Diluvion Resubmerged relaunch sale

Despite its exciting premise of Jules Verne-inspired nautical adventuring, sea monsters and mechanical leviathans, Diluvion sank out of sonar range shortly after launching early last year – yesterday, it resurfaced under an expanded name. While a striking looking game, it got depth-charged by negative reviews, with complaints about wonky UI and some underdeveloped systems. Developers Arachnid Games have been patching holes ever since. Boasting major improvements, it’s currently 75% discounted. Below, a fresh trailer for the new ‘Resubmerged’ version.

From the little bit I had to play, it’s three quarters 3D claustrophobic ‘light’ submarine sim, one quarter I struggle to define. As a salvager, you make most of your money finding wrecked structures or ships, boarding them and poking around to find loot. This is handled ingeniously by zooming in to a hand-drawn 2D cutaway view of the vessel you’re searching, and you manually click your way through crates and doorways to explore and plunder. You’ll also occasionally meet enemies in these wrecks, and your crew need to engage in turn-based RPG style combat to proceed.

Crew management and dialogue work this way too, dragging and dropping crew-members to their ship stations, with backup crew handling repairs and boarding. In friendlier environments, you can trade salvage for gear and additional crew, slowly cluttering up your submarine as far as your (upgradable) life support will allow. If there’s one thing I have to grumble about in my limited time playing so far, it’s the writing – it just feels a little dry and hollow, which stands out against the brightly coloured haze of its weird ocean world. I’m hoping to play more soon.

As I missed out on Diluvion first time round, I’ve little point of reference as to what they’ve added to it. Among the bigger changes listed are a major overhaul to UI, salvaging and the ship upgrade system. There’s new quests, smarter enemies, and a new save system – previously checkpoint-based, but now you can update your captain’s log whenever you see fit. It’s good to see Arachnid didn’t give up on this one – it feels too special to just leave to the barnacles.

Diluvion: Resubmerged is available on GOG for £3.74, and the Fleet Edition (including soundtrack, artbook and a bonus submarine) costs £4.74/€6.24/$6.24 on Steam.