Song of the Deep

My first hour with Song of the Deep felt like cracking open an illustrated novel someone accidentally coded into a game engine. The art direction is genuinely striking - deep bioluminescent blues, steampunk wreckage tangled among sea creatures, and a hand-drawn storybook aesthetic that holds up better than a lot of 2016 releases. Insomniac built this with a small fifteen-person team as something of a passion project, and that sincerity comes through in every scene. The Irish narrator frames everything with a fairytale cadence that draws comparisons to Bastion, and protagonist Merryn is an easy character to root for. The mechanical loop puts you in control of a makeshift submarine through a 2D side-scrolling underwater world. Movement uses a single analog stick for both thrust and aim simultaneously, which gives the sub a weighted, buoyant feel that simulates being underwater without ever feeling truly precise. You switch between the submarine and a compact diving suit for tighter spaces, collect over 200 scattered treasures, and funnel scrap into a central upgrade hub that opens up sonar pulses, harpoon launchers, propulsion boosts, and around 30 total submarine upgrades. The Metroidvania loop of gating areas behind abilities works fine, and backtracking to previously locked zones with a new tool does generate that satisfying click of recognition the genre lives on. Combat is the softest part of the package. The claw arm and homing missile types handle most encounters without much thought, and the generous health pool means you can usually just absorb hits and fire back. A handful of enemies, like armored giant crabs that require hitting from behind, ask slightly more from you, but boss fights tend to devolve into waves of enemies in open arenas rather than anything inventive. The bigger frustration arrives in the game's second half, where light-beam redirect puzzles and physics-dependent obstacle sequences run directly into the floaty controls. You often know exactly what a puzzle wants you to do - actually doing it with imprecise momentum becomes the real challenge, and not in a rewarding way. A few reported bugs, including one that could block progression by making interactive objects non-interactive, were present at launch and worth knowing about before you start. Pace and runtime shape the experience as much as mechanics do. Most players finish in six to nine hours, with completionists pushing toward ten by chasing all the hidden collectibles. That length is about right for what the game is trying to be. This is not a game that competes with Hollow Knight on mechanical depth or with Ori and the Blind Forest on platforming precision. It sits closer to an interactive fairytale with Metroidvania scaffolding - relaxing, occasionally beautiful, narratively sweet, and comfortable operating well within its own limitations. Steam user reception lands at 84% positive across more than 500 reviews, which tracks with the critical consensus sitting around a 71 on Metacritic: good, not great, worth your time at the right price.

Alex · Scout Team

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