Depths of Sanity

I play a lot of metroidvanias and this so far has the best story of them all, kind of gives off a spooky vibe and does it really well where you want to know what is next.

Atmospheric and spooky submarine game. The controls are a bit clunky, but that adds to the experience--if you collect a lot of the armor pieces, you'll feel like a heavily armored sub, able to be battered around but not sink. If you want smooth, fluid combat, you won't find it here, and the enemies do get pretty annoying by the end. But the atmosphere is well-paced, getting creepier the deeper you go, and the writing helps to sell it.

You can steer the submarine with a game controller. 10/10 Jokes aside, this is solid. The audio design in particular is well done. The first time I learned of Depths of Sanity was when I did my high school internship with the founder of Bomb Shelter Games in my senior year. It feels amazing to actually play it and see how far it has come since then. I know you're not with Bomb Shelter anymore, Owen, but if you're reading this: you did good.

A great underwater metroidvania, with awesome atmosphere and good gameplay. Shame that this game still has limited profile features, so if you have extra money on steam buy and support the devs.

Most of the negative reviews here are talking about the movement and controls, but to me that isn't really the biggest issue (although yes, it is bad), because that could honestly be managed, if not by patience then there are difficulty options. The biggest problem to me is the game is just utterly dull. Even in an game that is going for "dread" vibes (which I do like) games are still supposed to be enjoyable to engage with and this one isn't. Moving around the world just is not enjoyable for me. I see no potential for combat to develop and maybe exploration would, but it's so boring I just can't bring myself to continue.

Excellent metroidvania with a well-written story and characters and a captivating, haunting atmosphere.