Darkwater

I put several sessions into Darkwater expecting a competent-but-forgettable extraction game and came out the other side slightly traumatised and already queuing for another run. That reaction tells you most of what you need to know. This is a first-person cooperative extraction roguelite in which you and up to three crew members command a submarine trapped beneath a government-frozen alien ocean, hopping between procedurally generated outposts to scavenge fuel, medkits, ammunition, and whatever sellable junk the previous tenants left behind before something - enemy subs, abyssal creatures, flooding, or your own team's catastrophic decision-making - ends the run. The closest reference points are FTL's branching map of randomised encounters and Lethal Company's scream-comedy co-op loop, but the first-person perspective changes the texture of both. You are not pushing icons around a screen: you are physically sprinting through flooded corridors, patching hull breaches with one hand, and trying to remember which valve controls the bilge pump while torpedoes rattle the hull. Each player can take on distinct roles - sonar operator, weapons manager, engineer - and the game is brutal about punishing miscommunication. A mishandled pipe configuration can detonate your engine. Greed during a loot run will get you trapped as water rises past your knees. The tension is genuinely physical in a way that pure strategy games rarely achieve. Submarine-to-submarine combat earns particular praise from the community for its strategic depth. You can target specific systems on enemy vessels and manage your own repairs mid-firefight, which means every engagement is a small-scale crisis simulation rather than a stats comparison. Outpost scavenging is the weaker pillar - environments feel somewhat sparse at present, and reviewers have noted the variety of encounters and enemy types could go further. The sound design is excellent and consistently unsettling, but the game is not yet leaning into its horror credentials as hard as the premise deserves. There is enormous potential in flooded labs, cursed cargo, and ghost transmissions from dead ships; right now, only some of that space is being used. Solo play is technically supported but this is fundamentally a co-op game, and rating it outside that context feels dishonest. With a full crew of four it is frequently hilarious and occasionally frightening in equal measure - the kind of session that produces stories. The procedural generation keeps runs distinct enough that the loop does not immediately exhaust itself, and submarine customisation gives experienced crews something to optimise between dives. Performance had some rough patches through early access, and there are still community guides covering edge-case pipe-and-valve interactions that the in-game tutorialisation does not fully address. Targon Studios is a small operation and the development pace reflects that, but 1.0 shipped without a price increase, which is a credible signal of good faith. If your squad has already exhausted Lethal Company and wants something with more tactical friction and genuine sci-fi atmosphere, Darkwater is the next logical stop. Solo players or anyone who hates communicating under pressure should temper expectations - this game asks you to talk, coordinate, and accept catastrophic failure with good humour. The bones are strong, the setting is underused but genuinely eerie, and the gap between what it is now and what it could become is the most exciting thing about it.

Monika · Scout Team

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