The first in-game message Nauticrawl: 20,000 Atmospheres sent me ended with one line: Don’t give up.

That’s an appropriate warning, considering my first few runs of Nauticrawl were entirely fruitless. First, I struggled with figuring out how to turn on my ship’s engine. I spent a few minutes sitting in the dark, underwater, pulling various levers and toggling various switches. Finally, I managed to get power running to the ship. That was a victory in and of itself, but I had to follow it up by turning on the engine. With the engine running, I began to advance: up, up, up ... CLUNK.

I had collided with something massive, and my hull took critical damage. Before long, I was back in the dark, surrounded by the hiss of broken systems and escaping steam. My first attempt at escape hadn’t gone so well, and I frantically started hitting buttons to see if there was a way I could repair things. There was a switch, a hum, and my radar flickered on.

Oh. Yes, well, that would have been useful to know earlier. I took a few minutes to stretch, think about my early attempts, and then get back into the driver’s seat.

This defines my experience with Nauticrawl, a game so dense and complex that my review copy came with both a numbered, step-by-step guide, and a warning not to use it. Every step was hard fought as I figured out what to press, how to activate key features of my ship, and realized that I had somehow accidentally doomed myself. I didn’t feel frustrated when I lost; I felt excited. I could always go back to step one and try again.

In Nauticrawl, I am trying to escape a horrific, oppressive civilization from under the sea. I get a glimpse of the world, and it seems visually impressive, with towering spires that are more Dalaran City than BioShock’s Rapture. But the society itself is rotten, and I’ve gotta get out of there if I have any hope of making a better life for myself. I’ve acquired a ship, and now I’m making a break for the surface.

There’s just one problem: this isn’t a sleek sci-fi vessel, but a hulking and slow craft with serious limitations. Sure, I have a cloaking device, but I also have a battery that will rapidly drain if I cloak and try to stealth my way out of the ocean. Everything about my ship is slow, and operating its control panel feels extremely tactile. I pull levers to release steam, check my radar, and flip switches up and down to figure out how to pilot the thing as safely as I can.

There are the bones of a roguelike here, in that there were times where I would attempt, fail, and retry. But Nauticrawl ultimately feels closer to an escape room or a puzzle box, where I’m given a limited environment in which to try solutions using whatever tools I have at hand.

I usually only have some hints from the ship’s UI and what I can see out my window to tell me how I’m doing and where I am. It’s a clever way to present the information, and it strikes a balance between claustrophobia and the freedom to explore and advance. Nothing about being a pilot in this world feels natural, and I’m trying to figure everything out from scratch.

Sometimes I know what I’m doing, and I’m making clever use of the tools that I’ve figured out. Those moments make me feel like a genius, or at least a resourceful and clever survivor. More often, I’m fumbling in the dark, hitting random switches out of desperation and then something clicks, or I die and start over. I slowly advance towards my final destination, switching between feeling clever and feeling lost. It’s a potent combination.

Something that strikes me about Nauticrawl is the fact that despite the fact that this is a difficult game, it’s not a punishing one. Nauticrawl doesn’t have the same “get good” attitude as some of its peers, where a loss feels crushing and I feel as though the game itself is taking joy in my failures. Instead, Nauticrawl feels kind.

Things can go wrong, but there’s no blaring lights, no screams or scenes of torment. Instead, failure tends to be expressed through status messages, the soft hiss of steam, or darkness and flashing lights. I don’t feel punished for losing with some sort of horrific consequence; I just go back and start again. There’s a zen quality to it. When starting over, there’s even a message reminding me that this is just part of the process.

Yes, I fail, but it feels fair, and the game just keeps urging me onwards through both text prompts that remind me that failure is part of the game, and non-punishing restart mechanics. This attempt will be the one where I figure things out, I decide before every run.

Nauticrawl is a small game; there are only three chapters for players to explore. The player focuses on their vehicle’s screen, and most of the actual action takes place in my imagination.

But this is also a product made by a single developer, and it successfully captures the tension of a big experience like Star Trek: Bridge Crew, which is quite the trick. It’s like savoring a small, delicious snack over a big buffet, which makes it a perfect palette cleanser for players going through longer campaigns in other games.

Overall, this puzzle game is short, sweet, and delightful ... despite occasionally crushing my dreams. And I’m always up for another try.