a review of a game you may not know
As you’re lowered further and further into the deep, your thoughts swirl chaotically with the school of fish outside your diving bell. You’re a trained commercial diver, but not for this. Never in the open abyss of the ocean. Your thoughts circle around – your wife, your child, your old man, your future. As you take that first step into the frigid yet serene water, your mind focuses on the tasks at hand and you begin to wonder, will this chosen isolation heal or damage?
This is the first look you, as the player, receive of Stan – a commercial diver who has been contracted by a big corporation to live on the ocean floor and provide much needed maintenance. Will this extended stay under the waves of the North Sea be worth it?
The Basics
First things first, let’s look at some of the straight facts:
- Developer: Parallel Studios
- Release Date: August 2023
- Platforms: PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox X, Xbox S, Xbox One
- Engine: Unreal Engine 4
- Tags: adventure, story-rich, exploration
- Average main story play time: 7.5 hours
- Steam Rating: 77% positive
The Gameplay
The storyline is the driver of this game. The game progression is marked by the number of days that Stan has been working his contract. Each day is a new chapter in the storyline and each day has specific tasks to complete with a linear progression in which to complete said tasks. Stan wakes up, grabs his coffee, obtains his tasks, and heads out into the ocean. After completing the tasks, you can opt to explore the area and find the plethora of collectibles scattered around. Each new day will give you new skills and will guide you how to explore the world around you. You are given a one-man submersible to make traversal relatively easy, but you can also opt to raw dog it and swim around in your diving gear (just make sure you craft or scavenge enough oxygen sticks to do so). As the days continue, Stan battles his own reasons for taking the contract, struggles with past trauma, and wrestles with the morality of working for a big corp. that is ruining the ocean. There’s a lot going on, thematically with this game, if you couldn’t tell by that last sentence. There’s nothing inherently difficult about this game and if I had to sum it up in one sentence I’d say something along the lines of:
Under the Waves is a commercial diver simulator where you help Stan battle his inner demons, but also, you get to hunt for collectibles and swim with a Humpback whale.
If you are someone who values your free will and exploration of an open world, this may not be a game at the top of your list. But if you are someone who loves narrative driven games with real heart behind it, this should definitely go at the top of your ‘to play’ list.
My Thoughts
As someone who is an absolute sucker for narrative games that gut punch the ever living emotions out of you, I thoroughly enjoyed this game. Just a simple browse through the Steam reviews will show that a majority of people enjoyed the game simply because the Unreal Engine allowed such a beautiful and immersive world. I have been open water diving before and the sound design crew really hit the nail on the head with how it sounds and ultimately feels when diving under water. So if you’ve never been diving but have always wanted to, this is a far cheaper way to simulate that experience. While the daily tasks did get a bit dull at times, each gave you a new piece of the narrative puzzle, which in turn, moved the storyline along. The voice acting isn’t the most stellar of performances, but it gets the job done. This narrative does bonk you on the head with the “big corp = bad” a bit too much at times, but I ultimately chalked that up to the devs being passionate on this topic. I ended up pouring about 15 hours into this game with a 100% completion.
While it may not have re-playability, it certainly does have heart and soul. And to me, that makes my plunge Under the Waves worth it.
