--Miku, Submerged
Like City of Brass, Submerged is the product of ex-Bioshock developers, and the flooded world of the game is much closer to Bioshock's Rapture than the enchanted desert city of City of Brass. A brief but very unique game, it features a city mostly covered by the waves of a seemingly global flood. The story of how the main character and her (seeming) brother found their place in this alien environment is slowly revealed, and the remaining landmarks of a once surface-based cityscape are gradually identified. Submerged stands out because of these and several other aspects that are handled quite differently than those of more mainstream games.
Production Values
The flooded city is a grand world that can be explored at will, but the graphics, at their best, fail to rise above the lower end of mediocrity for the Switch. At the very least, though, they do manage to showcase a world left flooded after a great storm. While sounds from the environment, including noises from animals, are common, there is almost no human speech. The main character speaks in an unspecified language, but only infrequently, making voice acting an addition that barely occupies any time of a playthrough. In fact, most of the immediate story is told through visuals, while the backstory of both the two primary characters as a family and the world as a whole is told through optional collectibles that unlock images.
Gameplay
Players use a boat to travel between various structures protruding out from the global ocean, disembarking to grab collectibles and obtain necessary resources to progress the story. Combat is nowhere to be seen, as boating, platforming, and exploration of the sunken landscape are the only gameplay components. Optional items such as boat upgrades can be found by scouring the environment carefully, but it would be difficult to play through the entire game without running into several even without actively looking for them. While using the boat, numerous upgrades can be found floating openly! Boat rides also give Submerged the chance to show it's aquatic life: although their appearances can differ from their real life counterparts (due to a strange skin condition that the main character develops), dolphins, whales, and rays can surface near the boat.
Story
The narrative is driven almost completely by the environment, most of it revolving around helping a young boy who seems to be the playable character's sibling. As such, there is little to spoil besides the setting and the very simplistic story, but I will still announce that spoilers are below, as usual.
A young, unnamed woman takes care of her (likely) brother Taku as she navigates a flooded world. After placing him in a safe area, she collects medical supplies, water, and food from the surrounding buildings that have seemingly long been abandoned after the flood. As she ventures to and fro, a mysterious humanoid being watches her from nearby rooftops, and it is soon joined by others. The protagonist also becomes increasingly affected by a seeming growths of vegetation on her skin, something that appears to worry her without ever deterring her from gathering supplies for her brother.
Intellectual Content
The lack of dialogue (or monologues) leaves much of this world's backstory unspoken, which is an experimental take on thematic development by the standards of modern gaming. This means that there are no conversations between characters that reflect core philosophical ideas behind the narrative. However, the very absence of a flourishing human society could easily provoke thought on the part of players about both the relationship between humanity and the natural world and the manner in which humans should live now.
Conclusion
Submerged offers a gaming experience that differs significantly from the more intense, dialogue-driven games of the mainstream entertainment world. This means that most people would likely either resent it for diverging from the norm or embrace it for the very same reason. Regardless, it is a game that stands on its uniqueness, and it conceptually succeeds as a smaller title built around nontraditional storytelling. Submerged does not attempt to handle itself the way many other games would, but it does a great job of handling its world and its handful of mechanics.
Content: There is practically nothing in Submerged that would even warrant an ESRB content descriptor, so, for the first time, there is nothing that needs to be detailed here.
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