Barotrauma

One of the games that make me wait for the action, but when the action comes I beg that it stops

Got hired as medic on my first ever game captain says were doing a simple delivery mission cool. 5 minutes in hulls breached on 3 sides theres water everywhere reactors melting down and some dude is injecting everyone with random chemicals "to help" while a sea monster is ripping the sub apart from outside lol. We all died. Queued another one immediately This game is basically what happens when you give like 16 people a nuclear submarine and just say figure it out. Engineer rewires something and accidentally kills the oxygen. Mechanic is welding a breach while standing in water and just electrocutes himself. Medic overdoses the captain on morphine. Security officer shooting at something in a dark flooded hallway that mightve been a crew member nobody knows. Somehow the sub is still moving tho. Sometimes Traitor mode is where friendships actually end btw you get a secret objective to sabotage the mission and now your trying to act completely normal while quietly flooding the ballast tanks or putting stuff in the medical supplies lmao. "Why is the reactor being weird" idk man thats crazy have you tried turning it off and on. Then someone catches you and its just I KNEW IT I KNEW IT WAS YOU in voice chat while the sub goes down. Everytime Ngl it can be frustating sometimes like youll spend 40 minutes on a run and someone floods everything because they welded the wrong pipe or some creature just oneshots the hull and your sitting there watching water pour in knowing theres nothing anyone can do anymore. But then next round something so stupid happens everyones just dying laughing and you forget all about it thats basically the whole gameplay loop lol frustration into chaos into laughing into queuing again Devs actually keep updating it too which is rare honestly and modding support is crazy, the sub editor lets you build whatever and workshop has some absolutely wild stuff on it. Game just keeps getting better somehow 8/10 spent most of my time either drowning fixing leaks or getting poisoned by my own medic and i wouldnt change any of it honestly

One of my all time favourites. Especially early days, before you know a lot about the game it is one of the most panicky games I have played. And once you are an experienced captain you get to take your newbie friends out into the darkness, and relive that panic through them. I will say this, use the ingame voice! It works very well, and takes into account distance, position relative to the player, and perhaps most importantly consciousness. There is nothing more chilling than hearing the mechanic in the ballast tank screaming for help as he is being attacked, and then sudden silence, or a massive explosion from the reactor room, and no reply from the engineer who was working there. That moment when your ship is flooding, sinking, in combat and you are totally caught up in trying to fix it, then you realize you haven't heard from your captain in a while so you frantically go searching for his body to possibly save him? Priceless. Or when you are on EVA looting a crashed submarine and you hear an almighty explosion from your sub, with sudden silence from the crew. You go outside to only to realise the sub is gone, so you dive at its last known position, praying that you have enough oxygen to reach it before you suffocate? If you are lucky, or smart enough to carry a handheld sonar, maybe you find it, manage to patch it up, and bring it back to base all by yourself, all with the rest of the crew watching from spectator mode, or desperately trying to reach the sub in a respawn shuttle. Absolute gold! There is a very solid crafting system in the game which lets you build all but a select few (only one comes to mind) consumables, and definetly anything that is required to keep going. It can be a little overwhelming for a new player, but the key resources and consumables are easy to identify after a couple missions. There is a massive power curve, both for the submarine and the player characters. In the beginning your sub will be small, weakly armored, slow etc. As you move on you get to upgrade your sub with money and resources, until enemies that terrified you at first become a minor nuisance. But fret not, the deep holds enough challenges even for well equipped subs to keep things interesting. As a character you gain skills and talents that make you more effective in your role, and while in the beginning every EVA is a possible death sentence, by the endgame you can be reasonably confident you will make it back to the sub alive, provided you have gathered materials for ammo, meds and better equipment along the way. The game rewards teamwork above all else, each class gets individual foci, and access to crafting individual recipes, so in a perfect world you want one of each available. If you don't have 4 other friends dedicated to playing a whole campaign though, don't worry. You can hire bots which will not only help man guns/maintain the sub but also enable you to craft items you wouldn't otherwise have access to. Lastly there is the option of modding your submarine in game. Every system has a wiring terminal, and with some basic knowledge of logic circuitry you can improve the function of your sub significantly. Want automated batteries that keep charging, without overloading the reactor, but will cover any gaps in your power supply as well? Done! Want a button to open all internal doors to purge water downwards, then reset them to their normal function when the timer runs out? Done! Want the ability to force flood, or force purge parts of the submarine, lock doors, manage the reactor independently of fuel or display warnings when enemies are on board? All of those are possible! Truly this is one of my favourite aspects in the game, and with the new circuit boxes it is SOOO much easier to make these modifications. The game progresses in difficulty nicely. Resources are scarce, unless you dedicate yourself to driving a cargo sub, but then you are poorly armed. After close to 300h I can confidently say there are only two resources which you will have more of than you can use in the lategame, and that only happens if you cosplay as a hoarder. I will say the movement system seems very janky at first, and until you understand why certain things are happening it can be frustrating. On the other hand it makes sense that your character can't swim against the current if there is a massive rush of water flooding the submarine. So, in conclusion: Is it perfect? No. Can it be a frustrating until you learn to work with the wierdness? Yes. But it offers endless hours of fun, room for creative problem solving, near infinite exploration, rewarding progression and combat, great opportunities for team play and emergent stories, an atmospheric voice chat, some minor but cool puzzles (totally optional, but worth the effort) and much more. I can only recommend this game in it's current state, and am looking forward to upcoming patches and releases, no doubt I will get another playthrough in once they drop.