We Need To Go Deeper could be a lot of fun but it needs to do a better job at everything

With thanks to a supporter, I was gifted a copy of We Need To Go Deeper. It's a 2-4 player co-op submarine roguelike and it's pretty rough.

It's in Early Access, so I will absolutely excuse some issues it has. A lot of games end up going into Early Access practically finished, which is firmly not the case here.

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After trying it out for a while now, I can honestly say I get the idea behind it. It could end up becoming a lot of fun, but to get there it's going to need quite a lot of work. For one, it tells you practically nothing. You either play online or across LAN with people or bots and figure it all out for yourself there.

For some games, that can work. For We Need To Go Deeper, it just ends up as a frustrating mess. Considering the game is all about communication, it doesn't seem that you can even see the history of what everyone's saying. So as soon as someone pops a message in the chat, if you don't see it before it vanishes they have to tell you again. It's little nuisances like that, which make it annoying.

In my last game, we seemed to have a bit of an infestation…

Apart from the overall roughness of the interface and no kind of tutorial, I do see a diamond in the rough here. There has been a lot of amusing moments, like the one picture above. Some weird deep-sea creature attached itself to our hull and lots of things began infesting the ship through holes. They began multiplying like crazy and it was a bit of a mad dash, to try and repair all the holes as we were taking on a lot of water, while also fighting off these nightmarish things.

It's just so weird and confusing and yet stupidly charming at the same time. As an example of how weird, a freaking Lion (yes, a Lion) appeared out of nowhere and when I asked a member of my crew where the hell a Lion came from—"it's a long story, don't ask"—oh, okay then? Did they smuggle it on board? I don't think I will ever know that one. I was also making my way across the sub to repair a hole in the wall, when a tentacle came spinning out of it and started lashing out at me…just what did we get ourselves into?

There's also a random time traveller that appears now and then, because why the heck not. I love the visual style to it, I just want everything to be a little more clear.

Cross-platform multiplayer seems to be working well though, I've had no problems with tons of random people joining my games and joining games hosted by others, so that's a point in its favour.

For some Linux users, you might also find your keyboard input is doubled up. So entering in your name, would end up like "lliiaamm". It's an older Unity game engine bug, until they upgrade you can set this as a launch option to work around it:

XMODIFIERS='' %command%

I shall continue to follow it as they push through development. I want to like it and it has some great ideas, it just feels too rough and confusing as it stands right now.

You can find it on Humble Store and Steam.

Hat tip to archtoasty for the game gift.