On the one hand, here’s a game absolutely loaded with atmosphere: it’s about working together to crew intensely vulnerable, grimy submarines, on voyages through the hostile darkness beneath the ice of an alien world. This is my first proper game of Barotrauma, the co-op science fiction submarine sim that entered Steam Early Access yesterday, and it’s completely baffling - in exactly the way I was hoping it would be. I’m the ship’s jester, you see.” Oh right. “A doctor, sir?” he says, with the dry amusement of a 1970s policeman. “Why sir,” he implores, thinking I can’t hear the smile in his voice, “whyever would you point that gun at me? I’m here, just as you asked.” I raise my pistol, fearing that the madness of spending months beneath the ice has caught up with me at last. And he’s playing circus music on an acoustic guitar. But my medical officer is dressed as a clown. “Just two ticks, skipper”.Įventually, Lamp reports that he’s ready for duty, and the bridge’s door opens with a greasy hiss. “Nearly there, sir” he’ll say, in his calm Welsh baritone. Lamp, was meant to report to the bridge minutes ago, and despite my increasingly irate demands for him to report his status, he’ll only offer foolish excuses. This isn’t our ocean, after all.īut I’ve got more immediate concerns than phantoms out in the black.

Deep groans as the hull contorts under the immense pressure of the water outside, and metallic ticks that could be rivets settling, or could be claws testing the weld-lines of the hull from the outside. Behind their racket, however, there are other sounds. And in truth, I’ve got barely more experience than them - but I can’t let them sense my weakness.Įven now I can hear my schlubmariners clanking around in the bilges, bumping into things and giggling like schoolboys as they drop their tools. They’re an untrained bunch a mob of roustabouts I hired at the last waystation because I couldn’t afford anyone else. I’m pacing the dank, red-lit command deck, haggard even before the voyage starts, and worrying about my crew.

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