Spying the words “deep sea submarine adventure” in my inbox and opening that press release instead of anything marked “urgent” which I’d sent to myself in the middle of the night is how I found out about Diluvion [official site], an undersea exploration and combat adventure inspired by the work of Jules Verne. We wrote about it a couple of years ago but a) I missed that and b) it’s a lot closer to release so it’s worth seeing what’s being said now.

There doesn’t seem to be a playable build contained in the email so let’s just have a look at the words and trailer:



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After a great flood devastates the world and its civilisation, humanity’s last remnants are left to struggle against each other for limited resources and survival beneath an impenetrable layer of permanent ice. As submersible captains, players must explore the uncharted reaches of the open sea, brimming with distinct harbours, factions, mercenaries and secrets. Salvage treasure and supplies from wherever possible, trade goods and bounties, battle enemy vessels in real-time 3D action and take on gargantuan creatures from the darkest depths of this beautifully realised aquatic realm.

You can recruit crew, enhance your submarines, upgrade home bases and so on as you pursue wealth and notoriety.

I’ve actually just started playing Sunless Sea in earnest so at first glance the descriptions made the games seem relatively similar. But, looking at the images and reading further, I think that Diluvion is far more about moving in a 3D environment and the combat and acquisition loops, where Sunless Sea is a rich linguistic adventure and combat seems more of a punctuation mark or an uneasy threat implementation than the core of the game.

I also like the next image which I assume is how they’re helping you work out direction while underwater. I just really like the stylised spectral compass like a halo around the sub:

Anyway, Diluvion should be out on PC in autumn (fall, if you’re from that other bit of the English-speaking world) 2016.

Oh, and just because it popped into my head as I was thinking about things that live in the water below layers of ice: I was learning about Greenland sharks the other day. They swim incredibly slowly and live for a very long time, but the most interesting (and also kind of gross if you aren’t good with eye things) is that so many of them are affected by a parasitic copepod that attached itself to the shark’s cornea, gradually eating the tissue and rendering the shark blind. They look like eye-tassels.

Finding that out I felt truly grateful that I have arms and fingers and access to medical care so could, I assume, defeat a parasitic copepod if the situation ever arises.