Diluvion

{Diluvion} is an action-adventure game that takes place in a wholly submerged, post-apocalyptic realm, where you command a submarine in three dimensions, navigating the waters in search of a way to the Endless Corridor, a place that is said to hold the secret to humanity's salvation. Using sonar, a map, and clues you move from one quest to the next, learning bits about the world, improving your ship, and finding crew to help run it. In total it is a game unlike most you will find, past or present, but as often happens when venturing into uncharted waters, one is just as likely to find the bad as the good.

Players start by choosing what sort of submarine they want to command, each with stats that emphasise toughness and armaments, speed, or cargo capacity. The player is then thrown into the deep to learn about the basics, which include looting everything you find, and managing your crew. When an officer is at their post, they can take between 2 and 4 crew. Each post requires 2 of the 4 attributes every crew member has, and crew with higher aggregate stats give the station better performance, from increased sonar range to better engine speed. Any unused crew stay in the crew quarters and act as damage control. Though you can change crew even in mid battle through a timed semi-pause feature, it's best to leave one in their quarters, especially when in battle, to repair your ship's hit points should things get bad.

Battles take place in three dimensions, and can come from above or below as well as laterally. As the view is an over-the-shoulder third person looking past your submarine, you will find, often, that attacks are coming from angles you're not prepared for. Assuming you're not surrounded by obstacles, turning is not too difficult, and you can use sonar to help learn what sorts of objects may be around, including attackers. The ship's guns use bolts, which are pretty commonly found, and if you have torpedo tubes you can take aim at a target to fire off one of the guided explosives, but they have a chance to miss and can damage you or unintended targets close to the blast radius. The combat can be intense, but at times it feels like a bit of a zero-sum game when caught in a close firefight since any retreat may put you at a significant disadvantage.

Docking is tricky. When one pacifies an attacker or wants to dock at one of the many ports throughout the game, one slows enough as to not put too much tension on guide ropes, and fires the ropes when an anchor symbol on the object enlarges. If the anchor is solid, it means you haven't visited it recently and you may get some oxygen tanks refilled in addition to gaining access. As oxygen is scarce, you find one of your greater struggles will be finding places to refill your supply before you lose your ship and have to start over from your last save. When desperately trying to dock as your oxygen alarm sounds, it can be frustrating to be close to saving everybody, only to watch the ship bounce around because you came in too fast. As well as oxygen, food is another resource you need to keep topped up. It's relatively cheap, but if you run out your crew will go idle, dropping your ship's stats and abilities until you find more.

The most reliable way to keep in the black is to sell salvage you find. Different merchants offer different rates for goods, with the wandering merchants that seem to be exclusively in the first area of the game yielding top buying prices. There may be a bit of a grind while you're figuring things out, and so you'll probably loot a lot of buildings and kill a lot of pirates and sell their fossils and dinars until things stabilise. Should you find the home base you'll be able to upgrade it a few times, adding a few services in addition to giving you a reliably large recruitment pool, and upgrades to your ship require able mechanics and special materials in addition to coin. There are several chests throughout the game that act as a universal stash, so you can stow what you don't need and pick it up elsewhere, and many of the locations you visit will have hidden stashes of goods you can take seemingly without consequence.

Inside structures, things are carried out in a 2D plane using the mouse. Conversations with the people you meet inside are usually to the point, often relevant to your quest. The cast of characters may not say much, but they're colourful and sometimes surprising. The quests lead you through the plot of the game without too many detours, helping you learn about the world without overloading you with dialog. There are a bunch of optional areas one need never find, but some of the greater treasures and sights lie outside the avenues you're expected to follow. Navigation isn't as straightforward as you often find now; any landmarks that the players find will be placed on their map of the area, assuming they have it, and will show up on a glowing compass that surrounds your ship, which you may toggle on and off. Players set a heading and follow to get close enough to see the desired location, using sonar to highlight points of interest (but this can also alert nearby enemies to your presence, so it's wise not to use sonar too much unless you're ready for a fight). Quest pointers offer a glowing trail of fish that give you an idea where you need to go, or at least what landmark is closer to your goal.

As is often the case with independent productions, one finds an interesting blend of things that risk-averse companies might be afraid to put together. The whimsical tone in the face of the world's bleakness adds charm, and the music is varied and skilfully executed, from lively folk music to rousing exploratory scores to western rock combined with throat singing; it's without a doubt one of the game's best elements, with many tracks sounding like they'd belong in a film. The ease with which the player can search a location by mousing over objects and listening for a clicking sound is something adventure games that are looking to be a bit more accessible might learn from, and the navigation that forces you to figure out your heading on a static chart feels appropriately old-school nautical. Improving your ship or hiring better crew has immediate, tangible benefits, making optimisation a good idea. There's different art styles, from the quirky character portraits and the dancing couple of frames of animation for people in their living environments, to the hand drawn look of the details on seaborne objects and glowing sprites that channel the figments from {Psychonauts}; you wouldn't think it would all fit together, but it does.

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It's important to note, though, the drawbacks of {Diluvion}. Depending upon the geometry of your chosen sub, manoeuvres can sometimes result you getting entangled in the scenery, with the camera sometimes shaking in a disorientating mess that prolongs the confusion, and when there's a battle going on it's not fun to be bouncing between girders and have to back up. When you load the game at a seaport, even if it's guarded there can be randomly generated encounters that will attack you, often from an unexpected angle. Trying to figure out where attacks are coming from when your ship will always turn the direction you want to look can be less than ideal. We know that in real submarines you wouldn't likely be able to look around at all, but the game doesn't seem to demand that level of realism from its NPC subs. Upon loading having to fight desperate battles with random subs which will deplete your resources might not be so bad but there is only one save per play-through, and these are activated by checkpoints, usually near landmarks, including in the middle of battle. While loading from a save will give you at least one full tank of oxygen and ship health, you may still have spent more than you wanted when it saved. And if you are trying to figure out how to fight a boss or explore a place that takes a toll on your oxygen, having to return from the same checkpoint every time can be grating, especially when random encounters will pop up to distract you further.

We also encountered two bugs we should warn you about: while returning to the first area to sell our cargo full of junk to wandering merchants, we lost almost all of it, but were strangely refunded the cost of our latest upgrade (which was of dubious quality) to our home base, even though the base still had all its editions intact. We also found that if you back out of a dialog where you sell sea charts to an explorer, you will not get the chance to sell them again, which costs the player thousands in potential gold. The developers seem attentive enough, already addressing issues with quest pointers not being clear enough at times, although it must be noted one of the setbacks of {Diluvion} is being given a bare minimum of clues and then being expected to figure the rest out, and this is a bother especially when in the middle of a more complicated mission. Without the quest pointers it would have been madness, and with limited resources, side explorations often feel costly, and sometimes result in little reward.

{Diluvion} is game like little else there, with some wit and charm, plenty of weird things to see, and some unsettling sights, all wrapped up in what's overall a refreshing package. This is marred by a few bugs and janky interfaces, but also by a few of the core design elements. If your need for fantastical undersea exploration overrides any aversion toward a bit of scrounging for cash at times, some weird bugs and design headaches, and seeing the load screen a bit too often, then the waters of {Diluvion} will give you a memorable experience.