Hidden Deep Preview

Are you a big fan of movies like Alien and The Thing? Boy, do I have the perfect game for you to check out! Hidden Deep takes place 9772 meters under the ocean floor at a mining and research station. The group of researchers working there detected strange unknown anomalies, so they organised and sent out a crew to investigate. Based on previous experience, as soon as a research station is mentioned in a game or movie, you know something bad will happen there… After 681 days Locke Industries has lost contact with the station, and the status of the crew is unknown. You play as a member of the second crew, it is up to you and your teammates to go down there to find out exactly what happened, and rescue the survivors if there are any…

In this 2D action and exploration sci-fi thriller, you take control of the members of your crew directly or by giving them orders using your keyboard and mouse. Each mission has different tasks you need to accomplish to move on to the next area. The tasks can be as simple as opening a gate, exploring a mine shaft, or learning how to use a drone to scope out a new area that you want to go to. The mines are incredibly dark and have limited lights to start with so you rely on the headlamp on your helmet to light your way when you go deeper into the mine. This makes the atmosphere of Hidden Deep incredibly creepy, just because you can’t see anything doesn’t mean that something can’t see you. Combined with a tense, atmospheric soundtrack that makes you feel alone but that can scare the crap out of you at any moment this is a suspenseful experience.

Your team is all armed with a pistol with a laser sight for when you come across any unfriendly “anomalies”. Though I definitely felt under-armed when I found a huge tentacle monster that kept grabbing me from a hole in the wall and killing me, my pistol definitely did not save me! Besides the pistol, there are multiple items and gadgets available during your missions including grappling hooks, scanners, drones, and heavy machinery that you can use to take down these hostile alien creatures of the deep, or completely avoid them if needed. If you are killed you will start again where you perished, depending on the difficulty level you chose. If you selected the intense or hardest difficulty fewer deaths are allowed before getting a game over. I selected the expedition setting because I wanted to focus more on the story and the exploration part of the game that has fewer enemies. When you complete a level, Hidden Deep shows you stats on the amount of time it took you to complete that mission and how many men were lost on your attempt. Most of the time men were lost because I would fall when I wasn’t smart enough to use my grappling hook. Heights were more of a hazard for me than the alien creatures!

Hidden Deep has both local and remote play available for anyone who wants to team up with a friend to take on the Challenge Mode. It requires completing random missions and tasks in randomised levels. This mode can also be played single-player if you choose, but for the narrative-driven levels, you are on your own.

If you are a fan of creepy sci-fi thriller movies and 2D games, you have to try Hidden Deep! Everything works together to create a suspenseful, atmospheric game that made me jump multiple times while playing it. I knew that once a research station was mentioned this was not going to be a happy story…