A storm is raging on the horizon, flashes of lightning set white fire in the sky, the submerged city skyline illuminated for the briefest moment. A fog rolls in with the rain heading your way. This could be it, as the weather lashes out again and again at your tiny vessel, rocking on a body of water polluted with chemical fluorescence. You grit your teeth and bear it, with no shelter, no protective clothing and a body racked by creeping mutation, you must go on. Out here in the middle of it all, you risk everything to save the life of your dying brother.
Except, you don’t. The thing is, and be grateful for it since it’s a thing that usually affects 100% of Earth’s living population, you, Miku, can’t die.
The idea of Submerged is based entirely in fear, the fear of ecological disaster, the fear of being unable to save a loved one, the fear even of becoming other. It is a timely, melancholic and impressively put together piece of speculative fiction that asks us to consider what will live on when most of us die, posed not only in relation to what might be destroyed, but also through Australian Aboriginal dreamtime storytelling, reflecting human life that has already seen destruction.
An awe-inspiring feat, and what makes the game a delight to play is the landscape in which this all occurs, a harsh yet beautiful drowned city of enigmatic landmarks and mutated animal life, through which you must navigate to locate supply drops. You head down the submerged streets by boat, searching for these supplies, as well as scrap to salvage for your engine, and clues to the fate of the city. The freedom that makes this enjoyable is ultimately what takes away from the game’s bold premise. In searching for a way to make telling the story possible while using the mechanics of collection chosen for the game, the designers have created a pitfall in the experience, Miku can’t experience harm at any point in the journey, whether sailing through a storm, or clinging by fingertips to a ledge ten stories up.
In case the danger of life on harsh waters, even with some protection, was understated.
This soft approach helps make the game easier for a younger audience, makes it easier for a narrative to be told in such a deadly situation, and makes the story make sense – since the fear of dying of mutation is key to your perseverance. This means though that you can’t die a non-narrative death, nor experience injury, and that just doesn’t pass as believable. Suspending disbelief is key, and it relies on consistency – we are happy to accept that Harry Potter can cast spells from a wand, as long as he doesn’t start shooting them from his armpits, that’s just ridiculous. Just as I am happy to accept the storied terrain of an ecological apocalypse, as long as the survivors are still subject to the very things that caused the submersion in the first place, the deadly capacity of water.
The most satisfying element of Submerged for me was in using the in-game screengrab tool to create what are truly remarkable gameplay scenes, but surely that goes against the entire message of the game. The idea that ecological disaster is beautiful is one I’m sure the developers didn’t mean to include, but unfortunately it’s definitely there, I mean look at the photos I took with this mutated whale:
Meanwhile, the game manages well to retain tension between you and the mutated humans that remain, since you’re never certain of their intent. They linger over you the whole time, moving in and out of sight as you climb for supplies, and that truly felt like a threat.
I can understand how it’s easier to mask the potential of your ‘monsters’ than your environment, but it did make this very intense and relevant story feel more like a boating holiday around some quirky landmarks gathering supplies, instead of an urgent message.
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