Deepclaim

The deep is full of treasure. It is also trying to kill you.

Deepclaim is a game about greed and one honest number: the air in your tanks. You drop your mining submarine through the seabed, drill up ore and lost cargo, and haul it back to the rig at the surface to sell. Every second underwater your air is running out — and the rig at the top is the only place it refills. So every dive is the same quiet question: one more gem, or turn back while you still can?

A seabed you have to light

Below the sunlit water, the rock keeps its secrets. Ore, capsules, chests and air pockets stay hidden until your lamp, your sonar or your drill finds them, and what you've seen stays seen. Upgrade the lamp to cut further into the dark, ping the sonar to chart a whole cavern, and learn which glints are treasure.

Twelve seas, each stranger than the last

The Home Shoal is calm and bright. It does not stay that way. As you claim the core of each sea and open the next, the deep turns against you in new ways:

• Silt that collapses the moment you dig out what holds it up, and can bury you.

• Chokedamp that looks like a pocket of clean air and drains your tanks instead.

• Saltcrust you can cut through, but that corrodes your hull if you sit in it.

• A crush depth that squeezes harder the further under it you go — upgrade the hull or be flattened.

• Danger that grows with depth: every hit costs more the deeper you are, and each sea is darker than the last.

Every sea has its own ore found nowhere else, its own palette, its own name for the dark, and its own danger line waiting at the door.

Then the twelve run out — and the game doesn't

Take the twelfth and final core and the deep opens beneath it: the Beyond, an endless descent with no floor. The seas cycle and darken, the numbers climb forever, and the only question left is how far down you're willing to fall.

Dig in peace, or fight the deep

At the start of a new career you choose your deep:

• Peaceful — just you, the rock, and the air clock. Slow, quiet, and yours.

• Perilous — the deep is alive down here. Glowing drifters, lurking anglerfish, and fast hunters roam the caves, and in the darkest water some glints are lures. Charge one down at full throttle, freeze it with a stun pulse, or clear the room with a bomb. Drift in slow and heavy, and it bites.

Keep a Peaceful career and a Perilous career side by side, each with its own dive. Everything you've banked is shared between them — Charter upgrades and the Claim that buys them, the relic shelf, the ore codex, your records, your looks and achievements.

The Daily Dive

One dive a day, the same for everyone: the same sea, the same rock, the same sub, and one tank of air that the rig can't refill. Bank what you can carry home before it runs dry. Your first dive of the day goes on the Steam leaderboard, beside every diver's sub in the look they dived in; after that, practise all you like. It never touches your careers.

The Weekly Challenge

One sea a week, the same for everyone, under a twist that changes how you dive: a glass hull that can't lose a single plate, lights out with only your sonar's echoes to go by, a gold rush with half a hold, or heavy water that drags you down. Dive as often as you like all week: your best attempt stands on the week's Steam leaderboard.

An operation that never stops growing

Sell your haul and pour it back into an uncapped submarine — a harder drill, deeper tanks, a stronger hull, a bigger hold, a lamp that reaches further, thrust to climb faster. Bank a rarer currency into permanent Charter upgrades that carry across every future run. Take jobs from the rig — hauls, deep dives, hunts, no-hit runs and relic hunts — that pay in step with your own prices, chase setpieces hidden in the rock — drowned wrecks, crystal geodes, sealed vaults — and let the Salvage Arm strip the walls as you dig for a combo bonus.

Things worth keeping

• Twelve unique relics, one hidden deep in each sea, for the shelf at your rig — and a fresh relic hunt in every career.

• The Locker: 193 looks to mix and match across eleven slots — hull shapes, paints, emblems, lamp colours, trails, drill heads, pets that follow you down, horns, and the boat, flag and deck of your rig — and a name for your ship. Every one is earned by playing, including sixteen secret feats. None is ever for sale.

• An ore codex that remembers every mineral you've ever pulled from the deep.

• Treasure maps in sunken chests, pointing to hoards buried off to one side.

• Thirty-six captain's logs from the first Deepclaim crew, forty years ago, left in wrecks and drifting bottles across the twelve seas: their story, as you find it.

• Forty-three Steam achievements: thirty-one pay a little Claim back, and twelve are just for your profile.

Made small, on purpose

Deepclaim is one honest single-player game with no microtransactions, no online requirement, and no fluff — nothing to install, just dive. Controller support is built in, with your pad's own button names and rumble, and there are comfort options for colourblind players, flashing, darkness, the hidden seabed and a larger HUD. When the deep looks good, photo mode stops the clock so you can frame it. The pixel art and the drifting, tension-aware soundtrack are all generated by the game itself as it runs.

How deep can you claim?