Under the Waves

Nothing hurts a father's heart like children being hurt or dying. The Walking Dead (Telltale) grabbed me by hitting those emotional strings and The Last of Us did exactly the same thing. Powerful, memorable, remarkable gaming experiences where the characters took center stage, where the environment shaped them, and where I became a vital part of the gripping narrative.

The recently released adventure Under the Waves aims to do the same. Sam is a professional diver working several hundred meters below the surface of the beautiful North Sea. His mission revolves around problem solving and exploration and Sam's loneliness, like the sea itself, is one of the game's most tangible characters. Sam's four-year-old daughter Pearl is dead. Her death, of course, broke his heart and it is the dark blue depths of the ocean, the echoing emptiness and calmness down there that serves as a metaphor for his suffering. The depths represent Sam's grief. The isolation his loss and Under the Waves does a great job of conveying this and building atmosphere.

The daily chores and exploration that Sam engages in become part of his grieving process and the alien, vast ocean and its uncertainty become a way of trying to deal with what has not been processed above the surface. Regular phone calls to his wife Emma expose his emotional spectrum while he tries to soothe a lonely, tormented wife who wants nothing more than for him to return home, to the surface - again. Meanwhile, Sam's boss Tim also calls down to the ocean floor periodically to share status reports and assign new missions. The more vocal part of the storytelling in this game works very well, but it is the story told through the environments, music, atmosphere and the lonely silence down there that matters most.

There is no doubt that developers Parallel Studio have a very special relationship with the ocean as Under the Waves can in many ways be seen as a love letter to the "Big Blue". Rarely has the depth been so beautiful and so invitingly atmospheric as in this game, and rarely has the sea felt so incredibly large and changeable. There is plenty of life beneath the surface and Sam's mission structure is well-built, as is the variety of his different tasks. You play from a third-person perspective and with the help of a submarine, there are plenty of missions that require you to explore parts of the ocean with it. Big whales, tiny turtles, huge schools of fish and everything in between remind Sam of the beauty of life and his journey under the surface is meant to inspire hope. That being said, on several occasions it becomes so sad and so dark that I had to swallow the lump that formed in my throat.

Under the Waves is short but tight. It took me about four hours to play through it, and while it may seem like barely longer than a movie, it was just the right length for me. There is no filler here, no actual repetition to extend the play time and it never got boring or frustrating for me. Instead, Parallel Studio has built an experience that soothes, that grips and that leaves an impression. There is also a tone here that rhymes with a kind of environmental awareness, that we must protect our oceans and everything that lives in them, and even there the developers succeed very well with the balance. Their message is never imposed or forced - just subtle and thoughtful.

The design is gorgeous with a kind of retro-futuristic aesthetic that I really like. The mix of minimalism and style is successful and the depth of the sea is beautiful in a way that I didn't expect. Having lived on the bottom in the extraordinarily atmospheric Subnautica, I hadn't thought that this game would trump that underwater experience in terms of beauty, atmosphere and variety, but it has, despite its modest playtime of only four hours. The only real gripe I have is that Sam's facial animations in some of the key scenes (the conversations with Emma) don't convey so much as a single emotion, which is of course a shame. The developers should have spent a lot more time and bought a Senua or The Last of Us: Part II-style facial system to really cement his suffering in those super important moments. But, you really can't have it all and I would, in summary, advise you to play this. Because it's memorable, beautiful, soothing and atmospheric.