![]() ![]() Except your sub is as graceful as a bloated whale, and your camera is drunk. You would think this would be preferable – and it is. Simulator, by comparison, is the compromise released days after release, and is your more traditional WASD-control scheme, with a camera that moves independently of the sub. The turn buttons, ascend and descend keys? All useless. You can’t turn to look without also turning your sub, so you can’t see anything around you, and have to more or less ram your enemies. But that’s the problem – you follow the mouse. Your sub moves organically, and it’s a lovely sight to behold as you twist and turn, following the mouse like an agile fish. Arcade is what the game shipped with, and it shows. You see, you have two control schemes in Diluvion : Arcade and Simulator. While you can hit enemies with a close-in torpedo, why do so when you can from far away? The range of a torpedo is the range of your sonar’s ping – but there’s a chance they’ll explode partway there, and can also be blown away by enemy fire (and by your own). And by strategic, I mean powerful and cowardly – and thus, preferable. Combined with excellent lighting and sound design, there’s a meaty thunk to your cannon fire. Each ship has a different number of cannons and a different layout, but won’t actually tell you the latter, so it takes experimentation to figure out your own blind spots. Cannon combat is pretty standard stuff, with you circling your opponent and leading them before blowing them out of the sky sea. How each enemy fights depends on their type, as well as whether they actively seek you out or not. Armed with (literal) Scrap and, later, torpedoes, you’ll engage with your enemies, usually of the pirate variety. While we’re talking about sending people to a watery grave, let’s talk about the combat. I was effectively stealing their oxygen! By the end of the game, had I inadvertently doomed hundreds to an early death? Often I was docking with traders, or ships disabled by pirates who were waiting for help. The latter is clearly designed to keep you from asphyxiating quite as often, especially with the exorbitant cost of extra tanks… but immersion-wise, it left a strange taste in my mouth. As such, you’ll need oxygen, which is filled completely at towns, or one tank at time from other ships and ruins. ![]() It also turns out, just because humanity has figured out how to magically survive for hundreds of years underwater, they haven’t figured out how to breathe it yet. Your crew needs to eat (although I don’t think they can starve to death), and food – which is expensive – depletes very quickly as you gain crew. Other ships will not be shy about pinging you as well, and while it might just be trader making sure you aren’t out to get them, a sonar ping could also be the precursor to a torpedo launch.Į xploration isn’t just about sailing around and stealing loot from ruins, or completing fetch quests to finish the main plot (there’s a fair number of them). It also marks vessels, salvage, and places of interest briefly on your HUD, making it absolutely indispensable to doing just about anything in the game. Sonar acts as a wave, briefly illuminating the landscape within a certain range. The theme does break a bit as the ships get bigger and more heavily armed, taking on a more directly-steampunk aesthetic.Īt lower depths, or where particulate is heavy, visibility is basically nonexistent y our only method of s ight is sonar. Vessels have a Jules Verne-inspired, pseudo-organic style, taking after various fish. The physics of the engine may not be good enough to make them sway in the current, but even the largest of structures are tenuous things, often covered in a patchwork of materials. Rusting hulks litter the ocean floor, from the size of your tiny starting vessel to massive tankers cities and dwellings are literally bolted with massive cables to rocks and ice. Humanity ha s been trapped underground a long time, and it shows. By the end, rest assured, you’ll have your questions answered.Īt its core, Diluvion is a game of exploration, and it continually nails the sense of wonder, trepidation, and dread that follows in the wake of that. The story is vague at first, only picking up once you hit the game’s second map, and serves as a not-so-subtle guide to your explorations, the game’s main focus. Naturally, as a race, we’ve gone and mucked it all up, and it falls to you, -PLAYER-, to gather your ragtag crew (Tired Veteran, Explosion-Obsessed Girl, and more!), and reach the end of the apparently not-so-Endless-Corridor, hopefully saving the squabbling humanity in the process. ![]()
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