Under The Waves Review

It’s hard to not notice the analogous relationship between the game and the titles as just under the surface of some visuals hiccups, stiff character animations, and a crafting system that feels out of place lies a game that is full of excellent art direction, great atmosphere, superb voice acting with a story that is engrossing, albeit a little predictable at times.

It was inevitable for comparisons to Subnautica, which outside of the setting, is nothing alike. Under The Waves is much more akin to something like Firewatch with the main character trying to run away from their problems, ironically, which only leads to more problems.

You are Stan who has decided to impose solitude on himself to help deal with some deep seated issues and trauma that has yet to be healed. You slowly unravel the story of whats happening at the bottom of the ocean as a worker for Unitech, an oil company with an offshore rig. Most of the game is told through talking to Tim, your friend above surface, who walks you through figuring out what you need to be doing and how to properly manage the constant issues that are arising during the storm. This leads to you moving between jobs in your personal submersible and out in the ocean by yourself.

These are the main mechanics of the game and for the most part they are fun and perform as you’d like them to. You need to find materials at the bottom of the depths to craft items including bigger oxygen tanks and whatnot but proper monitoring, you can render the crafting system irrelevant except for the missions that require it, and the one item that you need to progress the story.

The audio is top notch across the board as Under The Waves is a feast for the ears. The sound effects of the deep have a proper muffled feel to them, voices and comms sound perfectly poor enough, and the soundtrack emphasizes the different moments of hope and despair during your time below.

Removing the crafting system would have not only given the development team more time to work on areas that needed attention, but would have helped the pacing of gameplay which suffered at times due to the crafting. It would have been just as easy to have found the items already built. With just a few more months of development, Under The Waves could have been elevated from a good game to a great game with the removal of immersion breaking items screen tears, frame rate dips, and awkward facial animations, but despite these issues, Under The Waves is still a worthy voyage.

HIGH 7