Depths of Sanity

I have a soft spot for the games that nobody puts on a list. Depths of Sanity spent six years in development, crept out on Halloween 2022, and somehow still flies under the radar despite sitting at a 92% positive rating from its Steam community. That gap between what it deserves and what it gets talked about is the whole reason I wanted to write this up. The central design gamble is real and it holds. Because the entire experience is set underwater, the genre's usual scaffolding disappears entirely. There are no double jumps, no wall-runs, no gravity pulling you into a rhythm. Instead, you pilot Abe Douglas through full 360-degree movement, and the tools you collect replace all of that lost verticality in ways that feel thoughtfully designed rather than bolted on. The sonar guides you through pitch-black biomes. A diver suit squeezes you through tight passages. Tow lines yank you through heavy currents, and with a bit of creativity, you can also launch yourself headfirst into enemies with them. Traversal in this game has its own logic, and once it clicks, exploring coral reefs, sunken wrecks, magma lairs, and a late-game area called Whale Fall genuinely feels like descending somewhere you are not supposed to be. The atmosphere is where Bomb Shelter Games clearly poured their soul. The sound design reacts to the narrative in ways that catch you off-guard; audio logs introduce a threat, the score warps to match it, and then the threat arrives. It is the kind of layered environmental storytelling that bigger-budget games outsource to cutscenes. The pixel art has a dark, deliberate quality to it, and the full-game art overhaul made for launch brings the earlier biomes up to the standard of the later ones. At 10 to 15 hours depending on how much you want to uncover, the game also knows its own length, which is a discipline I respect more than I can say. There are multiple endings, and the community conversation around which one lands better is a small but genuine sign that the writing earned some emotional investment. The honest caveat is combat. The floaty 360-degree movement that makes exploration feel otherworldly also makes aiming and firing feel inconsistent, particularly on keyboard and mouse. Some players pushed through it; some did not. The game handles better with a controller, and if you can accept that the combat is serviceable rather than satisfying, the atmosphere and map design carry the rest. The upgrade loop, hull expansions, and a late-game Equipment Scanner that helps completionists track down remaining secrets all add up to a metroidvania skeleton that is structurally solid, even if the shooting never quite reaches the same standard as the world it lives in. If you are the kind of player who chose Subnautica for the dread and not the base-building, or who finished Hollow Knight and immediately wanted something weirder and quieter, this is worth your attention. It was a six-year project from a tiny team, and it shows in the specificity of every biome and the care of every audio cue. It does not announce itself loudly. It just sits there, waiting to be found.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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