Info about Death in the Water 2: Official game description: **BEWARE** ---------- Beware the waters, they hide a mysterious and terrifying threat. Death, an ancient Kraken leviathan haunts your every move in this tense underwater horror survival game. Fight to survive using powerful weapons and upgrades as you explore a beautiful yet treacherous underwater world. **Gameplay Modes** ------------------ * Campaign: Unveil a captivating storyline through challenging missions. * Survival (Horde Mode): Face endless waves of enemies. * Free Roam: Explore the open seascape without the threat of being attacked * New Game +: Take on tougher challenges **Gameplay** ------------ Death in the Water 2 blends the heart-pounding action of a wave-based shooter with spine-chilling horror and tension. Explore each dive cautiously, uncovering treasures and collectibles while acclimating to the surroundings. As you investigate ruins, wrecks, and reefs, the tension escalates. The marine life mirrors real behavior, with sharks and creatures remaining passive unless provoked. Lurking in the depths of every dive is Death, also known as the Kraken. Its sinister mind-control sets off a frenzy of feeding, focusing ruthlessly on you. Your mission: survive, achieve your objectives, and progress to the next Dive. As the difficulty intensifies, the fusion of tension and action becomes utterly addictive. **Open World** -------------- Death in the Water features a large open-underwater world map for you to discover during dives. Explore wrecks, reefs, caves, ruins, and terrifying open waters that will test your thalassophobia. Find hidden treasures and other secrets to help you on your quest to take on the Kraken. **Creatures** ------------- Death in the Water 2 has an extensive list of incredibly lifelike procedurally animated creatures, both real and fantasy based. Enemies will navigate through the world reacting realistically to the environment as they hunt you down using sight, sound, or scent to find you. **Weapons and Gear** -------------------- In your arsenal, you will have access to a host of weapons and gear that you can unlock and upgrade. These include Chum Grenades, High Powered Sniper Spearguns and Shotguns. **About the Dev Team** ---------------------- We are two friends Neil (the artist) and Edward (the coder), we started making games as a hobby back when we were still in school. Thirteen years ago we quit our day jobs and went on to found Lighthouse Games Studio and have released multiple top selling games including Shark Attack Deathmatch, Comedy Night, Avatar Deathmatch, and many others. Release date: 26 Jan, 2023 Categories: Survival, Action Horror, Horde Shooter, Open-World Exploration, Weapon Customization, Single-player Story, Resource Management, Monster Hunting - Hardware Profile: No data Feature extractions: - Community Price: No data - Playtime Metrics: No data - Time-to-fun: No data - Player Archetypes: No data Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category. Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews. What players like: - Immersive & Terrifying Atmosphere (weight 0.7): Players consistently praise the game's exceptional atmosphere, sound design, and visuals for creating a deeply immersive and terrifying experience. The game effectively evokes feelings of dread, tension, and fear, particularly related to the deep ocean and its creatures. - Stunning Underwater World (weight 0.57): The game's underwater setting is highlighted as a major strength, with reviewers commending the beautiful, detailed, and realistic environments, lighting, and sea creature animations. This contributes significantly to both the immersion and the horror elements. - Impressive Indie Development (weight 0.47): Many players are astonished by the high quality of the game, especially considering it was developed by a small team (often noted as two people). This achievement is frequently cited as a reason for the game's value and overall positive reception. - Solid Gameplay & Combat (weight 0.15): Reviewers find the core gameplay, including underwater combat and movement mechanics, to be satisfying and engaging. The variety of weapons, upgrade system, and intense battles with diverse enemies are frequently enjoyed. - Realistic & Varied Sharks (weight 0.15): The sharks are a standout feature, praised for their realistic appearance, behavior, and animations. Their imposing presence and unpredictable attacks contribute significantly to the game's tension and horror, making encounters memorable. - High-Quality Sound Design (weight 0.13): The game's sound design, including the soundtrack, sound effects, and ambient noises, is consistently praised for being excellent, immersive, and crucial in building tension and fear. It effectively conveys the underwater environment. - Polished & Performant (weight 0.1): The game is generally considered well-polished, with reviewers reporting no significant bugs or performance issues. This contributes to a smooth and enjoyable experience, especially given its indie status. - Improved Sequel & Content (weight 0.06): Players note that the game is a significant improvement over its predecessor, offering more variety, content, and refined gameplay mechanics. New modes and expanded scope contribute to its replayability and overall appeal. - Unique & Engaging Concept (weight 0.04): The game offers a distinct and interesting experience, standing out from typical shooters or horror games due to its unique underwater setting and creative approach. It provides a fresh take on the genre. Common complaints: - Repetitive and shallow gameplay (weight 1): Players consistently report that the core gameplay loop, mission structure, and enemy encounters become monotonous and repetitive very quickly. The game lacks variety in mechanics, environments, and overall content, leading to boredom and a lack of motivation to continue playing. Many feel the game is too short for its price and lacks replay value. - Limited enemy variety and AI issues (weight 0.81): Players note a significant lack of enemy diversity, with the game primarily featuring reskinned sharks and 'watersnakes.' The enemy AI is also described as janky and inconsistent, with sharks appearing unrendered or behaving unpredictably, detracting from the combat experience. - Unsatisfying progression and upgrades (weight 0.79): The upgrade system is widely criticized for being minimally impactful, with players feeling little to no difference even after fully upgrading their gear. This lack of meaningful progression contributes to the overall sense of repetition and makes the gameplay feel unrewarding. - Unbalanced difficulty and frustrating late game (weight 0.71): Players report that the difficulty curve is wildly inconsistent, with later levels becoming tedious, overly long, and frustratingly difficult, especially due to a scarcity of health packs. The final boss fight is also criticized for being disappointing and unnecessarily hard due to bugs. - Mediocre survival mode (weight 0.67): The survival mode is largely considered the worst mode to play, described as boring, repetitive, and unusually difficult compared to the rest of the game. Players feel it offers little in terms of rewards or unique settings, making it an unappealing option. - Poor localization and guidance (weight 0.15): The game suffers from very poor machine translations across multiple languages, making dialogue, menus, and objectives incomprehensible. Additionally, players report weak in-game guidance and tutorials, leaving them confused about mechanics, objectives, and how to progress effectively. - Technical issues and performance problems (weight 0.12): The game is plagued by various technical glitches, including inconsistent performance, low frame rates, frequent crashes, and graphical flaws. Bugs like disappearing ammo, lost markers, and inventory resets further detract from the player experience. - Small and uninteresting maps (weight 0.09): The game's maps are consistently described as small, poorly laid out, and lacking in complex terrain or diverse scenery. This limited environment contributes to the feeling of repetition and dulls the exploration aspect, which many players expected to be more prominent. Gameplay feedback: - Core Gameplay Loop (weight 0.59): The game features a consistent gameplay loop across its modes: players explore underwater environments to find treasure chests for upgrades, then face waves of aggressive sea creatures, primarily sharks, in combat. This cycle repeats with increasing difficulty. - Wave-Based Combat & Modes (weight 0.31): The primary combat experience is wave-based, often described as an underwater arena or 'boomer shooter'. The game offers a campaign mode with 15 levels, a survival mode, and a free-roam mode, though the core combat mechanics remain similar across them. - Enemy Variety & Behavior (weight 0.23): The game features several enemy types, predominantly various shark species, along with sea snakes, eels, and sirens. Sharks exhibit realistic behaviors like faking attacks and appearing from blind spots, often requiring headshots for efficient takedowns. Sirens pose a unique threat with spear attacks. - Story & Level Structure (weight 0.22): The game has a loose story across 15 levels, culminating in a boss fight against the Kraken. While the narrative provides context for dives, the levels themselves are often repetitive, focusing on objectives like treasure collection and creature elimination within semi-open maps. - Difficulty & Game Length (weight 0.21): The game's difficulty is generally considered medium and scales gradually, with some players finding it easy, especially with experience in kiting enemies. The campaign is relatively short, taking around 3-5 hours to complete, with some replayability for achievements. - Weapon & Gear Upgrades (weight 0.15): Players collect gold from treasure chests to purchase and upgrade weapons and diver suit enhancements (e.g., oxygen, sprint speed). Ammunition and health packs are also found in chests, requiring resource management during dives. - Weapon Arsenal (weight 0.07): Players start with a harpoon and can acquire additional weapons like a sniper harpoon, shotgun, minigun, and pistol with explosive ammo. The initial harpoon and shotgun are often highlighted as effective choices for progression. - Vigilance & Movement (weight 0.05): The underwater environment and enemy behavior necessitate constant movement and vigilance. Players must frequently look around to avoid being ambushed by creatures emerging from blind spots, contributing to a sense of fear and urgency. - Combat & Controls (weight 0.04): Combat is described as fun and unique, with decent underwater controls. It emphasizes lining up shots, particularly headshots, to effectively deal with enemies. The overall gameplay is simple but serviceable. - Diving Realism (weight 0.04): While set underwater, the game prioritizes action over realistic diving simulation. It lacks surfacing/diving animations, but features realistic fish movement, contributing to the immersive setting. Performance notes: - Performance is inconsistent (weight 0.08): While some players report excellent optimization and fluid gameplay even at high resolutions, others experience significant frame rate drops, low FPS, and frequent crashes, even with powerful hardware. This suggests a varied experience across different system configurations. - Steam Deck performance is strong (weight 0.02): Players on the Steam Deck report a surprisingly immersive experience with stable performance, achieving 30 FPS at max settings in performance mode. This highlights good optimization for handheld devices. - Good crash recovery (weight 0.02): Despite reports of frequent crashes, players appreciate that the game state is preserved, making these crashes less disruptive to the overall gameplay experience. This indicates a robust save or recovery system. - No memory leaks or choppiness (weight 0.01): One reviewer specifically noted the absence of choppy moments or memory leakage, contributing to a smoother gameplay experience for some users. This suggests good memory management in certain scenarios. Recommendations: - Generally Recommended Experience (weight 0.51): Many players recommend the game, especially for fans of underwater horror, Lovecraftian themes, or those seeking tense, immersive settings. It's often seen as a worthwhile, short, and fun survival horror experience, particularly when purchased on sale. - Price Sensitivity is Key (weight 0.44): A significant number of players emphasize that the game's value is heavily tied to its price. While many recommend it on sale, some feel it's not worth the full price, suggesting a lower price point (e.g., $3-10) is more appropriate for the content offered. - Support for Developers (weight 0.37): Players express a desire to support the development team, hoping for continued updates, future content, or even sequels. There's a clear appreciation for the potential of the game and the efforts of the creators. - Desire for More Content (weight 0.33): Players frequently request more content, including an open world, true exploration, additional treasures, equipment, weapons, new fish species, monsters, and Cthulhu-like deep-sea beasts. There's also a strong interest in new game modes, including co-op multiplayer. - Enhance Immersion Experience (weight 0.02): Players suggest specific ways to enhance the game's immersive qualities, such as playing at night with headphones or during dark, rainy weather. This indicates the atmosphere is a strong point for many. - Sound Level Adjustment Needed (weight 0.02): One player advises immediately lowering the sound to avoid being scared and deafened, suggesting potential issues with audio balancing or sudden loud noises. - Refund Option Noted (weight 0.01): Players mention the option to refund the game if they don't like it, indicating that some have utilized this feature or see it as a safety net for trying the game. Other player notes: - Short Playtime & Small Team (weight 0.19): The game is perceived as relatively short, with most players completing the main campaign in 5-6 hours. This is generally understood and accepted given that the game was developed by a very small, independent team of only two people. - Future Content & Updates Expected (weight 0.15): Players are highly optimistic about the game's potential and are eagerly anticipating future updates, DLC, and even sequels. There's a strong desire for new game modes, content, and expanded projects, with some suggesting specific features like VR support or cooperative gameplay. - Underwater Horror & Thalassophobia (weight 0.07): The game effectively creates a terrifying underwater horror atmosphere, particularly for players with thalassophobia (fear of deep water). It's seen as a strong contender in the underwater horror genre, building on its predecessor's themes. - Concerns about AI-Generated Art (weight 0.04): There are noticeable instances of AI-generated art used throughout the game, including menu icons, logos, and cover art. While some players are not bothered by it, others initially had lower expectations due to its presence. - Suggestions for New Objectives (weight 0.03): Players are keen on more diverse gameplay objectives beyond just combat, suggesting tasks like underwater repairs, item collection, photography, species protection, and rescue missions to enhance the realistic diving experience. - Kraken Story Element (weight 0.02): The game's narrative prominently features the Kraken, depicted as an antagonist disliked by humans but revered by an ancient merman civilization. - Desire for More Marine Life (weight 0.02): Players express a desire for more diverse marine species to be included in the game, such as amberjacks or schooling fish, to enrich the underwater environment. Emotions: - Satisfaction (weight 0.24): Players felt satisfied due to the game's immersive atmosphere, beautiful graphics, and effective sound design, which created a terrifying yet engaging underwater experience. The fun gameplay, variety of sharks, and overall high production quality for its price also contributed to a positive experience, often exceeding expectations. - Disappointment (weight 0.2): Disappointment stemmed from the game's repetitive gameplay loop, lack of content, and unfulfilled expectations regarding exploration and survival mechanics. Players also cited issues like simplistic story, poor weapon satisfaction, and misleading marketing that promised a different genre (e.g., open-world exploration instead of an arcade shooter). - Frustration (weight 0.12): Frustration was primarily caused by repetitive and grindy gameplay, numerous bugs, poor AI, and issues with game mechanics such as slow reloads, ineffective weapons, and ammunition shortages. Players also expressed annoyance with unclear objectives, lack of proper saving, and high difficulty spikes, particularly in later stages. - Excitement (weight 0.12): Players experienced excitement from the game's tense and visceral combat, its ability to evoke fear of the deep sea, and the unnerving atmosphere. The thrilling encounters with realistic sharks, impressive sound design, and the overall immersive and challenging experience contributed to a sense of adrenaline and enjoyment. - Fear (weight 0.05): Fear was a direct result of the game's realistic visuals, deep ocean setting, and unexpected appearances of terrifying creatures, effectively triggering thalassophobia in many players. The constant horror atmosphere, scary noises, and the feeling of fighting for survival against formidable underwater entities intensified this emotion. - Boredom (weight 0.04): Boredom arose from the game's repetitive gameplay loop, lack of diversity in scenarios and missions, and the quick onset of monotony. Players found the gameplay uninteresting and meaningless after a short period, with predictable horror elements and unvaried enemies contributing to the tedium. - Joy (weight 0.04): Joy was experienced by players who found the game to be a blast, enjoying its unique scary nature, atmospheric qualities, and fun gameplay. The overall positive and engaging experience, including fighting sharks and appreciating the graphics, contributed to this feeling. - Hope (weight 0.03): Hope was expressed for future improvements, updates, and potential sequels or DLC from the developers, indicating a belief in the game's underlying potential. Players wished for more varied objectives, additional content, and features like co-op to enhance the experience. - Admiration (weight 0.03): Admiration was directed towards the small development team, often consisting of only two people, for achieving such high quality in environments, graphics, atmosphere, and overall technical execution. Players were impressed by the game's polish and realism given the limited crew. - Enjoyment (weight 0.02): Players enjoyed the game's immersive ocean-themed aspects, engaging gameplay, and well-crafted atmosphere, along with its sound design and creature animations. The thrilling and entertaining experience, coupled with satisfying movement and evasion, contributed to a strong sense of fun. - Amazement (weight 0.02): Amazement was primarily driven by the game's stunning graphics, phenomenal creature AI, and exceptional sound effects, especially considering it was developed by a small team. The high quality of the visuals, animations, and overall atmosphere for an indie title left players in awe. - Anger (weight 0.01): Anger was caused by critical bugs such as inventory resets, enemies getting stuck, and the lack of manual save options leading to lost progress. Rage-inducing battles, cheap kills, and the game's perceived poor quality also contributed to this negative emotion. - Awe (weight 0.01): Awe was inspired by the game's stunning graphics, beautifully rendered underwater landscapes, and its overall amazing quality, realism, and atmosphere, particularly given its development by a small team. The immersive story and sound design also contributed to this profound sense of wonder. - Surprise (weight 0.01): Players were pleasantly surprised by the game's overall quality, graphics, and movement, especially considering it was developed by a small team. Unexpected appearances of sharks also contributed to this feeling. - Confusion (weight 0.01): Confusion arose from unclear game progression, poor UI, uncertainty about weapon upgrade paths, and ambiguous triggers for enemy attacks. Players also struggled to understand the survival aspects of the game. - Caution (weight 0.01): Caution was expressed due to the game's short playtime, limited replayability, and the reviewer's inability to continue playing due to intense fear. This led to a hesitant recommendation for others. - Immersion (weight 0): Immersion was achieved through the game's mesmerizing visuals and uncanny sound design, drawing players deeply into the underwater world. - Challenge (weight 0): The game presented a significant challenge, requiring players to push themselves hard and adapt their thinking, akin to learning to think like a shark, to succeed. - Discomfort (weight 0): Discomfort was caused by an unpleasant combat experience and deafeningly loud sound effects, detracting from the overall enjoyment. - Neutrality (weight 0): Neutrality was observed regarding the gameplay and audio, with some players finding the gameplay and weapons to be merely 'good' without strong positive or negative feelings.}