Deepest Trench

My honest first read on Deepest Trench was cautious optimism: underwater survival co-op is genuinely underserved as a genre, and a covert military operation set inside a crumbling Mariana Trench facility is a premise with real tension on paper. Favor Games, a debut indie studio, put two protagonists at the centre of this - ex-Navy SEAL Rob Wilson and deep-sea mechanic Maria Santiago, an estranged ex-couple forced by circumstance to patch up a classified government research base together. That interpersonal friction layered on top of the survival pressure is a reasonable hook, even if reviewers across the board found the actual dialogue and voice acting too clunky to carry the emotional weight the story demands. The core gameplay loop asks you to manage oxygen meters and battery supplies, solve environmental puzzles split across both characters, pilot underwater drones for recon, repair breached systems to maintain power, and survive encounters with deep-sea predators using a spear gun. In local split-screen co-op - which is clearly the intended mode - tasks like illuminating paths, rationing oxygen tanks between players, and trading tools under time pressure generate genuine moments of coordination that land well. The problem is everything around those moments. Swimming controls are sluggish and imprecise, puzzle logic frequently tips from challenging into opaque, and shark encounters in particular feel less like skill tests and more like unavoidable resets - the spear gun barely gets a chance to fire before the enemy connects. Solo play, which requires you to manually swap between both characters while tracking two separate oxygen timers, compounds the friction significantly. From a strategy and decision-making standpoint - which is where I focus my attention - the game is lighter than its tags suggest. Choices do shape some story beats and the game has two distinct endings, so there is a degree of branching that gives a second run a reason to exist. That second run is reportedly short, around an hour if you skip cutscenes. The puzzle design starts with genuine promise in the early acts and degrades as the mid-game repetition sets in: environments loop visually, puzzle patterns become predictable, and the pacing softens the finale's impact. Atmosphere is the one area where Deepest Trench genuinely delivers. The sound design - distant metallic groans, hissing oxygen, flickering station lights - does real work at building dread, and there are specific moments where the weight of being miles underwater feels tangible. That alone separates it from pure shovelware. For co-op players with a couch partner who enjoy the communication-heavy style of games like It Takes Two or A Way Out, Deepest Trench occupies a rougher, cheaper tier of that experience. Temper expectations on the polish side - visuals trend toward dated textures, controller remapping is limited, and post-game bugs have been reported. If you and a partner are specifically hunting an atmospheric underwater co-op with a short story and some light puzzle-solving, the asking price at indie tier is at least in the right ballpark. Anyone expecting tight combat mechanics, strategic depth, or solo value should recalibrate sharply.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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