$34.99Is Barotrauma worth it?
Barotrauma is worth it if…
- you like tense co-op where everyone has a job and everything fails at once
- you like difficult survival horror with gore, pressure and sea monsters
- you like replayable runs, missions, factions and reputation to manage
- you like tinkering with wiring, crafting, talents and submarine building
Screenshots
Hold a leaking submarine together
You steer a tin can through black water while everything breaks at once. The hull breaches, water pours in, the reactor overheats, the lights die, and something large shows up on sonar. You grab a welding tool, pump out a corridor, swap a fuel rod, then man a gun. Jobs split across captain, engineer, mechanic, medic, security and assistant, so a good run feels like a well-drilled crew. A bad run feels like 16 people arguing in a sinking hallway, which is also the point.
Monsters, missions and Europa itself
Outposts hand out transport, salvage and hunting work for the last remnants of humankind, with four factions to please or annoy. Between stations you cross procedurally generated seas, alien ruins and crashed wrecks. You can flee a swarm, fight it, mine minerals, loot bodies, or ignore the job entirely and pick a fight with a clown. Danger rarely announces itself: pressure, fire, flood and parasites do the talking. Expect to die from a mistake you made two stations ago, like forgetting spare oxygen or ammo.
Lie to your friends in traitor mode
Work together toward the mission, or take a secret objective and make sure nobody gets home. You act normal while the ballast quietly floods, the medicine cabinet gets rearranged, or the reactor starts behaving strangely. Built-in voice chat carries by distance and position, so a scream from the ballast tank that cuts to silence tells its own story. Play it straight for survival, play it crooked for comedy. Either way, one round can swing from calm repairs to full flooding in about a minute.
Wiring, crafting and your own subs
Learn complex systems if you want to live long: sonar discipline, reactor output, engines, pumps, wiring, medical chemistry and crafting for weapons, equipment and medicines. Gain experience and unlock talents across three specialization trees per class to shape your role. Supplement a short crew with bots in singleplayer or multiplayer when friends are scarce.
Good to know before you flood?
How does co-op actually play?
Up to 16 players crew one submarine, with bots to fill gaps in singleplayer or multiplayer. Six classes divide the work: captain, engineer, mechanic, medic, security officer and assistant. You navigate, run sonar, feed the reactor, pump water, weld breaches, treat wounds, shoot guns and craft supplies. Early hours are panicky because nobody knows the systems yet, and experienced crews get their fun from teaching newcomers while the ocean tests them.
What do you do between outposts?
Take missions such as transport, salvage, monster hunting, exploring alien ruins or breaking into a prison, then travel a procedurally generated route to the next station. Factions track your reputation, so helping one cause brings rewards and consequences with the others. There are multiple game modes, so runs stay different through new maps, objectives and crew combinations.
Is it scary or just chaotic?
Both. Ragdoll physics, dark water, limited oxygen and quiet sonar contacts build slow dread, then a breach or creature turns it into shouting and laughter. It carries violence, gore and drug use, with psychological horror in the traitor and infection side of life. Come for pressure management and poor decisions under stress rather than scripted jumps.
Can I build and mod things?
Yes. Crafting covers equipment, weapons, medicines and survival supplies from gathered materials, so a prepared crew is a living crew.
