Diluvion is a journey to the bottom of the ocean with FTL-like crew management

In Diluvion, your goal is simple: get to the bottom of the ocean. To do that, you'll need the right crew, a hardy submarine, and a few technological upgrades. Otherwise, if the pressure doesn't crush you like an empty soda can, the giant mechanical sea spiders will.

It's not your average third-person exploration game: Diluvion folds in some FTL-lite crew management via some gorgeous cross section art, and gives every member a voice—they're fully realized characters. I played a short demo at PAX West and chatted with Jacob Stove Lorentzen, Technical Director at Arachnid Games about how deep the game goes—see that in the video above.

In the demo I played, most of my time was spent from a third-person perspective behind the sub. It's a fairly simple vessel to maneuver and the deep ocean squirrels away a ton of landmarks, secrets, and supply crates to loot, all of which I found by using my sonar ping. But this isn't an entirely relaxed trip. Using sonar also alerts any nearby enemies to your presence, at which point you'll have to duke it our or dive to safety—I should have done the latter. During combat, you can move around crew members using Captain Time, a sort of bullet time for crew management. Switch them out to focus on repairs or shunt more of the workforce into different parts of the sub. Or do as I did, and die.

I'll have a second chance when Diluvion releases sometime this fall.

James is stuck in an endless loop, playing the Dark Souls games on repeat until Elden Ring and Silksong set him free. He's a truffle pig for indie horror and weird FPS games too, seeking out games that actively hurt to play. Otherwise he's wandering Austin, identifying mushrooms and doodling grackles.