Submerged Review: Under Water, Above the Rest

Submerged from Uppercut Games caught me completely off guard. I don’t know what exactly I was expecting when I first loaded into the game, but I certainly wasn’t expecting to beat the game in one sitting.

Running at just around 4 hours, I completed Submerged last night, in one shot. I can’t think of another game that I’ve done that with, apart from the very short Dear Esther. I just could not put Submerged down.

Submerged gave me everything I want in a game, and then some. It gave me a new world to explore, one not full of deserts, or zombies, or battle tanks, but a world completely flooded, where only the very tallest of buildings rise up above the waters. A world that begged me to explore it, a world that I wanted to see every inch of, even if I didn’t need to. I haven’t felt like that about a game since I was into Skyrim, and Red Dead Redemption before that.

The story of Submerged unfolds as you scour the flooded city for supplies. You play as a teenage girl, and the supplies are to help your younger brother survive some sort of sickness that has incapacitated him.

Submerged is a free-form exploration game, so you can go anywhere in the game right from the start, but each time you find a supply case the game transports you back to the hideaway where you’ve stashed your brother. The hideaway is conveniently right in the middle of the map, so you can just head off in a new direction each time you return. This really sets the player up for a new adventure each time they set out from the hideaway. As long as you head in a new direction, you’re bound to find something new to explore.

There is no fighting in Submerged. The game is completely passive, though not without tension. There are two main sources of tension (which I will not spoil), not to mention the mystery of who the kids are and why everything is flooded, and it all kept me well invested in the game. Without having to worry about health or ammo, I was able to really relax and appreciate the detailed world that Uppercut Games built for me to explore.

Submerged also comes with a “postcard” mode that allows you to pause the game at any time and take a screenshot from any angle around the girl. This allowed me to take some truly spectacular shots. Little snippets of my adventure to help me remember it for months to come.

Not that I’ll need any help remembering this fantastic little game. Submerged is my new go-to recommendation when people ask me what indie game they should check out next. Submerged is out now on Steam, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. Do check it out.

A review copy of Submerged was provided to Epic Brew by Uppercut Games.