Was this a nice little game with awesome water physics in 2011?
Yes, yes it was.

Does it play well today?
Not at all.
The game is rittled with bugs, most of which are based on the game's FPS.
Many jumps in the game cannot be completed because the game runs too fast.
I got stuck at the game breaking bug at the infamous air vent jumping bug.
I tried everything, 60fps, 59fps, 50 fps, different resolutions, v-sync on and off.
I even tried to force the game to run at 30fps through Nvidia control panel.
But then the game got stuck in an infinite loading screen.
When I ALT+F4 to close the game, my save game was gone.

At that time I had tried to make the jump about 30 times, and with my save game now gone, it was it for me.

Other than the game breaking bugs, the gameplay is very unpolished.

Again, it was a nice little game in 2011, but almost unplayable in 2025
Sad really.

Hydrophobia was a short but neat little game for its time. It only took me about three hours to complete the campaign. There was definitely quite a bit of potential with this one that, ultimately, I did not feel was completely realized. For how cool the water physics in this game are, they really did not utilize it in the best way with regards to making fun, water-based puzzles. You also gain the ability to manipulate water very late into the game and barely have time to make use of it.

I only ran into a few bugs during my playthrough, but they were quite significant. It appears that either vsync or sub 60 FPS (or both) are needed to make certain platform jumps in this game, so keep that in mind. I really hoped this studio would have been able to keep going with this franchise as it really was fairly fun to play around with the physics in here. Maybe in the future another studio can pick up on the idea of a water-based game.

All that being said, this game is quite cheap and if you feel like trying out an interesting bump in gaming's long history, then by all means give it a try. If you can pick it up for just a few bucks then recommend giving it a go.