For some, no combat in a game may be a huge no. For me, as long as I’m having fun, that is all I care about. While Submerged: Hidden Depths is fun and has a very interesting world to explore, it’s a short adventure that I can’t help but feel like it could’ve had a lot more going for it.
I loved the original game that came out several years ago and I remember reading that this game was coming out and I was very excited. Then I found out it was a Stadia exclusive. So, because of that, I kind of forgot about it. Recently when I saw that it was now available on Steam, I was pretty excited to jump in!
If you liked the first game, this is really just a prettier update with a few more things to do. There is more to explore, more puzzles, more collectibles, and while still very abstract, a bigger story. It’s a 3D exploration game that doesn’t have any combat. You solve very light parkour puzzles and navigate your way around a world that is completely overtaken by the ocean.
This time you have 2 playable characters, a brother and a sister. The sister has some ailment on her arm, which shows as black vine type things. You’ll find giant black vine things all around the world as well. The siblings are in this sunken city to find large green seeds that will purify the area and hopefully rid her of this strange thing on her arm. Through little, graphical journal entries, you find that the siblings were shunned just about everywhere they went and eventually ended up here. I may have missed it but I’m not sure how they knew this place was the key to ridding them of this black overgrowth, but here we are.
You jump in your boat and search around for ruined buildings to explore that may house the seeds. You play as the sister for the longer parts when you collect the green seeds and the brother for the very short portions where you just collect a journal page. They both do the same parkour puzzle solving and navigation around the ruins but the areas for the sister are much larger and you’ll be spending most of your time playing as her.
As I mentioned, there are other extra things to do in the game a well. You can find different species of wildlife, find lookouts that give you a vantage point of the area and even collect speed upgrades for your boat. The extra things don’t affect progress at all. They also don’t help you find items on the map for the most part. When you find a lookout, it may uncover 1 or 2 things to find but there’s no real reason to seek them out besides achievements.
I also wish the lookouts that you find had more substance to them in an exploration sense. You kind of just find them, climb them and activate them. There really isn’t any kind of puzzle to them, which is disappointing.
There is a theme here with that though, things just not having much substance or point. The narrative portion of the game is straight forward and doesn’t have any gate keeping associated with it. This is a blessing and a curse in my opinion though. While I like the openness of doing things the way I want, I also wish there was a reason to collect the things in the world. Like, before you can do the ruins, make the player have to find the animal that lives in the area or when you find a lookout, have that uncover the area for you more. It doesn’t feel like there is any incentive to do the extra things.
If you do insist on collecting everything (like I did) you’ll be aimlessly wondering around, hoping you run into these places and items. I got bored and pulled up a guide very soon after finishing the story.
With all that said, during the main hours of the game, I had a lot of fun exploring and uncovering things. The game definitely has that OH ONE MORE thing mechanic going for it. Where you'll be thinking okay, just get this last thing and quit for now only to find yourself grabbing 4-5 items before you finally do.
There are also towering black vine giants that you eventually see walking around the seascape. They are really cool, but they pose no threat to you. You can boat right up to them and they don't care about you at all. I know this game is billed as a more relaxing, exploration game but it really would've been cool to have these monsters coming after you or at least taking a swipe at you. How about just acknowledge you?
While exploring, I got caught on the geometry quite a bit. It's not usually big boxes or things that are evidently in the way, it'll be like a floor board or a slightly higher ridge. This was very annoying when you see a ladder and you have to move like 6 inches over because the game won’t let you approach the ladder from that spot.
There are also these elevators that you can activate while you're on them or off of them and it's really annoying if you accidentally activate it while you're off because you then have to wait to activate it again and wait for it to come back and sometimes, these elevators are traveling an enormous height and it could take a bit of time!
The UI is not great. It looks misplaced and strange the way it’s laid out on screen. Like the boost for the boat was covered up by another graphic for some reason? It just looks strange.
All in all, I liked this game, but I didn’t love it. I think the collectibles should matter in some way and that the wildlife and black vine monsters should interact with you somehow as well. There is some jankyness with the game in that the UI isn’t great and some design decisions in the game I really am curious as to why they went that way. Overall, my biggest disappointment is how the overall gameplay loop doesn’t change much from what the first game was. I feel there was a lot of things they could’ve expanded on and they did do a little bit of that by making a slightly bigger world and expanding on the story a bit but Submerged has the capacity for more.
I loved the original game that came out several years ago and I remember reading that this game was coming out and I was very excited. Then I found out it was a Stadia exclusive. So, because of that, I kind of forgot about it. Recently when I saw that it was now available on Steam, I was pretty excited to jump in!
If you liked the first game, this is really just a prettier update with a few more things to do. There is more to explore, more puzzles, more collectibles, and while still very abstract, a bigger story. It’s a 3D exploration game that doesn’t have any combat. You solve very light parkour puzzles and navigate your way around a world that is completely overtaken by the ocean.
This time you have 2 playable characters, a brother and a sister. The sister has some ailment on her arm, which shows as black vine type things. You’ll find giant black vine things all around the world as well. The siblings are in this sunken city to find large green seeds that will purify the area and hopefully rid her of this strange thing on her arm. Through little, graphical journal entries, you find that the siblings were shunned just about everywhere they went and eventually ended up here. I may have missed it but I’m not sure how they knew this place was the key to ridding them of this black overgrowth, but here we are.
You jump in your boat and search around for ruined buildings to explore that may house the seeds. You play as the sister for the longer parts when you collect the green seeds and the brother for the very short portions where you just collect a journal page. They both do the same parkour puzzle solving and navigation around the ruins but the areas for the sister are much larger and you’ll be spending most of your time playing as her.
As I mentioned, there are other extra things to do in the game a well. You can find different species of wildlife, find lookouts that give you a vantage point of the area and even collect speed upgrades for your boat. The extra things don’t affect progress at all. They also don’t help you find items on the map for the most part. When you find a lookout, it may uncover 1 or 2 things to find but there’s no real reason to seek them out besides achievements.
I also wish the lookouts that you find had more substance to them in an exploration sense. You kind of just find them, climb them and activate them. There really isn’t any kind of puzzle to them, which is disappointing.
There is a theme here with that though, things just not having much substance or point. The narrative portion of the game is straight forward and doesn’t have any gate keeping associated with it. This is a blessing and a curse in my opinion though. While I like the openness of doing things the way I want, I also wish there was a reason to collect the things in the world. Like, before you can do the ruins, make the player have to find the animal that lives in the area or when you find a lookout, have that uncover the area for you more. It doesn’t feel like there is any incentive to do the extra things.
If you do insist on collecting everything (like I did) you’ll be aimlessly wondering around, hoping you run into these places and items. I got bored and pulled up a guide very soon after finishing the story.
With all that said, during the main hours of the game, I had a lot of fun exploring and uncovering things. The game definitely has that OH ONE MORE thing mechanic going for it. Where you'll be thinking okay, just get this last thing and quit for now only to find yourself grabbing 4-5 items before you finally do.
There are also towering black vine giants that you eventually see walking around the seascape. They are really cool, but they pose no threat to you. You can boat right up to them and they don't care about you at all. I know this game is billed as a more relaxing, exploration game but it really would've been cool to have these monsters coming after you or at least taking a swipe at you. How about just acknowledge you?
While exploring, I got caught on the geometry quite a bit. It's not usually big boxes or things that are evidently in the way, it'll be like a floor board or a slightly higher ridge. This was very annoying when you see a ladder and you have to move like 6 inches over because the game won’t let you approach the ladder from that spot.
There are also these elevators that you can activate while you're on them or off of them and it's really annoying if you accidentally activate it while you're off because you then have to wait to activate it again and wait for it to come back and sometimes, these elevators are traveling an enormous height and it could take a bit of time!
The UI is not great. It looks misplaced and strange the way it’s laid out on screen. Like the boost for the boat was covered up by another graphic for some reason? It just looks strange.
All in all, I liked this game, but I didn’t love it. I think the collectibles should matter in some way and that the wildlife and black vine monsters should interact with you somehow as well. There is some jankyness with the game in that the UI isn’t great and some design decisions in the game I really am curious as to why they went that way. Overall, my biggest disappointment is how the overall gameplay loop doesn’t change much from what the first game was. I feel there was a lot of things they could’ve expanded on and they did do a little bit of that by making a slightly bigger world and expanding on the story a bit but Submerged has the capacity for more.