Sub-Verge

Alright. [i]Sub-Verge[/i] is done and dusted. This is a Lovecraftian Narrative Puzzle game wherein you, an anonymous soul from the surface, are (based on your faction choice) either exiled or escape into the ocean in a one-man sub (which looks more like a diving bubble). Anyway, from there you will meet some of the people already living in a base underwater, who will debate what to do with you until they finally decide on a course of action. On repeat, lol. The story set-up is that people on the surface have begun living in floating cities due to some largely apocalyptic event, presumably Lovecraftian in nature. People are no longer allowed to access the ocean, however. Except, some people have rebelled and built a base in the deeps to get away from the totalitarian regime on the surface. As mentioned, you will choose one or the other faction as your origin, which then informs the reason for you getting into the sub to begin with. As you descend, divers (scouts/patrols) from the underwater rebel base begin to find you as a result of your sub emitting light, something that also will draw the attention of the Lovecraftian horrors living in the depths as well. In order to turn off the lights, you have to give the divers access to levers on your sub which shuts off the light as long as they're holding on to them. The downside of this is that this breaks the seals keeping the sub intact, and so it starts slowly filling with water. As more and more divers zero in on your sub, you realize that not all is well in the depths. And this forms the basis of the gameplay. The divers don't really agree on what to do with you. And within that, some of the divers will directly impact the decisions other divers make. This is where the puzzle aspect of the game comes into play. Each diver is assigned a lever. You have to decide in which order the divers will grab their levers, which both opens up dialogue trees AND decides whether they will start bringing you up to the surface or deeper into the...ummm...depths to reach their base. Or just sit there indecisive due to not agreeing on anything. However, as they argue and you make your decisions as to who will grab the levers in which order, abominations begin to show up in the form of the Krake (Kraken). Which will happen anytime the divers all let go of the levers due to not agreeing on the direction they're going to push your sub in. Each time that happens, the divers scatter and when they return, you begin the puzzle sequence over, potentially with new dialogue. Remember though, your sub is filling with water throughout this trial and error. And that is more or less the gameplay and story in a nutshell. The game does a good job of making you really regret not paying attention to the dialogue, as it will typically let you know to some extent what order you should do things in. Although I believe there are also multiple variations that can occur. I think the puzzle design is actually pretty clever. Where this game struggles are with the dialogue itself. There are creatures nearby and yet these divers have a difficult time reaching an accord despite the ever-present danger of being eaten by the sea creatures. There is a distinct lack of urgency. I think this is intended to add some humor to the situation, but it comes across as just being a bit cumbersome. Despite this game being Lovecraftian themed, there is really no tension at all. The push and pull of the dialogue aren't enough to create tension here and the threat of being eaten is largely backdrop to the dissent between the rebels. Additionally, the ability to click through dialogue doesn't keep pace with the dialogue itself. Sometimes the game will hang on what someone says for ten or fifteen seconds before a prompt appears to advance the dialogue. And there is no skip option for dialogue you've already seen. I did enjoy the ending I got. It was a fun resolution to the story. I don't think, however, that I'd want to click through the same dialogue a second time to find where it diverges for different outcomes. But at the same time, and despite my criticism, I did have a decent time with this game. I wouldn't want to pay seven bucks for it, and even at 50% off, I think I would chew on buying this, but there is a short and worthwhile experience to be had here. I see it's been bundled once. That's probably the optimal way to get this game. Otherwise, I think I'd wait for a steeper discount. However, as always, YMMV. One quick note: the DLC available is a pdf, and is about 50ish pages of actual story (70 pages total with credits and pictures), written as a prequel. What I've read of it so far seems pretty decent and is arguably worth its asking price. :) p.s. Sorry about the lack of screenshots. I had a screenshot apocalypse and accidentally deleted a full page of them. [b]I received this license via our IndieGems Curator program.[/b] [code]If you found this review helpful and would be interested in supporting my Curator group, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32549618/]Robilar's Reviews[/url], it would be appreciated. Cheers.[/code] [code]Also follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32732116-IndieGems/]IndieGems[/url] for more reviews like this one.[/code]

Liked the general idea, atmosphere, and the dialogue. But I really just can't recommend it. In this game, you have two choices to make. Up or down. Well, basically that makes sense, because you're in some kind of primitive submarine. Where else would you go? Thing is, you can't really 'choose'. Well technically you can choose which direction to go, but it doesn't matter until the very end. The first decision( surface dwellers vs depth rebels ) and the last decision ( to go up, or down? ) is all that matters. Everything between those two? Doesn't matter. You can argue that there are lore that you can uncover in those in-between decisions, but they're too vague to be actually good. There is a 74 page text DLC prequel that you can buy to learn more about what is actually going on, but shouldn't that information be in the game itself, rather than a separate thing that you have to buy? I get that this is their first game, and there's more to be improved. Maybe their next game, KUU, will be better. And I really hope so.

I'd give a neutral review, but these are not possible, so i give positive but only because i really like pantaloon. What I liked: Art, game idea, and i love short games! My issues with the game: - the story was in the wrong moments. I am focused on figuring out the order of divers, and they keep talking. Stuff like "i follow this person", "i am not comfortable with choosing yet" is great! it hints at the order i should do, helps me understand the dynamics of their group. But whole lore being said at that time? Distracting and annoying, plus aren't we in a rush? I'd love to hear all about it when we're already travelling though! - i was playing on a gamepad for the first half of the game. I click A button to go forward with the dialogue, and when the dialogue ends, I am not always aware that this is the last line. I click A again and i end up accidentally choosing a diver. They keep talking, puzzle resets, and i have to do it all over again. it was very frustrating and made me change to mouse.

🔹EXPECTATIONS: a choices matter game with puzzle game mechanics. 🔹REALITY: a visual novel and a puzzle minigame. 🔶 Sub-verge presents itself as a narrative driven mastermind game, where you influence others so that they behave as you wish, implying that player's choices have consequences and affect how the story evolves, but that's not the case. 🔸 The narrative is set in stone and player input has 0 consequences in its development. There are 2 choices, though, siding with a faction at the start and where to go (up or down) at the end, that will decide which of the 4 endings will appear. What happens in between is predetermined. 🔸 The character's conversations are interrupted at every stage (there are 8) by a puzzle minigame, where the game expects the player to find the correct sequence: A goes after D, and B does the same as C; that's the sort of clues that their dialogue gives away, but there's only one outcome. 🔸 There are 3 difficulty modes, but I didn't notice any difference, nor they are explained: game is not easier/harder, character's dialogue doesn't change, puzzle sequences are the same, nor the main character's vehicle fills with water faster. 🔸 The world of Sub-Verge is compelling, but it's underdeveloped, meaning that the paid DLC novel is mandatory to make sense of the factions, why they are at odds, and character's motivations. 🔸 It doesn't present as honest with a main menu that has a big button asking to wishlist the developer's next game, and another to sign up for the publisher's updates. Or the fact that the trailer is voiced, but the game is not. 🔸 Sadly, despite presenting an interesting world and gameplay concept (albeit on paper), I don't recommend Sub-Verge. POSITIVES: 🙂+ setting 😄+ 😍+ NEGATIVES: 🙁- character development 😠- choices don't matter 😡- DLC is mandatory

I can't recommend it. Nothing about the lore is explained adequately. The reason why the surfacers hate the sea isn't explained at all, and the endless looping conversations aren't fun. Everything feels arbitrary and on rails. I don't feel like I had any way to affect the outcome at all.

Spoilers, obviously. I played through the game once. Can't say that I enjoyed it. I thought there would be more of a choice to how you could steer things. "Manipulate a fractured band of renegade divers" and "Steer the conversation" sounds a lot like an interactive puzzle with a bunch of different dialogue with many different choices that led to vastly different outcomes. But this was more of a puzzle with extra solutions that eventually lead to the same ending (as I understand it). It says in the description of the game that there are multiple endings, which I believe, I guess. But it just didn't feel that way. It felt like it forced you to follow the story after even the third diver comes into the picture. That was fine, even though I really don't like puzzles like these. I thought I'd give it a go anyways. But the dialogue was just so incoherent and incongruent with the puzzle solutions at times. And having to listen to the same dialogue multiple times even when you end up picking the wrong diver is really annoying. Even the story was extremely fuzzy. What am I doing in this pod? What do the surfacers want? What does my video game character want to achieve? What are the divers doing when it's so dangerous there? Why can't the divers recognise the mind at first? Why can't my character communicate? Should I go up or down? Can I even get to the surface? Why does the puzzle sometimes get interrupted by a wrongful choice of diver with the mind/krake? The first instance when it blocks your path it seems like you can't get past it by any means, but there are other puzzles where it just interrupts you when you pick divers in the wrong order. Incongruent. A lot of questions are left unanswered with more popping up for every puzzle you solve. It wasn't fun and wasn't what I expected.

overall I am more neutral towards the game... however ~1hr or less for a playthrough... and its not really good enough for multiple, there is multiple endings though... I can't be bothered to find how different they are, also achievements are broken and have been for a month... devs don't seem to watching the discussion forum(and the publisher pantaloon didn't respond about this on their discord either)

I am ambivalent toward this game. I guess I misunderstood that choices do not matter and you are a NPC tasked with figuring out the "puzzle" of a group of disfunctional sea dwellers. I played through twice, I did not find the story that intriguing, nor the game play. They try to give you a sense of urgency but its a facade. I had much higher hopes for this game. Art is quaint, the style in original enough. The DLC is almost 100% necessary and should be free as it is the lore and story of the world and is the only redeeming quality to the story of "The Mind" otherwise it is a very empty and bleak game.

Absolutely terrible mechanics. Navigating each level is mostly trial and error. While a small handful of rules are pointed out explicitly or hinted in the text, most of the solution isn't based on those rules. You just have to try different permutations to see what happens to work - and as far as I could tell, there is rarely any sort of underlying logic to generalize. This is made worse by the fact that the game throws up a line of dialogue every time you select a diver, which makes an already frustrating process much more drawn out. The storytelling too suffers from this setup. You are constantly getting dialogue from the different divers, but much of it repeats and the whole thing is undermined by the characters making nonsensical-seeming decisions in the puzzle section. The game describes itself as a "narrative puzzle". All I can say is that the way this game couples the two makes both of them abject failures.

This game wants to be good. This game had the potential to be good, but ultimately, its mechanics fail it. It can't decide if it wants to be a trial-and-error puzzle game (which would require the ability to quickly progress through different attempts, or at the VERY LEAST not have to click through several repeated dialogues for every step of every attempt) or a thoughtful story of messy interpersonal conflict. Somehow it fails at being both. The divers feel 2D, like they each have One Thing. Drist doesn't care about anything but his brother, Eterna is indecisive and that's All She Is, etc. Some of the rules that allegedly have story reasons don't even act like they do — Owin's rule is based in a specific conflict, but he continues following it even when that conflict is resolved for.... reasons? I like puzzle games. I like complicated, messy morality. I like story-focused games. Sub-Verge is doomed by trying to be too much (and by being far more railroady than it seems, or at least failing to communicate that it isn't as railroady as it later seems).