Tweet
In Submerged, the oceans have risen and civilisation has crumbled. All that remains are a few scattered survivors, the tops of the very tallest superscrapers poking from the waves, and faded billboards advertising some of the developer's previous games.Games like Epoch, a very likable touchscreen cover shooter that did a lot with a little, offering sweet Unreal Engine graphics at the expense of large environments or genuine freedom of movement. As the whole thing was laser-focused on the blasting and ducking, the limitations didn't matter, particularly since the blasting and ducking were both excellent. Submerged feels like another attempt to create a lavishly pretty 3D game within the boundaries of a strict budget. It is more ambitious than Epoch, but it is nowhere near as successful.
Astonishingly for such a small team, this is an open-world affair that casts you as a young girl who, together with her injured brother, arrives by boat in an area of the endless ocean where buildings rise out of the water all around. Leaving the brother recuperating on a stone plinth - the echoes of Shadow of the Colossus are unavoidable and presumably intentional - you must venture out into the drowned metropolis to find supply crates that carry vital items like food and fresh water and bandages, piecing together the pair's backstory as you go. Unlocking this narrative, which is quietly affecting, provides the spine of the short campaign, while collectable secret items scattered around the map fill in the story of the rest of the world and how it got to such a dismal state.
Read more…
More...