Bodies of Water VR Review

One thing that you’re told when you have a collapsed lung, no matter the cause or treatment, is that you can never go scuba diving. Having always figured that I’d go scuba diving at some point in the future, this fact hit me quite hard when my lung collapsed in 2019. So a VR game about scuba diving really appealed to me when I heard about Bodies of Water VR.

You’re given a tutorial on how to do everything in a swimming pool, as I believe is done when you’re doing scuba training in real life. You’re then whisked away to a tropical island with one resident — the guy who works at the dive shop. There are several abandoned cabins, as well as a bunch of various floaties like beach balls and lilos, and a big gate keeping you from venturing into the open ocean.

Unfortunately, you’re there with no money, and it wouldn’t matter if you had even brought your wallet as the dive shop only accepts doubloons. You have to find enough doubloons  purchase each part of a diving suit — suit, watch and tank — piece by piece so that you can reach a save point. Quit before this and you have to do it all again, which is where I first began to grow concerned.

Bodies of Water is being made with a limited budget, that comes across with the graphics quality, poor optimisation, typos, and the text-to-speech voice acting. That’s all fine with me, I really don’t care as long as it’s playable and fun. Unfortunately, it’s barely one of those and definitely not the other.

While collecting the doubloons, you have to find them on land, on the dock, in the cliffs, and underwater. Without the diving suit you can only go down so far. Even with that, you still can’t reach some of them even though you can hold your breath long enough to definitely reach them and scramble around trying to pick them up. Gathering the doubloons is a major hassle and really gatekeeps the rest of the levels, not to mention the save point.

Slip off the cliffs by accident? You’re knocked unconscious and returned to the dive shop having just purchased whatever you’d last bought. That turned out to be a huge chunk of time each time, and I don’t find it fun to repeatedly scale the cliffs which can only be reached by slowly swimming across the bay! You can charge up a boost which lasts a couple of seconds, but even with that and holding onto a floatie it’s still a good few minutes journey.

When you’re underwater, Bodies of Water looks really authentic and I enjoyed diving. Dealing with strong currents, exploring a wreck, just looking at the sealife… Honestly, pushing through the hassle of dubloons allowed me to reach the part of the game I was after all along — floating around looking at fish. I just wish the whole package was better, and honestly the price is a bit higher than most people might like when it’s not on sale. Each section gives you tasks to complete, but they’re never the easiest to understand instructions.

Peel through enough of the game and there’s something kind of special here. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of peeling and the charge on a VR headset only lasts so long.