While I’m underwater, might as well check some things off my backlog. Here’s a cool open-world/maze shmup with a unique if distracting visual gimmick.

Earth has been claimed by the oceans. You are a daring submarine captain fighting off hordes of sea creature robots(?) that infest the ruins of civilisation. The ruins amounts to some background elements and a bunch of girders; the game is mostly caves. You traverse back and forth through the sprawling tunnel system that makes up the game world, tracking down bosses as they pop up on the map.

Getting to know the layout of this space is important, because of the backtracking element. As you beat bosses, more appear but the map only has dots, no level geometry drawn in. Traversal does have the purpose of letting you power up, as the randomly spawning enemies can give you weapon upgrades, and you lose them when taking damage. You also have a secondary weapon found in crates and barrels which spawn around the map along with bosses. Getting lost is all too easy but doesn’t lose you too much time, and the incidental enemies aren’t nearly as challenging as the bosses which feels like the right balance.

Much of the world does look the same though, which ties in to the awkward visual design. By attempting to capture the feel of ancient, weathered sea maps the developers have just made the game harder to look at. The sole visual setting is to remove a small border around the screen, but I wished I could turn off the screen-wide mottled overlay/filter, as it was tiring on the eyes and could occasionally obscure enemy shots. I suppose it could be worse as they’ve done a decent job with strong outlines and the look is certainly distinctive, but I think the game is less playable and accessible for it.

It was cool seeing what new monstrous mechanical animal would turn up next, and how you could build yourself back up from a devastating defeat to eventually triumph against it, or choose one of the other unlockable subs if its weapon profile might be more useful. At a certain point the game becomes a bit “rinse and repeat”, and reuses bosses (but now with electricity!). And I would have liked to see a bit more variety and content in the game, not to mention a more useful map and some visual options. But the structure of the game is pretty innovative and I found it a decent way to fill time.