The key to making a simple game like Submerged: Hidden Depths work and avoid becoming boring is to use what gameplay elements it does have in fun and surprising ways while making sure the entire experience doesn’t overstay its welcome. For the most part, this standalone sequel to 2015’s Submerged from Uppercut Games seems to understand that. Like with most games that rely on atmosphere to do so much of the heavy lifting, to describe this game as one where you simply explore and solve puzzles is a decidedly small way to look at it. It’s not inaccurate to categorize it that way though, as it clearly stays within the confines of the genre.

"If dialing back the complexity of a lot of modern puzzle adventure games while soaking up a lovingly crafted atmosphere sounds like a good time to you, then the case for playing Submerged: Hidden Depths seems like a fairly easy one to make."

That said, the special sauce drizzled on top of Hidden Depths is a profoundly evocative tone, created by a combination of its gorgeous visual style and its undeniably moving soundtrack. Despite the characters rarely speaking at all, and the story mostly staying in the background, it only took me about 30 seconds to forget about how tired of this art style I am to fully enjoy playing as these characters. The little non-verbal brother and sister things they do are given about as much attention as their grander-scale journey of liberating these floating ruins of the ravages of time and discovering the secrets within them. The reality of their relationship to each other and the world they’re uncovering is brought to life all the more with the game’s well-designed graphics that, while simple, also shine on the PS5 with deep saturated sunsets and convincing water physics that don’t stop the game from running smoothly.

Unraveling the adventure will have you doing a lot of the same few things though. Using a telescope to identify places to explore, heading there in your boat, solving the puzzles that await and planting giant seeds is a pattern that becomes a bit too predictable a bit too soon, as it doesn’t do as much as it could have with mixing up those core elements. Thankfully the game’s many explorable sites also contain plenty of items to collect and ethereal creatures to discover, giving it a nice optional layer of collect-a-thon energy if you so desire it. Finding different items that flesh out the world a bit is a nice way to divert from your main objective every so often, and can provide some replay value for those that might technically complete the game but still want a reason to hang around in it. The collecting has a slight addicting quality to it as it very clearly tells you how many of any given item is left in the world waiting for you to find it. While I still think the atmosphere is the main draw, rest assured, fans of collecting stuff could certainly scratch that itch with Submerged: Hidden Depths if that’s all they want out of it.

Discovering new areas on your own and traveling to them on your boat is a breeze, as all you really need to do is genuinely look around through your telescope at a good vantage point and the game will let you know when you’re close to seeing an area of importance. Follow the indicators and it’ll be added right to your compass where it will perpetually dare you to come explore it until you finally do. Going there is just as simple. Controlling the boat is about as easy as it gets, but wisely, the developer didn’t let these moments fall flat as you can make some discoveries on your way to any given point as well.

"While I still think the atmosphere is the main draw, rest assured, fans of collecting stuff could certainly scratch that itch with Submerged: Hidden Depths if that’s all they want out of it."

Once you get to an area where you can park your boat and start exploring, you’ll also find that these areas are very thoughtfully designed with ziplines to glide down, ledges to scuttle across, and a few other types of traversals that make them more entertaining to wander around in than they would otherwise be. The simplistic approach to storytelling also translates to its controls, as climbing around, hopping across chasms on little platforms, and pulling yourself up on ledges are all done with a simple press of the joystick, relegating actual jumping to only areas where making large leaps are more obviously needed. It might not work in a more traditional action game, but it feels right at home here. You do play as both characters for various reasons throughout the story, but they basically play the same and neither seem to have any real advantage or disadvantage when compared to the other, which is a bit of a shame, as that could have been a nice way to inject more variety into the game.

Ultimately you want to find one of the ten seeds if you can and plant it to cleanse the area before moving on, and some areas shroud these seeds more than others under layers of platforming and puzzles. The puzzles sadly might be the weakest element of the entire gameplay loop, as many of them blur together with only a small handful of elements that aren’t changed around much, and sometimes fall a bit flat. A particular annoyance that stood out to me; it can be hard to tell what pressing a floor button did if you don’t happen to be facing the exact right direction when you do it, and some buttons that require objects to be set on them won’t let you remove them to see what you did. This can result in a few minutes or even long stretches of time where you’re just looping around the structure trying to find whatever changed and/or whatever new path was just revealed, and that’s exactly what you don’t want in a game that so heavily relies on a steady flow of immersion to keep the experience going.

As mentioned, the music is positively outstanding here. It’s rare that a video game so deliberately leans on its music to carry its various themes, much less do it well. Submerged: Hidden Depths absolutely nails it here. Whether it’s the simple ethereal tones that fill out the game’s less energetic moments, the uplifting melodies that accompany discovery and success, or even the handful of somewhat unnerving pieces that underscore the game’s darker, more surreal sections. Every mood the game tries to achieve is made exponentially better with this thoughtful soundtrack.

"If you like these sorts of atmospheric games, Submerged: Hidden Depths will likely serve as a meaningful addition to your library, though it won’t distract from the undisputed kings of it."

At this point, you should probably already know if Submerged: Hidden Depths is for you. If you like these sorts of atmospheric games, it will likely serve as a meaningful addition to your library, though it won’t distract from the undisputed kings of it. It slips up a bit with repetition and pacing, which can lead to occasional lags in your enjoyment, but mostly delivers on what it promises to otherwise with a slower, more relaxing vibe that few games lean into this much. If you don’t typically like these sorts of games, there’s little here to change your mind outside of a reasonably dense web of collectables and puzzles that more-or-less fit with the $20 price tag. Had the game either expanded on its ideas or honed them a bit more, I could more emphatically and broadly recommended it, but as it is, it gets enough right that many fans of the genre should like it, and some might even love it, but it mostly forgoes being much more than that.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

First person rogue-lite dungeon crawler City of Brass is the latest free title on the Epic Games Store. Log in to your Epic Games account now and download it for free. City of Brass will be available until June 6th, with Kingdom: New Lands replacing it after that.

Set in an Arabian Nights-like metropolis, City of Brass sees player exploring randomly generated environments to obtain treasure. Upon seizing the treasure, the player must then escape the city. Throw in rogue-lite elements like traps and random perks, along with melee focused combat, and you have a rather entertaining experience.

City of Brass has also been updated for free with new playable classes and content. It’s currently available for Xbox One, PS4, PC, and Nintendo Switch at a normal retail price of $19.99. The Epic Mega Sale is also ongoing, providing a $10 discount for titles that are priced $14.99 or higher. It ends on June 13th, so hurry up if you want to nab titles like Ashen, Control, and World War Z for cheap.

Treasure lies hidden in the heart of the city for those who are quick and clever.

City of Brass by @UppercutGames is now available for FREE in the #EpicGamesStore until June 6!

⚔️: https://t.co/UfdcwB5l2b pic.twitter.com/ILsWd3OPa7

— Epic Games Store (@EpicGames) May 30, 2019

Uppercut Games’ first person rogue-lite City of Brass didn’t have the most explosive reception when it launched for Xbox One, PS4, and PC. However, it may just have better luck on the Nintendo Switch. The developer recently announced that City of Brass would be heading to the Nintendo eShop on February 8th.

The story focuses on players venturing into the titular City of Brass and stealing the treasures that lay within. The city’s environments are procedurally generated and change with each run, so you’ll come across different hazards with each new attempt. Fortunately, players can use a whip to fight enemies, swing from various objects, and even grab objects.

If the city is a little overbearing (or too easy), then the Blessings and Burdens system lets you fool around with modifiers to increase player health and damage output, item costs, and much more. City of Brass will feature three new unlockable characters – the Brigand, Soldier, and Hellion – to go with the Fool and Traveler on Nintendo Switch. Each promises a different gameplay experience to go with all the new enemies, weapons, and relics added through free updates.

Uppercut Games’ City of Brass has been somewhat under the radar since it entered Steam Early Access. Having been there for less than a year, the procedurally generated first person rogue-lite challenges you to gather treasure and items while fighting enemies. The full version is now available with update 1.0 which brings tons of new features and bug fixes, including the final boss fight.

As with Spelunky, players will have a whip to start with. City of Brass allows them to bestow different benefits to the whip, including igniting enemies. The existence of genies, who grant wishes for different powers while offering items, throws an extra wrinkle into the adventure.

Since you’re racing against time, the general vibe of the game has plenty of jumping and sliding, navigating spikes and blades while fighting off enemies in order to progress forward. Along with PC via Steam, City of Brass is also available for Xbox One and PS4. Check out the launch trailer below for more information.

City of Brass is a rogue-lite game that is being developed by an Australian indie studio called Uppercut Games. The game was first announced last year we’ve slowly been able to learn more about the game. In a new interview with Wccftech, Director Ed Orman offered some technical insights regarding how the game will perform on the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro.

The game will fully support HDR on the Xbox One X and will run at 4K resolution. It will also boast some other enhancements such as higher quality lighting and better framerates. The game will also run with better visual quality on the PS4 Pro, although there won’t be HDR support and the game will run at 1080p resolution.

The developer stated that they hope to offer HDR support for the PS4 Pro in the future. When asked about the possibility of a Switch port, Director Ed Orman replied, “I love my Nintendo Switch. And the Unreal Engine supports Switch, so it’s something we are considering for the future.”

City of Brass is now available on  Steam Early Access.

Uppercut Games, which developed Submerged, has revealed its next big game – City of Brass, a first person rogue-lite title which takes place in a city inspired by Arabian Nights. It will release this Fall for PC via Steam and arrive on Xbox One and PS4 in 2018.

City of Brass stars a thief who runs around this city, gathering treasure, avoiding traps and ghouls, taking the help of genies and taking procedurally generated quests. Permadeath is an issue though. The goal is to steal the treasure at “the city’s heart” in the time allotted.

Lead designer Ed Orman noted that, “Players must learn how to use the traps to kill their foes, and even turn enemies against each another. You’ll perish in the City of Brass – often, and quite horribly – but as your skills improve and you discover new ways to cheat death, you’ll return to fight another day.”

Weapons, armour and relics must be gathered to help you stand a chance with combat relying on agility. Global modifiers called Divine Burdens are also available to amp up the challenge with enemies having different abilities and environmental hazards increasing. What are your thoughts on the premise for City of Brass? Let us know in the comments.

There are examples of the narrative driven game being done very well, such as Journey, or Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, or even more prototypical versions of this genre mostly seen by Team Ico. It’s not hard to see where the DNA of Submerged comes from, but it failed to replicate what made these games work in the first place.

"There are no peaks and valleys in the story to maintain a level of interest from the player that better games like Journey command so effortlessly. "

An homage (or rip off) to the opening of Shadow of the Colossus brings us into the world of Submerged, as a brother-sister pair in a boat float up to an isolated building amid what is suggested to have once been a bustling, New York-esque metropolis. The sister Miku must then search the dilapidated world for supplies to care for her injured charge.

These are the stakes at the start of the paltry few hours of runtime, and even over such a short length of time, the first and biggest failing of Submerged is that the narrative remains static throughout. There are no peaks and valleys in the story to maintain a level of interest from the player that better games like Journey command so effortlessly.

While searching the world, Miku is bound to come across at least a few of the 60 collectibles, which help piece together what happened to the once thriving city around her, and reveal more about the personal story of the two non-characters the game expects you to invest in. It’s interesting how they’re presented in comic strip like hieroglyphs, leaving a certain amount of interpretation to the player. However, they hinted in my mind toward a far more interesting story, and one I would have preferred to play.

"The world is as empty as the vast ocean before our boring heroine. A world that doesn’t even seem to want a player."

The world we’re begrudgingly allowed to exist in seems all at once serene, empty and hostile. I dodged around the word ‘play’ here, but we’ll get to that in a moment. There are no real characters to speak of in Submerged. There’s nothing outside of Miku herself that moves besides the occasional whale in the distance. The world is as empty as the vast ocean before our boring heroine. A world that doesn’t even seem to want a player.

Submerged was proudly touted as a non-combat game by the developers, and we’ve already discussed how this decision means the game does nothing to vary tone throughout the experience, but I skimmed over what interaction it does resent offering you. Firstly the supplies Miku requires aren’t by default pinpointed on the map for you. Rather you scan around the world with a telescope to locate them.

Once pinged onto your map, you slowly motor over to your discovery and make a generally slow ascent with dumbed down Uncharted type climbing. The weakest part of Uncharted titles, generally mocked, and simply there to vary the pace between firefights, is made even weaker and turned into the main activity you do in Submerged.

"There is no skill needed or anything to be asked of the player here in Submerged. It doesn’t even really want you there. It wants you to sit down, shut up and look at the pretty world they made."

The climbing is so mundane, and the environments so unchanging that I longed for some kind of variation. I could only enjoy the world itself for so long that I needed something new, even if that meant embracing death. I actively tried to die at several points, and was not capable of this. The game simply doesn’t allow it, regardless of how perilous the on screen action may appear. There is no skill needed or anything to be asked of the player here in Submerged. It doesn’t even really want you there. It wants you to sit down, shut up and look at the pretty world they made.

The worst part is, the presentation isn’t even all that stunning. The game is all about the water and it doesn’t even have better water effects than Super Mario Sunshine, and there are plenty of muddy and similar looking building textures that turn any of the climbs into the same old slog. The soundtrack isn’t bad in and of itself. But it isn’t exciting either. You could swap it out with almost any atmospheric Hollywood or “art game” soundtrack and you would have the same thing.

"Lazy storytelling and giggling contempt for having to be played drag it down enough, before the visual pitfalls stick the game’s foot ever further in its almost pretentious mouth."

“Walking simulator” is a term I hate to use, but Submerged is totally deserving of such an odious label all the same. Lazy storytelling and giggling contempt for having to be played drag it down enough, before the visual pitfalls stick the game’s foot ever further in its almost pretentious mouth. Even as a narrative driven game, there are better selections to make than drowning in the tedium that is Submerged.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.

Uppercut Games has announced that its third person adventure game Submerged will be releasing on August 4th for the PS4 and Steam and August 7th on PC. To make things more ideal for PS4 owners, PlayStation Plus subscribers can avail of a 20 percent discount from launch day onwards.

Submerged is a rather interesting story as it centers around siblings Miku and Taku as they’re stranded in a flooded city packed with mysteries and vast environments. Miku will be in charge of caring for her brother, who is wounded, and that involves exploring underwater structures and flooded streets for supplies.

There’s quite a bit of mystery to the area though and hidden objects peppered throughout will provide clues. And it certainly helps that the visuals look good on Unreal Engine 4.

Will you be picking up Submerged when it releases in the next few weeks? Let us know your thoughts in the coming weeks.

Prior to working on Submerged, Uppercut Games developed the iOS and Android video games, Epoch & Epoch 2 as well as SnowJinks.

Thus far, Submerged has been officially confirmed to be launching on the PlayStation 4, making it Uppercut Games’ first current generation video game. The game is thought to be releasing on other platforms including Xbox One and PC in “early 2015”.

• 1. Development
• 2. Story
• 3. Gameplay
• 4. Characters

Development

As clearly shown in the official development blog for Submerged, the game will be running on Unreal Engine 4. This has given the developers access to tools that have made the development process a bit easier than if they had been working with previous Unreal Engine builds. Inverse Kinematics, a system that allows for more accurate movement in certain objects, is used to help position the limbs and extremities of Miku and Taku.

Speaking about this, Uppercat Games’ Ben Driehuis has said that ,”Doing basic IK in Unreal 4 is quite easy”. While Inverse Kinematics isn’t revolutionary, it’s an important system in character focused games like Submerged. Driehuis also said, “The other issue we had is once we started adding in the level art the limbs would often look out of place or go through the meshes. The solution was to use Inverse Kinematics or IK. The quick explanation of this is that we can set the hands and feet to exact positions and the IK system will rotate the bones before it in the chain so that they end up there.”

Also talking about the options afforded to them by Unreal Engine 4, Uppercut Games’ Ed Orman said, “We use Unreal Engine 4 to create the gorgeous graphics that you see above.”

The first playable build of the game was presented to Canberra Game Devs during PAX Australia, this served as both a gameplay reveal and a means of locating bugs in the game based on played feedback.

Working on the game’s score, is the Canadian/Australian, BAFTA award winning composer Jeff Van Dyck. His portfolio is extensive, he has worked on titles like Alien Isolation, Medieval 2: Total War, Total War: Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai among other Total War games.

Talking about getting Van Dyck on board to work on the game, Orman said, “We’ve enlisted BAFTA-Award Winner Jeff Van Dyck to provide the musical score. The gameplay is designed with no failure states: play at your own pace, safe in the knowledge that you’ll never die. It all adds up to create a relaxing, mysterious adventure that everyone can enjoy.”

Speaking by way of the European PlayStation blog, Orman has expressed an interest in introducing Virtual Reality support, but only if it’s introduced in a meaningful way. Answering a question put to him by a gamer about Project Morpheus support, Orman said, “We are interested in VR support, but we would want to put some real thought into designing for it – don’t want to just slap it in. That said, I’d sure love to be able to stand in the world of Submerged and have a good look around.”

Story

Submerged focuses on siblings Miku and Taku, who arrive at a strange location by boat. Due to Taku being injured, the sister Miku must explore the area and find supplies to help him recover. Finding supplies will be a bit of an issue though due to the collapsing nature of the nearby city. Exploring by boat, Miku will use her telescope to discover supply caches and ultimately explore various, deteriorating structures to find resources to help her brother.

Gameplay

Submerged is an adventure video game that focuses on the two main characters, the game is designed in a way that the player cannot lose, given that there are no “fail states”.

Arriving in a strange and mostly collapsing and submerged city by boat, you must find shelter for your wounded brother whom you will also provide for.

Navigating the game world with your boat, finding your way and locating useful items thanks to a telescope and climbing your way through the ruins, you will gather the items neccesary to shelter yourself and your brother as well as supply aid.

Talking about this, Uppercut Games’ Ed Orman said, “As she traverses the sunken metropolis, Miku starts to uncover the secrets of how this world came to be. And in turn, we begin to learn about Miku and Taku: what drove them to this mysterious city, where the only inhabitants appear to be malformed copies of the native sea-life?”

Character

At this time, not a great deal is known about Miku and Taku, the brother and sister duo that serve as the primary protagonists of Submerged.

Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game.

Update: Also coming on Xbox One and PC.

Uppercut Games has announced a brand new exploration adventure game, Submerged, that will be coming to the PlayStation 4 later this year.

Submerged seems to be the latest in the new line of games that de-emphasize combat or aggression as the primary mode of interaction with the game world. Instead, the focus seems to be on actually exploring and appreciating the world around you, and interacting with it in other, more non violent ways.

“Submerged is a serene adventure set in a city that has mysteriously become flooded and overgrown,” said Uppercut Games’ Ed Orman. “It follows the story of siblings Miku and Taku — the pair arrive in this strange place in a boat, and Miku has to carry her wounded brother Taku to shelter before she can start gathering the supplies she’ll need to nurse him back to health. But to do that, she’ll have to find the supplies first! She will have to explore using her boat and telescope, locate the forgotten caches, then climb the crumbling buildings to retrieve them.”

It also seems like a lot of impressive talent is involved in the making of the game.

“We use Unreal Engine 4 to create the gorgeous graphics that you see above,” Orman said. “We’ve enlisted BAFTA-Award Winner Jeff Van Dyck to provide the musical score. The gameplay is designed with no failure states: play at your own pace, safe in the knowledge that you’ll never die. It all adds up to create a relaxing, mysterious adventure that everyone can enjoy.”

If you want to see the game’s first trailer, you can check it out above. And stay tuned to GamingBolt for more information.