7/10Developer: Uppercut Games | Released: 2022 | Genre: 3PS, Adventure

This will be the last entry in my blog series with balanced reviews.

This sequel to Submerged is essentially more of the same. The goal is different – put a big seed in an enormous flower located in large buildings – and it has more collections as well as a few more features, including the brother now joining in on the adventure. But other than that, it’s still relaxed climbing, jumping and sailing, and again it often feels a little bit too easy.

With the brother now steering the boat, the two siblings sail between buildings to climb them for various objectives. The main one is lifting a beach ball of a seed into a big flower to change the organic flow of the building, but there are also other objectives such as finding relics, collections, books with the history of the city, boat boosters, light a fire in towers, discovering landmarks and animals, etc.

The most noticeable new features are mostly related to the boat. It can now drag bridges and platforms out with a rope, and it’s also where you see the brother raise relics with an anchor. The siblings are randomly in control when going on a climbing adventure in a building. That was a really cute feature, although the main story buildings with the seeds are for the sister only, as that part relates directly to her.

7/10Developer: Uppercut Games | Released: 2015 | Genre: 3PS, Adventure

Ever wondered what it would be like if you made a game out of just the climbing part of e.g. Tomb Raider or Uncharted? No combat, no complicated quests, no real danger – just climbing on the walls of buildings?

Submerged is pretty much exactly that.

Well, and a bit of traversing a partly submerged city in a boat, just to get from one building to the next. The story is very thin – barely an excuse to go climbing. The young girl in your control has a younger brother that has been injured, and she has to climb those buildings to get food, water, bandages, etc. There are ten larger buildings to find, all with a chest on top with the things she needs.

The game is very easy mode. You can’t fall down from anything and die. Sometimes the girl loses her grip in one hand and dangles for a few seconds with just the other hand, but it’s all show with no consequences. It makes for a very relaxing experience that also involves finding landmarks and collections, but as you might imagine, the easy mode climbing does feel like it’s too much of a good thing.

8/10Developer: Stage 2 Studios | Released: 2023 | Genre: 3PS, Adventure

This was a spiritual sequel to Lifeless Planet which I completed in 2015. This one also had me in control of an astronaut on long treks across rocky landscapes, forests, caverns, an empty city and many other bizarre locations. It didn’t impress me all that much in the beginning. It felt a little cheap with its low resolution textures, especially just coming from Stray which looked amazing.

But the game turned out to be surprisingly varied, frequently coming up with unexpected vistas and set pieces. It even had the jet pack from the previous game for a stretch, although thankfully without having to refill it all the time. I also didn’t have to replenish my oxygen. Removing these two mechanics was a good choice in my opinion. It kept a better focus on exploration and solving puzzles.

9/10Developer: BlueTwelve Studio | Released: 2022 | Genre: Adventure, Third Person

Know that feeling when you think a game is going to be in a certain way, then when you finally play it, it turns out to be significantly different? Stray was like that for me. I had the impression it would be sort of a cat version of a walking simulator, barely figuring out how to traverse a city, with lots of platforming and jumping through difficult to find openings. And that would be just about it.

But it was much more than that.

The game was also an adventure game with chain-like quests, it had a floating robot called B-12 to translate text and communicate with robots, there were genuine stealth sequences, running for a while from chasing enemies, even some combat. Yes, the actual shooting kind. At the same time, the game constantly awed me by how fantastic it looked. The lighting and the amount of detail was staggering.

So many of my screenshots taken of the game could be framed and put up on the wall.