Hidden Deep Horror a Mile Under the Seafloor

The setup is pure 80s sci-fi: researchers found strange anomalies deep in a sub oceanic mining and research facility, and after 681 days of silence, nobody knows what happened to them. You lead the second team. Go down, find out what went wrong, and rescue anyone still alive.

It borrows its mood from Aliens, The Thing and Half-Life, and the nods are there if you know where to look. The dread builds slowly: something is wrong down here, and the game lets you feel it before it shows you what.

Getting through the caves is the game. You grapple up shafts, swim flooded tunnels, scan rock for a path and blow one open with explosives. The grappling hook feels great when it clicks, and the game rewards creative use of bombs and ziplines: sometimes you can blast a shortcut right past an objective.

You do not go down alone. Control your team members directly or give them orders, coordinating tasks across the group. And when the job calls for it, you operate the big stuff: drones, cranes, a drilling machine, a bridge layer, a loader. One moment you are inching along a ledge, the next you are piloting heavy machinery through a chamber the size of a cathedral.

This is a game built for passing the controller.

Challenge Mode is the natural fit for two: randomized levels with various mission goals, so you never quite know what you are dropping into. Clear a zone, hold out against waves, hunt for a disc, keep an eye on a reactor. It is the kind of game where one of you forgets the jetpack and meets the floor at speed, and that is half the fun. Online co-op is planned during Early Access.