Game EXP: Hell Dive (VSD)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Hell Dive through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.] 

Hell Dive
Systems: Windows, Linux
Release Date: January 7, 2025
Publisher: Teacup Games
Developer: Teacup Games
Time Spent: 2.7 Hours

We have an entire playlist up on YouTube here, which I'll be referencing throughout the article.  So go on and have a watch; it'll do ya good.

Hell Dive was a retro-inspired minimalist survival-horror game that was light on narrative, but absurdly strong on creating and maintaining an oppressive sense of dread marred only by the game being overly cryptic to a fault.

Hell Dive is the very definition of "bare bones" when it comes to story, although I admittedly didn't read as much on the computer during the first couple of stations and I never did figure out what the display in the bridge was for (although I did try using the security keycards, those didn't seem to work).  Visually, all we know upon starting is that we're a person named Daniel who is on a submarine that submerges and that there's a partially leaking hole in the side of the sub.  There is the voice of VIRGIL (VIRtual Guide, Info & Liason) who addresses the player as "Daniel" and that Daniel is once again, functional; which makes me wonder if Daniel is even a human or some kind of android?

Without directing the player what they need to do, you kind of bumble around the three areas of the submarine: the quarters, the engine room, and the bridge.  Through exploration and trial and error, you find a gas canister that you can use on the engine and a button to push to turn the engine on.  You also then find a fixed key/ignition in the bridge along with controls to move the submarine.  If you watch any of the playthrough videos, you'll notice that I only use one aspect of the controls at a time, and only in the late game did I realize that you can have the sub moving while also turning at the same time.  But despite that, I thought that having separate controls for moving forward/backward and turning was a neat little mechanic.  Then using logic derived from playing video games for at least the last 38 years, I drove the sub forward for a few seconds before seeing a structure that read "Storage Offline."  So that was where I went intending to turn this Storage Station online; also because there was the lighted list on the bridge that looked essentially like an objective list.

The basic structure of the game from this point on was pretty much the same.  You pilot the submarine towards the next station that was offline, explore the unique area, turn the power back on, make your way back towards the submarine, and then find the next station.  What changes is the theme for each station and how you go about turning on the power.  Some stations will have an enemy that will relentlessly pursue you once spotted, while others only offer the threat of an enemy attacking you, keeping you on edge the entire time, only to make it back to the sub without any issues.

This lingering threat and ever-increasing sense of dread is where Hell Dive really excels. The first station is a great tutorial level for what is expected of you without any enemies to run away from.  Just the basics on how the mechanics of the game operate between filling the engine with gas (which was already introduced in the sub), following power lines to switches and power room (which was already introduced in Jurassic Park), the battery life on your flashlights, and inventory management.  Pretty typical survival-horror material.  Then, in the second station, the game introduces the invincible enemy that if it catches you, you're dead.  So when you finally make it back to the sub after having turned the power on and escaped the creature, the sub now feels like your safe place.  That nothing can harm you here, that you're completely safe.  And that's when VIRGIL questions if you're the only one on the sub and that there might be someone else on board.  That was terrifying and brilliantly timed.

And I still don't know what that thing poking out of the toilet was supposed to be.  Was there a payoff to that?  Did I just miss something somewhere?  Was it just there to creep you out and keep you on edge?  And as mentioned way back up there at the top, I don't know what the card reader-looking display in the bridge was used for either.  Maybe I needed to collect all of the ID badges and use them sequentially to get the display to work.  Maybe there were cards that I was supposed to pick up that weren't door key cards?  And speaking of missing something, I don't know if I could tell you what the end of the game meant.  There was the ice throne across from dozens of video monitors.  There was the final elevator that cut to a cutscene that included the creepy-ass doll from Recreational Facility, which coincidentally was also the station where "Murderer" and "REDRUM" were written out in children's blocks.  Had Daniel murdered everyone on each of the stations?  Did Daniel somehow cause the downfall of this underwater society?  Was Daniel a human or an android?

What then was the point of the game?

So many questions were left unanswered, or at least, left completely unable to be deciphered by me.  And yet, I wouldn't classify Hell Dive as a bad game.  Maybe a little incomplete feeling in the narrative department, but how successful I felt it was in creating and maintaining that uneasy feeling of what's around the next corner was spot-on brilliant, and I will not fault that game.  Hell Dive was by no means a perfect game, but where it excelled in the terror department, it really excelled.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
We're Gonna Have A Whole Lot Of Fun

P.S.  I realize I didn't really mention anything about how the game ran on the Steam Deck, and that might've been a subconscious afterthought.  The game ran perfectly fine.  I did have to manually invert the y-axis on the camera, but that was it.  So that's really all I feel like needs to be mentioned as far as Steam Deck compatibility