Death in the Water 2 Review Summary

A beautiful underwater world with excellent visuals, animations, and sound makes fun gameplay shine, but repetitive loop, AI art, bugs, performance issues, and short length hold it back.

Excellent Visual Quality: Many reviews praise the game's graphics as beautiful, fantastic, and even comparable to AAA titles. The visuals are consistently highlighted as a major strength.

Beautiful Underwater World: The underwater environments are described as beautiful, diverse, and well-constructed, with a great atmosphere. The visuals effectively capture the feeling of being underwater.

Fun and Enjoyable Gameplay: Players find the game fun, interesting, and enjoyable for short sessions. It is often described as a fun little game to complete or pass the time.

Outstanding Sound Design: Sound design is frequently described as perfect, realistic, and well-crafted, enhancing the overall experience. Voice acting is occasionally noted as a minor exception.

Immersive Underwater Combat: The underwater shooting mechanics are well-implemented, with realistic gunplay and sound design that conveys the underwater feel. The combat controls are decent and contribute to an immersive experience.

Repetitive gameplay loop: Multiple clusters highlight that the core gameplay is monotonous, repetitive, and fails to evolve, leading to boredom and low replay value. This is the most frequently mentioned issue across clusters.

Lack of replay value: Many reviewers note that the game offers little to no replay value, often due to repetitive gameplay and short length. This ties into the broader issue of limited content.

AI-generated art criticized: Players strongly dislike the use of AI-generated artwork and voice acting, finding it depressing, lazy, and immersion-breaking. This sentiment is consistent across several clusters.

Too short for price: Players feel the game is short and not worth the full price, with some saying it doesn't justify even 2 hours of playtime. This is a common complaint about value.

Unfinished and buggy state: The game feels like a beta or unfinished product, with various minor and major bugs reported. Optimization issues further contribute to this perception.

Underwater Survival Shooter Gameplay: The core gameplay is a first-person underwater survival shooter where players dive for treasure while fighting sea creatures. It combines exploration, horror, and action elements.

Underwater Shooting Mechanics: Shooting sea creatures is the main gameplay, with a variety of weapons such as harpoons, spearguns, grenades, and more. The game is essentially an FPS against aquatic animals.

Weapon Upgrade System: Players can acquire and upgrade weapons using gold collected from treasure chests. Upgrades apply to weapons, character, and gear between missions.

Shark Encounters and Combat: Sharks are a primary enemy, often sneaking up on the player. Combat with sharks ranges from nerve-wracking to comically simple, and they attack by approaching and biting.

Kraken as Final Boss: The Kraken serves as the final boss, and players may encounter it early if they search. The ultimate goal is to kill the Kraken.

Performance and stability issues: Multiple players report frequent crashes, freezing, and severe performance problems like sudden FPS drops and stutters. The game is often described as running poorly even on high-end hardware.

Smooth performance experiences: Some players report that the game runs smoothly and performs well on maximum settings. This indicates that for some configurations, the game is well-optimized.

Lag in specific zones: Some players experience noticeable lag and choppy performance in certain areas of the game. This can disrupt the overall gameplay experience.

Controller support problems: Players report that controller support does not work correctly, either with or without the Steam controller overlay. This can make the game unplayable for those preferring controllers.

Buy Only on Sale: Many reviewers advise waiting for a discount before purchasing, as the game is not considered worth full price. Common recommendations include waiting for a 50% sale or grabbing it on sale.

Mixed or Conditional Recommendations: Several reviewers give conditional recommendations, noting the game is good for testing phobias or as a time-killer, but not for those seeking deep tactical horror or expecting high replayability.

Not Recommended by Some: Some reviewers do not recommend the game, citing issues such as dissatisfaction or not being their kind of game. A few mention refunding the game or advising others to save their money.

Underwater Horror Fans: The game is recommended for fans of underwater horror and tense atmosphere, including those who enjoy horror based on anxiety and pursuit rather than jumpscares. It appeals to players who love fear and being scared.

Appeals to Thalassophobia: The game is particularly recommended for players who have a fear of deep water or thalassophobia, as it provides an intense and scary experience. Some reviewers note it is not recommended for those with the phobia, but many suggest it for facing fears.

Community fair range: $3.00 - $8.00.

Game completion: 8.0h.

Story completion: 4.0h.

Session length: 0.3h.

Players generally find the game fun and intense in the first hours, but the arcade dive loop becomes repetitive and less engaging after the 2nd mission or around 4 or 5 dives. It is best for players who accept a short, shallow underwater shooter rather than deep exploration or long-term progression.

Friction: Repetitive gameplay and mission design; Bland, low-quality levels and maps; Bare-bones progression and limited variety; Limited air tank respawn keeps players close to intended paths; Waiting for waves slows the pace; Basic UI and poor AI voice reduce polish.

Thalassophobic Thrill-Seeker: Cautious, immersive exploration and tense survival, reacting to sudden scares. Motivation: Confronting and overcoming deep-sea fears through immersive horror. Stance: buy.

Arena Shooter Enthusiast: Aggressive defense against waves of creatures, using varied weapons and upgrades. Motivation: Intense wave-based combat and satisfying gunplay. Stance: buy.

Achievement Completionist: Efficient, goal-oriented runs, often replaying survival mode for better scores. Motivation: Completing all achievements and beating personal high scores. Stance: sale.

Steam Deck: Audit of Death in the Water 2 on Steam Deck shows a mixed but technically compromised experience. While several reviewers praise the solid controls and combat feel, two blocking issues emerge: broken controller support (failing both with and without the Steam controller overlay) and recurring crashes that force full stage restarts mid-campaign. These are direct technical barriers to a seamless handheld session, and the evidence of frequent crashes pushes the experience into the broken tier rather than the tinkering tier.

Two-Person Development Team: The game was developed by a small team of only two people across several clusters. This includes both direct mentions and variations describing a small development studio.

AI-Generated Art and Assets: Reviewers frequently note that the game uses AI-generated images for illustrations, icons, menu elements, and more. This has been observed across multiple clusters focusing on AI-generated visuals.

Short Gameplay Duration: The game is often described as short, lasting only a few hours and offering low replayability. This sentiment appears in several clusters highlighting the brevity of the experience.

Improvement Over First Game: Many reviewers highlight that this sequel is a massive improvement over the first game in terms of content, scope, and polish. This is mentioned across several clusters praising the progress.

Comparison to Subnautica: Players compare this game to Subnautica, especially regarding scariness and thalassophobia, but note it falls short in exploration and survival aspects. These comparisons appear in multiple clusters.