Dive The Depths

[h3]Dive down that extraterrestrial reef and defeat the local wildlife in an all out roguelike hack and slash, thalassophobia included![/h3] This is a game about exploring a hostile alien marine ecosystem while cleaving through its inhabitants with an outlandish selection of melee weapons! Each dive you are exploring a predetermined set of different biomes, each hosting a diverse flora and fauna of swimming teeth and claws as well as murderous leviathans of diverse flavours. The levels are blending into each other and give a sensation of diving into the unknown, even though it is a semi-narrow dive into the darkness below. The sensation that you are more or less enduring a hostile alien aquarium is kind of brilliant, although I'm not sure that is the intention. Sure the runs are procedurally generated but they could use some more textures and more alien vegetation, for sure. I understand this might be a problem for the generation of the level, but parts of the game tend to feel a bit samey. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3482355953 When it comes to nautical themes in game I have an obvious weak spot for the watery setting presented, however, in this case the gameplay gets a bit in the way of me thoroughly enjoying the atmosphere, mostly due to a quite rough combat system. Depending on the weapon of choice you get a different style of attack focused on the cardinal direction of the weapon hovering around you. This weird disconnection serves a weird feeling and even though it works most of the time, it feels quite off. So, in a clam-shell, you swim around in a gloomy environment hitting anglerfish, venomous cnidaria and flammable mollusca in reckless abandon trying desperately to dodge some of the less avoidable attacks. In the vein of Binding of Isaac or Risk of Rain you collect a multitude of trinkets, gadgets and artifacts that adds effects to your main function, ye olde roguelike style more or less, and these effects stack over time. Some traits are intriguing, others cryptic as the games main hub, and a few outright game breaking. There are NPCs scattered across the map as well as shrines you can interact with for bonuses, although they vary greatly in usefulness. Overall the game has a weird curve in its difficulty where everything beyond a certain point becomes a pushover as long as you keep dodging. And somewhere around this point it becomes apparent that the game's balance is off the charts. The first regular boss for example is more or less a pushover while the first biomes “hidden” boss is a nightmare inducing death sentence if you time your dodge wrong. On top of a great ability for murder, it is also a bullet sponge of the weirdest sort and many runs ended on its weird hitbox ramming through me and obliterating my healthpool in seconds. So yea, the gameplay is a mixed bag consisting of looting, slashing and dodging, all while trying to avoid the worst of the pelagic horrors. Oh, and the soundtrack is great with plenty of bangers! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3482356419 So to summarize, this game is still quite rough around the edges and even though the developers have been expedient in ironing out the worst of the bugs, it is still quite unoptimized and suffered from heavy stutters the four times I have encountered the endzone boss due to all the effects cluttering the screen. That said, this is an indie-title through and through and I can see the love being poured into the game from its creators, it is just in a pretty janky state at the moment, something that might be fixed in the near future so take my recommendation with that caveat. One of those really hard to judge games simply due to the fact that I have a slightly old GPU, but I have read about people with far better cards facing the same problems so there is that. [b]Conclusion:[/b] This is a weak recommendation as it stands right now, there is potential here but as it feels like this game needs some more time to iron out the blemishes. Right now the replayability is quite low given it is the same loop of bosses and biomes, only the difficulty differs, and that is kind of a problem in itself. Pick it up if you like the idea of an underwater roguelike, just be aware that this is a work in progress with a fair bit of jank to be tolerated. [quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32732116-IndieGems/] Follow [b]IndieGems[/b] [/url] for more reviews like this one. [/quote]

This is the only game where despite it being super bugged at launch, I was so hooked and so desperate to play that I kept refreshing and even reinstalled the game to try and fix it for myself before a patch. I won't lie, game is super buggy atm, lots of softlocks, ways to put yourself in a weird zombie state (The nautical flask seems especially prone to this, I swear every time I use that thing I go into a permanent dash state, maybe the latest patch fixed it...) But the fact of the matter is: Underneath all of these bugs is a game that is rock solid. I am biased because I love oceans but even despite that, the items and weapons you get are incredibly fun to use and creative, like the soul sword that feeds off the souls of your enemies for it's empowered state that is a legitmately insane weapon, but is absolute abysmal in its unempowered state, not even being able to kill a goomba enemy that exists solely for exp fodder Or some of the really funny active items, like the one that fully heals you but then poisons you because it's dubious meat, or the one that blinds you but raises your stats to insane levels so you go into a literal blind rage There's a lot of creativity on display here and I eagerly await for all of the glitches to get ironed out and the bugs sprayed off, because I think this will be one of my all time favorite roguelikes once they are.

Before we get into the nitty gritty, this is a HARD game and there are some bugs present. That being said, it is clear that the developers of Dive The Depths have put a lot of passion and love into their game. With near constant bugfixes since launch, I am excited to see this game grow into its potential as I have found a game I can truly sink hours into. If you work past the initial difficulty curve as well as the bugs, you will find a charming game, a love letter of sorts to Terraria. It has beautiful environments, an amazing soundtrack, a variety of unique and interesting weapons to play with, relics that feel impactful that you celebrate getting, and a game that will challenge your ability to dodge and find windows to outplay whatever enemy or boss you match up against. While admittedly a rough launch, I am excited to see where this game goes. See yall in the depths, divers.

I was trying to find a good game that replicated Noita's wand-making capabilities with a fresh spin on things - a reddit post on the Noita subreddit led me to believe this is such a thing. Unfortunately, I just got Risk of Rain but you're forced to use melee weapons the whole time. I think the game has great execution on the concept and beautiful pixel art, but the concept itself is probably the most annoying thing ever. It feels like playing the melee character in an run of Isaac except you do no damage and you have to hit the first boss ~100+ times in melee on the easiest difficulty. Oh and the boss forces you to take a debuff that reverses your controls - because that's not the most annoying mechanic ever. Also, I hate how the only thing in this game that doesn't phase through the terrain is you - at that point why have terrain? Overall, more polish is needed because I suspect this game suffers from "balancing to make it a challenge to people with 100+ hr." syndrome.

I also played the demo and really want to like this game as its art style is beautiful and at it's foundation has the potential to be a stand out title but overlooking these flaws because of how good the presentation looks is inexcusable. If it was released into early access I could look over the faults and I'm really surprised it's been fully released because as of right now the game feels really half baked in a lot of departments. The sound design for so much of the game is just flat out missing. When I played the demo I figured this would've been addressed but everything is the same. Things such as the Anchor's secondary attack having no sound effects as you travel or even when you crash into things I genuinely can't understand being overlooked and should've been on the checklist for things to address before the full release (also a little bit of screen shake and such would go a long way for feedback). The music itself is pretty good but feels as though some parts are over relied on and get a bit repetitive. The secret boss issue is still prevalent and ruins most runs if you do make any progress. The 2nd boss could use some sort of off screen heads up about which direction is coming from. Enemies can't get inside your healing bubble but their attacks can and you're able to just sit in the bubble and attack them while getting actively healed. If an item falls on top of one another there's no ability to swap which is highlighted or even worse if it's too close to the shop keeper you'll lose out on it forever. You can't see what the items do till you pick them up and the text displays for such a short time you can't read he whole description either. If you're trying to compare usable equipment you literally have to swap them out which is usually how they get stuck on the shopkeeper. The boss and shopkeeper being sort of your home hub also feels... off? I could understand the shop but I just find it so odd that I'm just presented the boss right away. Instead of exploring the cool atmosphere the game has to offer I'm more inclined to find chests close enough to be worth my time and grind out the enemies in the area around me and rinse and repeat for each level of depth. The concept, art design, and overall theme of items, enemies/character designs, etc are wonderfully done and this definitely has the ability to bounce back if the devs really put the effort in. As of right now there's just a lot of little things that feel like they were overlooked in order to get the game out which is a shame because this has everything it needs to be a hit. If it gets a big overhaul update that addresses things like sound, growth, feedback, exploration, the "secret" boss (it's not much of a secret as is), among other issues that prevent this from being a classic I'll give it another chance and update my review but right now it's holding itself back from becoming an amazing roguelike that holds it's own amidst the indie greats it takes inspiration from.

[b][i]This is Open World Action-Roguelike + Adventure + Exploration + Survival. Explore the endless depths of an alien ocean, inhabited by unique creatures.[/i][/b] Gameplay: https://youtu.be/Ojd_La9-1xI Dive The Depths reminds of Noita, Dave the Diver, Risk of Rain and Terraria. You need to survive, explore the ocean, collect loot, destroy aggressive creatures and bosses, unlock new weapons and amplifiers. + Nice graphics. + Great music and sounds. + Dynamic gameplay + Unusual mechanics. + Various biomes and monsters. + Epic bosses. + Unique weapons, items, secrets and upgrades. + Replayability. + Achievements.

The only positive thing I have to say about this game, is that it has nice visuals. - The Hitboxes feel misaligned - Sound effects are awful - Enemy spawns seem broken as you either get 1-2 tiny enemies in a 200m radius or 15 of the bigger one chasing you down - You get a bunch of status effects from enemies that I couldn't find a description for - You get a short popup when picking up an item. If you don't manage to read it in time, you're ♥♥♥♥ out of luck.

This is one of the most challenging games I enjoyed playing. The art is very vibrant, the controls are easy to use but damn the enemies and the bosses are a hack of a challenge. But if you like dungeon like games and you wanna test your skills against unforgiving enemies. You should give this a go and show how cracked you are!!!

Excellent little roguelike that plays sort of like Terraria mixed with Risk of Rain, visuals are great and the gameplay loop is fun Initially had a good amount of bugs but the worst offenders seem to have been fixed with the latest patch Looking forward to more updates since the game has a lot of promise

where is the updates???????