Depths of Sanity

Why, yes, I would [i]love[/i] to fight a boss that fills the screen with currents to push you into the walls, turns all the walls into permanent damage zones that tick fast enough that by the time you're free you've lost 2-3 energy tanks out of your 5, and spams high-speed attacks at you from offscreen that are too fast to reasonably react to and interrupt your engines when they hit so you just slide back into the walls. How ever did you know? Maybe I'd try to push past this fight if I thought there was a chance it was just this one boss that's terrible, but the previous boss loved to randomly charge around the arena every 1/8 of a second while still dealing contact damage, so I have a feeling it'll just get even worse from here. Also, the dark sections are way too frequent and your means of dealing with them are way too underpowered. The lamp barely lights up one sub length in front of you and the sonar is an annoyance that does nothing to help find the very frequent enemies unless they're in front of specific background tiles. Did I mention that this game throws a bunch of fast-moving charging enemies at you, some of which spit equally fast projectiles, while giving your sub realistic physics? If you want an underwater metroidvania, play Aquaria or Song of the Deep instead.

I hate giving indie titles bad reviews, and usually, if I can, I try to at least get through a good portion of this game. After a little over three hours, and the first two bosses under my belt, I can't muster the energy to continue. I couldn't help comparing this to the game Pronty--a far superior MetroidVania, with a similar underwater setting and control scheme. This game feels like the exact opposite of everything that made that game fun and worth playing. Movement feels like a sluggish, and difficult chore. It demands being slow and methodical, but it is often awkward and troublesome. It also throws enemies that will try and force you into environmental hazards, or just chase you until you destroy them (a fun 'glitch' happened when I got an upgrade, and was reading the text on screen, but a swarm of fish ganged up on me and killed me while reading. Great). Things get even worse when you make your way into the pitch dark areas. You will crawl and go slow, and if you run into any enemies or environmental hazards, then I guess it's your own fault. There's little reason to engage in enemies since there's little in the way of rewards (the occasional health or missile ammo). The baddies feel spongy (playing on 'Normal' difficulty), and using your weapons is wearisome. The pea shooter you start with takes a lot of accuracy, but it's the best option you've got--The bounce shot feels built for specialized areas that are few and far between. The missiles seem like a joke: they go from zero to max velocity in speed that is insultingly slow. It makes it near impossible to hit the majority of the games enemies that move quickly, unless you are right next to them and risk contact damage. Not that it matters, since the game also feels comfortable to give you very little in means of ammunition. The artwork in this game is also lacking. Not a big issue necessarily, but everything has this feeling of looking like a first draft of what could've been. Again, not necessary for a game per se, but I do think it should be considered when this game throws so much weight around the narrative it's trying to build. It's harder to build a weighty, immersive story when the art isn't that good, frankly. I don't want to comment too much on the narrative, since I only played so little, and the story did seem to have a lot going for it. All I will comment on is that while I didn't mind reading all the notes and logs, it added an already slower pace to a game that moves like molasses. What's truly irking, is that this game seems so highly regarded within the MV community. Everyone is near unanimous in singing it's praises, from r/metroidvania to the small MV youtube reviewing community. I wish I could've played the game people saw here but all I got was a tedious chore. Pass.

THE SHORT REVIEW: This is a great game and I was all ready to rave about it, and then I finished it......The ending is a massive slap in the face, and I wish developers would realise people don't want to spend 20 or so hours on a game just to get punched in the balls with a bad ending you have very little agency in. Here's a tip if you decide to play this (and for 99% of the game experience I recommend that you do): Do not face the end boss until you have found all parts of the secret weapon, because that's the only way to get the good ending. THE LONG REVIEW: You probably never played, or have heard of, a game called 'Song of the deep' despite it being developed by a fairly prominent AAA developer (Insomniac games: Rachet & Clank, Spiderman, Sunset Overdrive) but it was a metroidvania of sorts. Albeit with you being in a rinky-dink submersible, it still had that structure of finding utility items that allowed you to tackle gated off areas, and getting weapon and armour upgrades to face boss challenges. I mention it on the slight chance you might be familiar with it, as 'Depths of sanity' is verrrrrry similar, although it has two differences. The first is that, unlike 'Song etc', its not a distinctly mediocre experience, and the second is that whereas that game was rather twee, this has a distinctly Lovecraftian horror vibe which is surprisingly well done. And I say that as someone who thinks Lovecraft is crap, but nonetheless its definitely an influence on the narrative here with its tale of unspeakable submerged eldritch horrors that corrupt the psyche and mutate the flesh. Not only does this blow away the AA release of 'Song of the deep' but its one of the most well designed and well realised games you can pick up IMO. Yes, it looks underwhelming, and the music is generally...er..present and atmospheric, if not particularly remarkable. But the game-play...well, I don't make that previous statement about its excellence lightly. It honestly is the only game I've played in recent times where I have been impressed by it. Be it the various enemy types with their very different attack patterns, and how your weapons have strengths and weaknesses versus each type of creature. Or the way that new abilities open up the environment and allow for some tricky challenges and reasonably clever (but not too taxing) puzzles. There's a level of craft and thought to each element here that is worthy of praise, and while it looks crappy graphically, to my mind that is doing a disservice to everything else about it. The boss-battles are best in class, never-mind just in this fairly limited genre of metroid-submarine-vanias (there's two I know of, including this) but in the metroidvania genre! I just played two of the best Castlevania games before this and neither of them could touch it in this regard, nor can the likes of Ori / Blasphemous / Hollow Knight. Every single boss here is a tough test for your reflexes and offers pleasantly varied patterns of attack. There's even one that requires a modicum of wits to beat it, and without any hyperbole that makes this game fairly unique. When was the last time you played a metroidvania and actually had to THINK *gasp* about how to defeat a boss? I can only recall one other example from what must be a hundred or so games that I've played in the genre (Deaths Gambit) that pushed the format beyond "dodge this! dodge that! duck under this! jump over that! Now hit them, and then repeat the process fifty more times and they'll be dead! Yayyyyy!!" So: the game-play is great, and the narrative is involving and superbly written. With suitably grim and grotesque elements of supernatural horror nicely sitting alongside the hopes and fears of puny humans stuck under the sea, that were already out of their depths (ba-dum-tish!) even before an all-powerful ancient entity started preying upon their minds. I'm equally impressed by both of these aspects, and from me that is high praise considering (a) that I think Lovecraftian stuff is overdone by now and was also crap to begin with, and (b) do we really need ANOTHER FLIPPING METROIDVANIA...??!! Well, as far as this game goes, in answer to that last point: When they are this good, yes! At least, that's what I would have said right until I finished it....at which point I got the "bad" ending and got rather annoyed at how little you can do to change the outcome in a game that's not built around player agency in the narrative. It took me 17 hours to finish, and whilst I don't mind watching a 2 hour long movie that doesn't end well, it annoys me to spend this much time on a game without clear choices only for it to go to sh*t at the end. Other than this massive slap in the face I absolutely recommend 'Depths of sanity'

[h2] Simply my 10/10 game [/h2] - wonderful, well-incentivized exploration. It gives you the itch to explore more and more. - For boss fight, it’s fair when you lose. You want to try again and again until you make it. (but ofc you can also lower the difficulty. The normal enemies are not hard and can be avoided) - Psychological horror/lovecraftian flavor - Axiom Verge’s feeling (just personal feelings. It makes me feel like im playing another Axiom Verge game) - All weapons and upgrades are meaningful and useful from start to finish !!! The only issue is its 360 degree movement and control. You need sometimes to get used to it. Plus I want more save slots and percentage showing how much I have explored an area. [b] Conclusion: it's for those who love MV focused heavily on exploration, balanced combat, and psychological horror/lovecraftian flavor[/b]

A lovely gem of a Metroidvania game! It's lovecraftian and underwater theme, really give it this creepy atmosphere as you progress. This is weaved in perfectly with the game's plot and gameplay. You play as a Submarine pilot named Abe, a mission to find out what happened to his crew and son, who's ship sunk while investigating an unknown signal. What starts with normal environments and sea life, slowly turns into a nightmare as you descent deeper, as everything is corrupted by this lovecraftian horror. Which also takes hold on Abe, who slowly losing his sanity as you progress. Plot has a nice late game twist, which is obvious to those familiar with these type of stories, but it's effectively setup for the payoff. The gameplay has a few flaws that hold it back a bit. Exploration is fun, but the game decides not to give the player access to fast travel until the last quarter, which makes backtracking very tedious and time consuming. The combat is passable which is held back by a ton of little issues that makes you just want to avoid it at points. Most of the enemies are fast, zipping around the screen making them hard to hit. The weapons have small bullets that make it even harder to hit them, on top of them being bullet sponges. Not a problem with the game's few bosses, which are all fun to fight. Even with those flaws, I still highly recommend it. Well worth your time if you enjoy the genre.

Depths of Sanity is a nautical horror Metroidvania, with strong emphasis on the Metroid half of the genre. You'll be steering your submarine through various underwater environment, fighting a wide variety of aquatic life, and collecting plenty of health upgrades, additional ammunition and new weapons. While I don't think the gameplay is anything truly original, it nails the Metroidvania formula, hitting all the staples just right. The variety of weapons is a lot of fun (although the depth charges felt fairly unnecessary), the puzzle aspects have a good amount of challenge to them, and the map is well designed. The main draw of the game is the Lovecraftian atmosphere and story, and I think it carries that nicely. Both environment and enemies become more unsettling as you progress, and the crew logs you collect paint a nice story of fear and desperation. There's a lot of small, gruesome details that I really appreciated too. It took me a couple hours of playing to notice a very unsettling aspect of the screaming seaweed. All in all, if you want a horror-themed Metroidvania that does its job but doesn't overstay its welcome, Depths of Sanity is well worth buying. Also runs perfectly on Steam Deck!

A cool metroidvania with a psychological horror/lovecraftian flavor to it. Fun game, not too easy and not too hard, some great moments and imagery, even if the graphics are fairly simple. Also, when I encountered a bug with an achievement, I contacted the devs and they quickly fixed it, so, that's always a big plus!

travel to great depths without imploding

A cool underwater metroivania with a touch of lovecraft to it.

This just might be the best metroidvania you've never heard of. And a good story, too!