Sub-Verge

fundamentally broken game. not a single achievement i got actually was acquired, there were so many typos i barely wanted to read through the dialogue, and the exit button at the end literally didn't work so i had to restart and, upon not finding another exit button there, quit the game manually-er.

Eight morons, a mute, and a sea monster walk into a bar....

Sub-Verge bills itself as a deep narrative puzzle. What Sub-Verge really is, is a glorified game of Mastermind. You're in this submersible, you can only go up and down with the help of divers outside. The problem is they all disagree and have different motives, you have to pick the correct diver to give a handle to in the right order. If you fail, there's a info box containing the try and a green circle around the diver in a correct position. There are various rules that pop up and change, and they are listed to make it easier. You might as well make a little logic chart to help you: The story to Sub-Verge is there's this city and an underwater base full of rebels and you have to side with one side or the other. I think this affects if you go up to the city or down the base. Really, it doesn't matter. The story, in my humble opinion, is irrelevant in so far that the banter is meaningless. The only thing that matters is the rules to govern the order. Something to note is that the Sub-Verge trailer on the steam page is voiced, the actual game is not, which is disappointing. I liked the Sub-Verge. Yes, it is a glorified game of Mastermind but its a well done game of Mastermind. The diver banter did not engage me, but the logic side of it did. So if you're looking for an puzzle game wrapped up in a visual novel of sorts, you cannot go wrong here.

Hay algo muy especial sobre este juego. Su estilo artístico es precioso, la atmósfera opresiva se consigue muy bien con el sonido y música. El que el puzzle sea narrativo y social lo hace super interesante y único. Es interesante el que tenga múltiples finales y dan ganas de explorarlos todos a ver cómo se consiguen. ¡Un juego excelente!

I'd love to shake the hand of the person who wrote this. Total genius, and totally flawed.

[h1]Short Review:[/h1] – Pretty art style – Interesting characters and ideas – Mission and world were vague – Endings made no sense – Choices were minimal and felt a bit pointless – Puzzle element was mediocre – Overall, had potential but disappointing [h1]Full Review:[/h1] Unfortunately, this game disappointed me. It felt like a case of trying to do two things (puzzle and story) but not putting enough focus into either. [b]What I Liked:[/b] – The art style is so pretty. What you see in the trailer is what you get, no extras, but it’s nice. – The characters, their backstories, their interpersonal drama, and some of the things in this world that they revealed were really interesting and memorable. I really liked the interactions between the divers and learning more about them. This could’ve made for a great game (or book), but this specific gameplay just wasn’t the right medium for it because it didn’t go in-depth enough. Spoilers: [spoiler]I really wanna know more about whatever Imphrey and Trembath have going on. It seems so toxic. Or maybe it’s good for them. I don’t know, but I’m fascinated. I’d love to know more about them individually too. Imphrey, so angry and dabbling in dangerous things, and Trembath, so macabre seemingly as a result of her chronic pain. I’d also like to know more about Drint, with the grief she’s been through and then the revelations and emotional arc of putting her full faith in The Mind and then losing that faith and feeling lost and unable to trust her own decisions anymore.[/spoiler] [b]What I Disliked:[/b] – The missions and the endings made no sense. For starters, I had no idea what my mission actually was for either faction because the intro was so vague. Looking back now, I can see one says, “Make it to the bottom,” and one says, “Get them up here,” but it was casually dropped amidst other confusing dialogue while I was still trying to understand what was even happening. And then every ending I got baffled me. Something would happen that the characters just said was impossible. Or the game would tell me that XYZ happened, except nothing prior indicated that. Or something would happen that was apparently part of a plan I was never told. – Choices were confusing, and there were actually only two. You start the game by choosing who to side with, with no real info. Then you can eventually choose to go up or down, but as far as I can tell, that’s only in the very last puzzle. I spent the first playthrough or two confused because it was so unclear if I had any say in each puzzle, or if there was one predetermined correct answer. And the description puts so much emphasis on steering the convo, choosing to obey or rebel, etc., even says, “There are many ways out,” but it doesn’t follow through on that. Conversation steering is accidental based on the order you guess in the puzzles, and as far as I can tell, there’s only two “correct” paths. – The puzzle gameplay was mediocre. Sometimes the order was too arbitrary, there was no reason for why this character couldn’t go before others, characters would do the opposite of what they just said they’d do, etc. I like this type of puzzle, having to figure out the order based on clues, but there are better games out there if I just want that. With characters involved, it requires motivations and reactions that make sense. – The music was basically just this “dun dun dun” sound which was more annoying than atmospheric. – UI was glitchy. Sometimes the thing on the side would get stuck in the out position, covering text. Sometimes I had to click all over to get text to change. Space bar worked better. [b]Everything Else:[/b] – There’s no voice acting. (The trailer makes it seem like there will be.) – Achievements are broken (maybe it’ll be fixed if you’re seeing this in the future). I don’t care about that, but some people do, and it would’ve helped me know if I found everything. – I found four endings. Side with Surface or Below + go up or down. I found one mid-game failure too. I don’t know if there are more. – My first playthrough took 80 minutes. I played four hours total because I wanted to know what the other endings were. – It’s not very fun to replay because you have to click through a lot of the same dialogue and do all the same puzzles. And you can’t skip. But I did at least get some different dialogue by doing things slightly differently. – I played mostly on normal mode. I tried the easy and hard modes but could not figure out what was different. The game seems pretty lenient, on normal at least. I had to try hard to get that one failure, and I think that was on hard mode. – Save and exit will set you back to the start of the current puzzle. – I bought this and the DLC in a bundle on sale for $5.58. [b]Overall:[/b] I can’t recommend this as a puzzle/choices game, and this medium didn’t allow for much exploration of the characters’ stories. But if you just want to meet some interesting characters and look at nice art, maybe it’ll still be worth it to you. And if the devs ever want to turn this into a book, I’d be down to read it. *Review can also be found on my blog (link in profile).* [h1]Accessibility:[/h1] (May not include everything) – Not accessible for blind players or screen reader users. – Does not require sound. – Difficulty options, but I have no idea what they do. – Requires a mouse, as far as I can tell (don’t know about controller).

Interesting idea and cool vibes :)

Sub-Verge was wonderful. A little bit of basic gameplay, but oh man, the story is what sold the game for me. And the sense of the SubVee slowly filling up with water had me on the edge of my seat. It was tough to get the divers to cooperate and agree with each other, but when they finally agree with you and choose a direction, it only fills up with water more, which means there is even less oxygen now, and it only gets harder for the divers to agree when the game introduces an additional diver during each puzzle. It was like a race against the clock. But, the story is what gripped me the most! Even for such a simple concept, it has a deeply captivating story told through blurbs of dialogue. And oh man, those creatures were creepy as heck. I really got creeped out when I saw them. For such a simple concept, they nailed the atmospheric horror, and this game made me feel uneasy as I continued to unlock harder and tougher puzzles. And lastly, that dreadful music in the background spooked me. It was like a deep, almost unhuman heartbeat. It only made the situation right in the moment feel even more intense, and it sounded like the beating of an otherworldly, aquatic monster. I really, really loved this experience. It only made me scared of the ocean and afraid to go in the water all over again just like when I watched the original Jaws movie for the very first time as a child. For a studio's first ever game, this is pretty dang impressive. Hope that Interactive Tragedy makes even more games, and I hope they sell well!

An interesting experiment at odds with itself. Eight (-ish) puzzles (?) about finding a workable order for an ever-growing group of cantankerous divers. I had a little trouble taking the writing seriously. I can't quite believe that the krake(n) would even be relevant: surely these squabbling children's casual disregard for their hazardous environment would long since have gotten them all killed? And there were a couple places where I stopped to outright laugh at the "I'm pretty sure that's not how diving works" of some lines. But it was fun (if goofy), some of the conversational clues were interesting and clever, and I loved the idea of what it was trying to do. Similarly, on the puzzle front... is the scenario in front of you a puzzle? Or is it more of a guessing game? Do you have a choice of two solutions here or not? Can you solve it yet, or do you have to wait for them to argue each other into changing their minds first? Plus the suspicion you have from very early on that the game isn't going to let you reach either end until it's good and ready to, so does it even matter if you have a choice? The UI delays that make it unclear if you have to click to continue the dialogue or if it's your turn to take action yet. But... these were all really cool ideas! (OK, maybe not the UI stuff.) I'd love to see more exploration of them in more games: they just didn't [i]quite[/i] work together here for me. And the game is really short and doesn't overstay its welcome: I think I did 5 playthroughs in 3 hours. So if (trying to) wrangle a soap opera (affectionate) of drama-queen underwater denizens through sorta kinda logic-puzzles in a sci-fi undersea setting with... I don't know, gives me both Victorian and Soviet vibes... this is worth a try. I'd recommend playing it on Normal - I feel like Hard removes too many of the helpful clues and features, and Easy starts pushing you forward and locks you out of failure after a while, which can be annoying if you're experimenting.

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