Coming up for air should be the moment you get a little breathing room in an underwater survival game. In DEEP DIVER, it means the next trip down is going to be even worse.
PEGAX Studios‘ newly launched survival roguelite has just entered Early Access on Steam, with a clever risk-and-reward system built around every return to the surface. Each time you head up to refill your oxygen, the difficulty increases, enemies become more aggressive, and new threats can start appearing beneath the waves.
That leaves you with a decision to make every time your oxygen starts running low. Head back early and make everything harder before you’re ready, or stay down for as long as possible, build up your strength, and hope you’ve left yourself enough air to get back.
Coming Up for Air Has Consequences
While you’re underwater, you’ll hunt fish, fight off creatures, and collect upgrades that gradually turn your diver into something much better equipped to deal with the depths.
The temptation is to keep going. Every extra moment underwater gives you another opportunity to improve your build before the next difficulty increase, but you’re working against an oxygen supply that isn’t going to wait patiently while you decide whether you really need that next upgrade.
It’s a neat way of putting the underwater setting to work rather than simply using it as a backdrop. You’re constantly weighing up what you could gain by staying down against what you stand to lose if you get too greedy.
Sometimes that extra upgrade might be worth the risk, other times you’re probably going to wish you’d started swimming upward 30 seconds earlier.
Building Something That Can Survive the Depths
The Early Access version gives you eight weapons to experiment with alongside 30 different abilities and skill trees, so there should be plenty of room to find combinations that suit the way you want to play.
Exactly what you choose becomes increasingly important as a run progresses. Putting together the right upgrades could give you the damage needed to tear through groups of smaller creatures, while other choices might leave you better prepared for the much larger threats waiting below. That includes bosses, with some considerably oversized sea creatures standing between you and another successful dive.
The whole thing feeds into that familiar survival roguelite race to become ridiculously powerful before everything around you becomes ridiculously powerful too. This time, though, you can’t simply concentrate on what’s trying to kill you. You’ve got an oxygen meter demanding your attention as well.
There’s More Planned for Early Access
PEGAX Studios expects DEEP DIVER to remain in Early Access for around a year, although exactly how long it stays there will depend on development and player feedback. The studio already has plans to expand what’s currently available. The eight weapons included at launch are expected to grow to more than 10 by version 1.0, giving players additional options when putting together future builds.
The creatures themselves are getting some attention too. PEGAX Studios plans to introduce more individual AI behaviors for the different fish, which should help make encounters feel less predictable as development continues.
Regular updates are planned throughout Early Access, with additional weapons and features expected along the way.
The Deeper You Go…
In Deep Diver, There’s always going to be another enemy to fight, another upgrade worth chasing, or another reason to stay beneath the surface for just a little longer. The trick is knowing when you’ve pushed your luck far enough.
Head up too soon and you’re making the next dive harder before you need to. Leave it too late and all those upgrades you’ve collected aren’t going to be much help when you’ve got no oxygen left.
Sometimes knowing when to quit while you’re ahead really could be the difference between sinking and swimming.