I made these card based water splashes using baked normal maps, with distortion added to create the wobbly fluid look.
The shader was one of many custom VFX shaders made to make use of Unity's HDRP translucency rendering to create detailed water effects at small scale.
in "I am Fish" the player camera is right on the waters surface, and you play as a small fish just centimetres long. These macro photography style splashes where used for jumping in and out of the water.
Fluid simulations where done in Real Flow 10, then cleaned and baked in 3ds Max. I made a custom shader for creating stylized water that used Unity's HDRP translucency shader features. Instead of flipbooks, motion was added in the shader, with distortion and decay driven by particle lifetime.