in the world, and the murky experience of becoming another person… you’re not going to find that here. As a creator, Snell is far more interested in turning guys into sexy ladies for comedy, tension, and myriad thrills than any sort of deeper exploration.
Hunter immediately resists their unwanted transformation into a woman, because they did not ask for this. However, the coaxing of their co-workers, and a group of “genderbent guys” gradually make Hunter more comfortable with their form. Several days of confusion, social pressure, exposure, and overall transformation gradually shift Hunter’s perspective on their new form, and their reservations shift along with it.
It’s a pretty standard acceptance outcome, similar to what Max went through in Max’s Big Bust, and it does not have much unique to say on being a woman versus being a man. It’s all a bunch of comments that should be familiar to any TSF fan. Casual discussions of female clothing, the freedom to look cute or sexy, the freeing sensation of skirts, bathroom troubles, hair being a bother, and the joy of being seen as or feeling desirable. It still engages with the subject, references, and routinely brings up Hunter’s wavering thoughts on what’s happening to them as they go about their life. However, they don’t say much that’s unique or all too specific about their experience, or what this transformation means for them as a person.
Much of the reason for this is that what Hunter’s going through is not a unique or interesting experience in this setting, and characters do not treat it like one. Most long-form TSF narratives tend to focus on a world where transformation is not common, where it is a remarkable or unique experience. In Axon City, you can just buy a serum that makes you a sexy foxgirl for eight hours, or permanently, and nobody bats an eye.
It raises a question of what’s the point of transformations in a world where anybody can just get the ability to become a catgirl or lamia and switch it on faster than they can change clothes. How do you tell a captivating story about transformation in a “post-TF” world? Focusing on unique experiences is one way, but in Hitiam, I’d say the point is probably the escalation. It takes a regular dude, sends them to the TF capital of the world, and thoroughly morphs them into a shapeshifting world saving heroine within the span of… two weeks. Axon City always corrupts, I suppose.
Part 4: Hunter Nosurname in the Puzzling Adventure
Building off of the investigation segments in Max’s Big Bust and Max’s Big Bust 2, Hitiam once again puts a strong emphasis on its puzzles, which make up the heart of each of the game’s chapters. Most of these are logic-based deductions that involve exploring, interacting, light item combining, and conversation in order to deduce the answer.
They’re dialogue heavy, but intuitive, with clear goals, not too many options to try, and a good level of variety that makes every chapter’s puzzle stand out. One chapter is a full on stealth section with a visibility gem straight out of Thief: The Dark Project. Another is a pseudo horror game where you need to avoid a pursuer while you scavenge for resources in a derelict structure. There is a social deduction and deal brokering game full of compelling recurring faces. Then there’s an escape room that I’d like to call a Zero Escape reference, but I don’t think it is.
I overall liked the puzzles of this game, found them to be consistently engaging, and even when they were a bit long or expansive, like the amusement park chapter, I admired their scope and construction. Though, there were two particular puzzles that were a bit too cute for their own good.
I have a bone to pick with chapter 6, as I think it exemplifies some of the more frustrating elements of Western-style adventure games. The first major puzzle is the type of puzzle that would be trivial with physical pieces, but the game only lets you place pieces in a specific order. You basically need to solve the puzzle mentally, or trial and error your way through it via the limited interface. The next is a logical deduction arrangement game, which would be easy, if not for one of the hints requesting an “unobstructed view” of something that’s supposed to be behind them. It’s the type of thing that I think would be caught if the game had playtesters but, uh, I don’t think it did in the traditional sense.
The third major puzzle is a board-based logic puzzle using chess pieces that honestly would feel right at home at a Professor Layton game. (That’s a compliment!) Puzzle four is… algebra that the game does not even bother making into a puzzle. While the final puzzle is a counting game for 8-year-olds. It’s all a peculiar yo-yo-ing of difficulty, made worse by the time limit to get a keychain required for an endgame unlockable.
Then there’s the last chapter’s puzzle, which I really don’t want to spoil, as I think amazing conceptually. However, without a guide I can easily see someone spend an hour, maybe three hours even, trial and error-ing their way through a puzzle with too many options. I’ve seen this before in adventure games… and it’s never a highlight.
The puzzles are not all hits— they rarely are in an adventure game— yet they work more than they don’t, and the game is big enough for both guides to exist and courteous enough to have a radio hint system. At their best, they are an appreciated addition that gets the player more involved and invested in the world and give them play places to interact with unique characters and settings. At their worst, they’re fairlyfussy roadblocks.
Though, uh, do get every keychain in every puzzle in your playthrough, start new game plus, visit the new character at Lungs, and reload saves to give them to the new character. Doing so will unlock a post-game bonus. I am under a legally binding NDA, so I cannot tell you what it is, but know that it is well and truly worth it if you like this game.
Part 5: Now This is MY Kind of Lifesim!
Functioning as the morning/afternoon intro section for most chapters, the player can have Hunter bop around Axon City, and its dead mall, pursuing shops, side jobs, and social links with four characters. All of which is reminiscent of the lifesim elements from prior games, but toned down a ton due to the fact that there are no time limits. You can work, explore, and build up social events as much as the game will let you at this point in-game. Some might find this to take the thrill out of the game, I view it as one more thing I don’t need to obsess over.
The side jobs take the form of mini-games with a surprising level of depth and detail for something made in Ren’py, showing off Snell’s stuff as a programmer. Hunter can work the kitchen at a fast casual dining establishment run by one of Axon’s many “reformed” criminals, trying to make a small menu of items before customers storm off. It’s a pretty standard cooking mini-game, where you need to move from station to station, follow on-screen instructions, and try to shove out the food without screwing it up or else your pay will get docked. Fortunately, the eight levels all follow a loose sequence, allowing a player to predict and plan around each order, juggling multiple cooking jobs like a pro.
Alternatively, or I guess simultaneously, Hunter can work for a bunnygirl who runs a game shop and needs help at the trade-in desk. This sounds simple, but Axon City is a city full of counterfeit games, bootlegs, and three regions of titles, all with their own exclusives and going rates. You need to identify the damages and missing manuals, ensure that you are using the right prices, and if there is ANY discrepancy, reject it. Every run is a bit different, and if you move too slow, then customers will storm out in rage. It can be genuinely tricky, as it is trivially easy to overlook one of the seven things you need to check for, but I found it to be a compelling challenge. It’s like Papers, Please but you don’t need to worry about your country’s imminent collapse!
However, the BIG mini-game is a staff management mini-game where Hunter’s running a Coffee Shrine franchise. With a growing gaggle of gals at their disposal, Hunter needs to match customer preferences, grab the right items from the kitchen, and maximize profits within a 2.5 minute limit. Every staff member has different stats, needs to recover after entertaining customers, and even their own level that can be increased through continued use. Booths can be customized to give additional effects, in exchange for the right investments. While characters can be recruited throughout the game until you’re managing a roster of ten.
As a mini-game, a lot of it is just moving things around, shoving a body into a hole in order to get some money before a customer storms off. However, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hooked by this simple yet compelling process, especially in the higher difficulty levels. In fact, I think all of these mini-games are pretty good at a minimum and spent… more time than I would care to admit on them, grinding up money, levels, and trying to get perfect scores in every level. None of them are unique, but they break up the action, give you something else to do, and are surprisingly responsive considering this is all in Ren’py. I was expecting to view them as a chore, but no, they’re all really solid diversions.
These side jobs get you money, but what can you spend money on? Well, three things. Food that buffs Hunter’s cute or sexy points based on the color of its background. Red gives sexy points that boost customer patience at the game store. Pink gives cute points that boost customer patience at the noodle shop. They can buy additional outfits for both cosmetic purposes and to get cute/sexy buffs when worn. Though, most of the funds will go to an assortment of gifts for the four potential love interests. As for who likes what gifts, that’s what save scumming, or guides, are for.
As for the social events themselves, it does not seem like much next to prior games, with only four romanceable characters and five events each. However, this feels appropriate given the smaller core cast this time around, and every character receives a full side story. They run a good mixture between silly fun, sexy fun, and hard lore about how humanity nearly went extinct during The Dragon Wars. All of which nicely supplement the main story, which is already no slouch at over 250,000 words. Next to that, these are enjoyable diversions.
As a lifesim, the sheer number of things you can do is pretty low, but I’d rather be casually going through mini-games between investigations than juggling stats ahead of a calendar event. Or, in other words, it’s my kind of lifesim.
Part 6: A Kitbash Presentation
As I said at the top, Snell is a solo developer. More specifically, he’s a dad with two kids, working a day job, developing games in his free time because he’s got that creative itch, and they make him some money. Many people who know the industry would write this off as impossible, especially when he ships 25 to 30 hour games every two years or so, but Snell manages to do it… with some concessions. And the big concession is the presentation.
One of the first thing you would have noticed with these attached screenshots is how this game looks like a kitbash of assets from different games… because it pretty much is. Character sprites, backgrounds, icons, and so forth can date back to 2015. There were at least half a dozen different artists who made sprites and other art assets. And even though many of them don’t look like they belong together, that doesn’t stop Snell from using them. This gives every one of these games, post MBB2, a rather unique look, as most creators would combine such considerably different art assets, but Snell does so anyway.
Now, that’s not to say the assets look bad. Dokudenpa’s character art from 2015 looks pretty scuffed. The majority of the character sprites look pretty great and largely look like they belong together. The CGs are often gorgeous. The maps, while exaggerated and cartoonishly deformed, give the world a vibrant and lively look that fits the game’s tone if not the backgrounds. Chibi sprites in all their flavors look appropriately cute and capture the look of the characters well. Icons and the like are well-designed and do their job. The motion manga cutscenes are a cute way to visualize key events while keeping the budget slim, even if I think the pages should have been horizontal, as this is not a phone game.
I’m not particularly bothered by the disparate gulf between some of these character assets— I’ve played too much Student Transfer to be bothered by that. However, I do have a bone to pick with the backgrounds. These range from illustrated backdrops carried over from Max’s Big Bust, to 3D renders, to more abstract 2D backdrops, to just photos. This makes economic sense. It’s a helluva lot cheaper to license backgrounds via Shutterstock than to commission them, and decent background packs can be hard to find, but they really make the world look inconsistent.
My recommendation would have been to open up Photoshop and give these images of disparate sources a style that meshes with the anime characters, not unlike what Higurashi and Umineko did 20 years ago. Find a setting that works, apply it, and roll with it. It’s not that hard. That being said, when Snell does try to edit these backgrounds, the results can be pretty mixed.
The Axon City backgrounds have been edited to include the sea-based sky of The Bite, meaning various photos of sea creatures who, in this context, are made to look utterly massive. This blending of realistic sea creatures and a painterly background of a contemporary city works decently enough in some instances, but others look shockingly rough. You can see the jagged unaliased lines between the new and old assets and some of the cropping was done so poorly that there are fragments of trees floating in the background. It’s obviously bad. I don’t know how Snell didn’t see this before it shopped.
I also need to talk about the animations, or lack there of. You can do a lot with just a couple character sprites, as oodles of visual novels have routinely shown the world. However, Snell tends to keep his presentations pretty flat. Characters enter stage, there are three spots they could stand on— left, right, and center— express at each other while talking, and that’s basically it for 99% of all conversations. Sometimes characters are thrown around or do a flippy dance, but I don’t think there are even ten of those in the entire game. It looks basic, it looks static, and over half the time you’re playing the game, Hunter just lives in the right character slot.
It all functions, but I’d say it’s not using the visual novel medium as well as it could, or should, and comparing it to an adventure game wouldn’t help it earn points either. I won’t say that Hitiam looks bad, but you can tell where Snell’s priorities lied. I just wish he put a bit more time and effort into both backgrounds and stage directions.
Conclusion: Help! I’m Turning Into A Mermaid! is Dope!
Despite having issues with a select few puzzles and my many presentational criticisms, I had a wonderful time with Help! I’m Turning Into A Mermaid. It’s confident in its absurdities and eccentricities, committed to being a truly ridiculous adventure game, and is a captivating continuation of its creator’s curious little universe. Pretty much everything I liked about Snell’s prior games has been refined here, enhanced by a decade of fresh experience, and I think he delivered something special here.
Hitiam‘s dope, and I’m excited for whatever comes next. …Probably Help! I’m Turning Into A Mermaid! 2, which has been confirmed via the developer discord, despite the name not making any sense, but who knows. Maybe “Ash N Chloe” will finally save Christmas!