Submerged is a post-apocalyptic world in which the entire planet is covered by ocean, by the people who made BioShock.
Now the actual story for Submerged is quite easy and straightforward to understand. Your brother has been gravely injured and you must take care of him. After a fierce storm, you wind up in front of a clock tower into which you enter and gently lay your brother down. As you look around, you notice you’re in a submerged city of some sort…and this is where your adventure begins.
Each day in the game, you gather supplies there are a maximum of ten containers, and once you have gathered them all you beat the game. I beat the game in roughly four hours, and that’s being generous. There are no side missions and no extras to keep you occupied, except for the Steam achievements awarded for the optional task of fixing up your boat. Now regarding this, I had issues finding the last piece for the boat upgrade; it took me roughly seven hours to find it (and even then I needed help from the developer).
The gameplay is very short and simple to follow. There is no combat or dying; it’s an exploration experience made using the Unreal engine. However, it just doesn’t feel like a full game. There are all these amazing buildings, but half of them are inaccessible! There are other places as well throughout the game where you simply cannot go. You’re limited to exploring only where red flowers grow they indicate places of interest. It’s because of this that finding all main story items, as well as those “secrets”, are really easy to find. I would have much preferred to explore the vast world, with its underwater buildings. This brings us to the related issue of the game’s graphics. While the high resolution is visual eye candy, every building seems to blend together due to recycled texture graphics.
So what do we get in the end with Submerged? We have a game that’s visually stunning, like something you’d find in the world of Studio Ghibli. But the mechanics of the game are greatly lacking. Playing it as a casual game is a lot more fun, but if you take it seriously the game loses a lot of its appeal. Final thoughts? Just make sure to play it on the highest graphics settings.
Update: We just learned the game is $20 and honestly for that price I cannot recommend it.
If the game was $10 or $15 it would be worth it but $20 for three to four hours of gameplay is just not worth it no matter how beautiful it looks.
TLDR; It reminds us that games are a lot like food beautiful to look at but don’t last long if you eat them.
An autistic gamer with opinions on games who also enjoys making dumb videos on the internet!
You guys should really invest in some copy editing. The grammar and punctuation made this harder to read than it should’ve been.
Thanks Niro, Long story short I have been fixing bits and pieces that got messed up after a grammar nazi got to it.
Gotcha. Sorry, my comment came off as rude, but it wasn’t intended to be so! Thank you for the review. This is one I’ve had my eye on, so it’s nice to see it reviewed well.
I didn’t take it as rude, I totally understand too when I went back to re-read it we had to re-write it to fix a lot of the problems.