Submerged - Hidden Depths review

Relax, enjoy yourself

One of my favorite things in the Far Cry series starting from Far Cry 3 is climbing the various radio towers that are spread throughout the map. During these sections, the game slows down a bit and lets you enjoy a bit of a quiet moment while also presenting you with (most of the time) a wonderful view. This is what playing Submerged - Hidden Depths feels like. It's a game that is made for pure relaxation. No hectic combat, no deaths where you lose all your hard-earned items, and no scary things trying to get you in the dark. Actually, the game is totally devoid of a fail state, further emphasizing that it's all about enjoying the journey.

Playing Submerged is like getting home after a long day at work or school, taking a cup of tea and just relaxing on your couch or wherever one prefers to relax. This game is all about just exploring the world that you find yourself in and enjoying the ride. You play as sister and brother duo Miku and Taku who are on a mission to find a new home for themselves. You start by discovering and exploring the game's main hub area. Once you have finished exploring it, you will also discover what the game's core loop is. Which is, find new locations, explore them and repeat. Apart from exploring the various locations, you will also be in search of a glowing ball (which I believe is some kind of seed, although this is never explained) and place it inside a black growth that's entangling the location you find yourself in. These black growths are some kind of sickness that Miku needs to heal to make the various places you find habitable again.

A walk in the park

This game is all about the journey and the joy of exploring. Considering how wonderful the game looks it invites exploration beyond the various locations that are set as the main ones for game completion. The main locations that you will find and explore vary from libraries to hotels to industrial complexes, which are all rundown, flooded and full of vegetation. How long you stay at each location is totally dependent upon how much you want to explore, the size of these locations are neither too small nor too big making your progress through them feel perfectly paced. The player can go and look for various relics that are this game's collectibles or they can go hunting for ship upgrades so they can travel faster between locations. Players can also go out looking for various books that flesh out the history of the city that they find themselves in. Apart from the variation of items that the player can find, various locations can also be found. These include various landmarks as well as outposts that are great places where you can use your telescope. This enables you to look further away and thus be able to discover even more locations that might have been hard to spot otherwise. Apart from maybe getting a great view or being able to see more from the outposts, I didn't find that the landmarks provided any kind of purpose besides the option to go out and find them.

Submergeds story is pretty vaguely told. It's through different book entries that show up after the player has completed an area that the players' journal gets filled with several pictures and text telling us bit by bit about Mikus and Takus earlier journeys and how they ended up in the situation they find themselves in. Cutscenes also appear every time an area has been completed that try to flesh out the relationship between brother and sister but fall flat since the characters don't speak any language that we use in the real world. But there is also the issue of reading their body language which is pretty hard to discern a lot of the time. Still, the story that is conveyed through the journal entries is more than enough not to blemish the overall experience.

It's so pretty

Submerged is a really nice-looking game, while the art style is on the cartoony side eschewing photorealism. What has been done with the lighting and coloring is just simply amazing. I caught myself several times stopping to play the game and just enjoying the view that I had on my screen. It is at times that beautiful to look at.

Submerged is not a long game and depending on how much the player decides to explore they will so decide how long the playtime becomes. It took me just about 4 hours to complete and I did take my time with it, although I still had a bit to explore and collectibles to find once I finished. Once the game is finished, players can continue exploring the game from where they left off if they so choose. In the end Submerged - Hidden Depths is not about completing stuff, it's about enjoying the journey.