Depth

Depth is an asymmetric multiplayer game from Ammobox Studios that pits a team of scuba divers against player-controlled sharks in claustrophobic underwater arenas. Released in 2014 and still pulling a Very Positive rating from over thirty thousand Steam reviews, it earns that reception the hard way: through a genuinely uncomfortable atmosphere and a tension loop that few games in this niche have matched. The diver side plays like a cooperative survival exercise. You and up to three teammates move through murky water collecting treasure, reviving each other, and trying not to become a snack. Your tools include spearguns, underwater flares, and gadgets like the sonar pulse that briefly illuminates the dark. The shark side is something else entirely. You feel fast, powerful, and predatory, using boost charges and ambush angles to isolate divers, then pulling them apart with bite-drag mechanics that are viscerally satisfying in a way that might make you feel a little guilty. Both sides require genuine coordination. Lone-wolf sharks get kited and shot to pieces. Divers who separate from the group last about thirty seconds. The atmosphere is where this game quietly earns its reputation. Depth knows that darkness and audio design do most of the heavy lifting. The soundtrack swells and drops in response to proximity, so divers get that Jaws-style low-frequency creep when a shark is circling just outside visible range. The ocean floor maps feel genuinely vast and isolating, not as a technical achievement but as an intentional design choice. There are shipwrecks, coral ridges, and trenches that funnel both predator and prey into ambush corridors. The lighting is minimal by design, not by limitation. Where it stumbles is in the consistency of the player population and some rough edges that have never fully smoothed out in the years since launch. Matchmaking can be slow depending on the time of day, and the learning curve for new shark players is steep enough that lopsided matches are common early on. The Metacritic score of 65 reflects a critics community that wrote it off too quickly at launch before the player base found its rhythm. The Steam review body tells a more accurate story: this is a niche multiplayer experience that rewards the people who stick with it. The honest audience for Depth is players who want something that prioritizes mood over polish, and who have at least one friend willing to queue up as a diver squad. Playing with randoms is fine but playing with a coordinated four-person diver team against a skilled shark is one of the more genuinely tense multiplayer experiences you can have on PC. If asymmetric horror-adjacent games like Dead by Daylight scratch an itch for you, Depth covers similar territory but underwater and with significantly less cosmetic bloat.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

Be the first to comment on Depth.