Your attack options are limited to begin with: you can fire shrapnel-or later on, homing torpedoes-at your enemies, and maneuver slowly around them. This is a problem that truly shows its ugly face when your sub is forced into a fight. It's the act of actually having to play the game that causes the whole thing to dissolve.ĭiluvion is marred by unintuitive controls and one of the most needlessly convoluted user interfaces in recent memory. The ancillary, narrative experience of Diluvion is a fine one. The relationships tend to fall by the wayside as exploration ramps up, but it's always welcome when the game takes a breath and allows your helmsman to give the history of a new area or lets your crazy gunner talk rings around the submissive sonar expert. The ones who do talk, however, speak in snappy, often funny lines of dialogue, with more than few characters worthy of endearing themselves over time-especially your erstwhile crew, who will interact not just with their captain but with each other when they're docked. There's an element of repetition here, since many of the stock NPCs are copy-pasted throughout the entire game, and most of them are interactive only to issue random grunts and sighs. Interacting with other characters takes on a lighter tone, with the view switching from the artfully rendered 3D ocean to 2D when docking at towns or with other subs. It's the act of actually having to play the game that causes the whole thing to dissolve. The more shallow sections of ocean are bright, wondrous places that you can find yourself wandering around aimlessly with a sense of peace and calm. Diluvion's most notable accomplishment is its score, a beaut symphony that haunts every mile you journey in-game, accentuating the wonder in one scene, ratcheting up the tension in another.
Most checkpoints are man-made structures overtaken by ice or algae. Towns are elaborate wonders of construction. The journey's gentle pace leads you to treasure every new landmark you come across-many awe-inspiring in either scale or design. Thankfully, Diluvion isn't always fear and dread. Being underwater, nothing in the world is particularly fast, but the management of resources to optimally escape a dangerous situation delivers great tension. Missions may be as simple as raiding a derelict ship, but even that might turn into a much different, frantic scramble away from unexpected danger. The game is at its unnerving best when it sends you into near-pitch blackness, with only the comfort of sonar to light the way toward your objective. One of the more chilling commonalities along the way is finding merchants who were stranded in isolated areas, waiting for someone to come along to give them the jump they needed to escape. Much of your journey is spent scavenging supplies and key items in uncharted danger zones infested with landmines and sea creatures-and it's hard not to be affected by seeing how many other vessels tried and failed to infiltrate the same areas. As you creep your way to the bottom of the ocean, you'll often have a checklist of parts to grab, people to see, and enhancements to make. Humanity's only hope of breaking through the oppressive ice above is a godlike ancient artifact lying at the bottom of the ocean.Īs the captain of your own tiny vessel, you are tasked with recruiting a capable crew, building a ship strong enough to withstand the crushing ocean depths, and locating the powerful artifact before anyone else. Instead, they're forced to build civilization anew underwater, with steampunk-inspired submarines and habitats as their only means of shelter. It presents an unusual take on a post-apocalyptic society where humanity doesn't go to space or live in the nuclear wastes.
There's so much to love and appreciate on the surface that the game's profound awkwardness and convoluted mechanics just hurt to experience. Diluvion is in that most tragic class of disappointing game: the kind with great ideas.
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