Submerged: Hidden Depths Review

Submerged: Hidden Depths

Release: March 9, 2022
Publisher: Uppercut Games
Developer: Uppercut Games
Genre: PlayStation 5 Reviews, PS5 Reviews, ReviewsXBox One ReviewsXbox Series X Reviews
PEGI: E
Comments:

 

Comment

Boat, climb, solve and explore in the beautiful ruins of a sunken world.

A drowned city, crumbling tips of skyscrapers stubbornly standing above the waves. Deserted villages, now inhabited by enigmatic creatures. And beneath the surging ocean waits an anguished, angry presence.

Submerged: Hidden Depths is a non-combat third-person “relaxploration” adventure, set in the sunken ruins of a beautiful world. Take on the role of Miku and Taku – one cursed with a mysterious power that she wants to use for good, the other determined not to let it tear them apart.

Features

• Boat across tranquil waters and storm-driven white-caps

• Explore, climb and interact with the remains of a once-towering city

• Collect mysterious relics of a distant past

• Scour the buildings for the seeds of its salvation.

Submerged: Hidden Depths is the sequel to 2015s Submerged, I admit I don’t recall playing the original one prior to doing this review, but ultimately it doesn’t really matter in this game. In this game, the world has been flooded and been taken over by some sort of hostile plant life.

Your job is to travel around the world via your boat and calm the plant life to help lift. the curse across your land. The visuals in this game are bright, cheery, and beautiful which is saying something considering the world is in some post-apocalyptic state.

Basically, the game is all about exploring your environment and finding various collectibles, customization, upgrades to your boat, and then of course the seeds which is the whole focus of the game. There is no combat to be seen, no way to die or lose, no enemies, not even the free ability to jump your character auto jumps to predetermined locations (normally highlighted in red).

This game is about as relaxing as it comes, just sit back, enjoy the ocean and solve the environmental puzzles to beat the game. The entire game should take you about four or five hours give or take.

All of what I mentioned above is in no way a knock to the game at all. It’s a perfectly good pallet cleanser in between bigger or more emotionally draining games. The visuals are delightfully done, everything runs flawlessly I had no frame issues, quality dips, or anything in this game.

Watching the waves crashing through my ship during sunset brings a sense of calm you don’t get to experience in gaming that much anymore, heck we barely get that in life anymore, so it’s a great escape. The soundtrack is also top-notch composed by BAFTA-award-winner Jeff van Dyck, which adds to the experience of the game and matches the vibe perfectly. The pacing of the game is pretty good as well, I think if it were much longer I might have found myself getting bored with it.

This would be a great introductory game for novices or those newer to gaming as at no point was I really challenged by much going on.

On the downside of things as mentioned above a little bit, I can see some folks getting bored with it during longer gaming sessions as nothing really “happens” in this game. It’s all about exploration and taking it all in, if you are looking for more than that you might find yourself disappointed, but other than that there is little to knock about this game. You can get your hands on it right now available on Playstation, Xbox, and PC.