Under: Depths of Fear

My spreadsheet brain usually tags a game by its decision tree depth within the first hour. Under: Depths of Fear handed me a very short list: open door, find key, open next door, hide under table. That's the loop, repeated across a claustrophobic ocean liner with rising floodwater as the timer. The setup is genuinely interesting on paper. You are Alexander Dockter, a traumatized WW1 veteran, and the ship he's trapped on is as much a psychological prison as a physical one. The lore scattered through readable notes builds a story about dead soldiers, guilt, and a sinister medical program called the 2nd Life project. For a two-person studio, that narrative ambition is real, and the voice acting is solid enough to carry the emotional weight where the visuals can't. The problem is that the mechanical design does not back the premise up. Progression is almost entirely key-hunting: you shoulder-check doors to see if they open, wander until you spot a key on a rack or inside a drawer, then repeat. A gun and a mine show up in your inventory, which sounds like it might open tactical options, but both items exist only as puzzle tools to blow locks off doors. The enemy cannot be fought. It is a lanky, WWI-ghost type that you escape by crouching under a bed or closing a door, and the hide mechanic is so forgiving that once you are concealed, the entity simply wanders away. No line of sight check, no audio detection, no escalation. For players who want decision-making pressure, that is a system that defeats itself inside twenty minutes. The flooding sequences are where the game gets closest to genuine tension. Rising water with a hard timer forces fast navigation, and the panicked geometry of identical corridors does create real disorientation. The trouble is that the paths are often so poorly signposted that the sequence becomes trial-and-error dying rather than skill-tested routing. Darkness compounds this: candles provide minimal illumination and some areas are so underlit that reading the environment becomes a frustration rather than an atmospheric choice. The graphics are serviceable but date the game noticeably. Steam reviews sit at a mixed 65 percent positive across roughly 298 reviews, which tracks with a game that has a genuinely unsettling first act and then runs out of ideas before the two-hour mark. Who is this for? Honestly, the audience is narrow. If you have played every Amnesia, Layers of Fear, and SOMA title already and need something to fill an evening, the WW1 nautical horror setting is distinctive enough to warrant a look at a steep discount. The story of Alexander has real heart, and community feedback consistently highlights the atmosphere and jump-scare pacing as genuine strengths. Veterans of old-school survival horror who remember back-and-forth key puzzles from PS1-era Resident Evil may also find the rhythm familiar rather than tedious. For anyone else, the shallow hide mechanic, the repetitive door-loop structure, the unforgiving and poorly-checkpointed flood sections, and a total runtime under two hours represent a hard case for full price. There is no mod ecosystem, no difficulty scaling, no replayability once the credits roll.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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