Full disclosure: when you play Hidden Deep, you will die. Often. Between bloodthirsty parasitic creatures that can fly, steep chasms, and lots of explosives, there’s plenty of carnage that goes on as you explore beneath the ocean.
And the great part is, dying is half the fun.
Inspired by the likes of Aliens, The Thing, and Half-Life, Hidden Deep sends you into cavernous depths where danger lurks in every dark smidge of the screen. As a side-scroller, the characters you control appear intimidatingly small in the daunting environment to be explored, filled with crevices, gaps, and ledges to leap over. Luckily, you’re equipped with a handy set of tools, including grappling hooks, rope, scanners, and more.
Taking the role of Murphy, an explorer marked as a “Scout” class, I was tasked with finding and rescuing my cohort, Hannigan, whose radio signal had been lost as he made his way into the labyrinth. As small Murphy shuffled towards the dark right side of the screen, helpful tutorials guided me towards how to run faster, climb up ledges, and leap over gaps.
Confidently approaching the first gap that I encountered, I had my thumb ready on the spacebar to jump, made a running leap towards the other side…and mistimed it spectacularly. Poor Murphy unceremoniously plunged to his death. Thankfully, Hidden Deep anticipates that many Murphys will be lost along the way, and he promptly respawned for me to take the leap again.
Heavily physics-based, Hidden Deep requires you to take care and precision in how you navigate the environment. Small drops are fine, but a small miscalculation can lead to your explorer splattering onto the rocky ground below into a bloody mess. While this could seem frustrating, respawning puts you back to the spot right before you died in about 5 seconds, and I was provided up to 15 different lives to experiment with as I got my bearings.
The extra lives became especially handy as I began using the more complex exploration tools, my favorite being the grappling hook, which has infinite usage and can double as a zip-line. It didn’t take long until I was swinging across chasms and using explosives to create more paths on my quest to find Hannigan. However, I knew that a new danger was about to present itself when the tutorial window popped up instructing me on how to equip Murphy’s magnum and reload it, “Just in case.” Not ominous or foreboding at all.
The looming danger that lurked in the darkness manifested itself suddenly at one point as I was in the middle of a crawlspace and three flying creatures appeared with a screech, making a beeline towards Murphy. I was able to quickly make my out and gun them down after taking a couple of hits.
The creatures in Hidden Deep are drawn to sound and immediately close in on explorers as soon as they known of their presence. They aren’t limited to flying parasites either—just when I got a handle on those enemies, I found myself ambushed and instantly killed by a tentacle-like creature that jutted out at me from the ceiling unexpectedly.
As I helplessly watched Murphy be slurped up by the creature, I noted that the number of remaining lives that I had was steadily closing in on 0, and that’s when I knew I needed to really begin to strategize how I proceeded. Hidden Deep is successful at maintaining a constant feeling of tense dread, because you never truly know what awaits as you guide your small avatar right into what is essentially the lion’s den.
I was relieved to finally reach my fellow explorer, Hannigan, who immediately joined my team as an Engineer to help search for the rest of the crew. With the option to switch between him and Murphy at will, I now relied on teamwork between the two moving forward by both directly controlling them and giving orders.
This aspect of the game made me excited and hopeful for a multiplayer component. Developer Cogwheel Software has announced that co-op multiplayer isn’t confirmed but is being considered, and I can imagine that having a team of four explorers simultaneously trying to survive would be very chaotic and fun.
Regardless, there are many aspects of Hidden Deep that appealed to me in the single-player mode that I experienced. The mystery of what exactly is going on in the underground cavern still baited me in the shroud of darkness, and I was eager to continue grappling and shooting my way through to uncover it. The player-intuitive controls and constant threat of danger kept the gameplay immersive and had me on my toes. The short time I spent with the many lives of Murphy made me eager to revisit Hidden Deep when it comes out in 2021.
Preview code for PC provided by the publisher.
source https://bloody-disgusting.com/video-games/3641562/hidden-deep-preview/
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