I Hunger!
HIGH Finding the final crystal skull.
LOW Repeatedly being teleported deep enough to have the air crushed out of my lungs.
WTF Finding out what Bait is made out of.
I kept playing Feed the Deep.
That doesn’t happen often. I try to only play things that have an ending, so that once I’m done, I can move on — but I kept playing Feed the Deep. Even after every mode had been completed, I kept playing. After defeating every challenge, I kept playing.
Even after wrapping up every secret and unlocking the true ending, I kept playing.
Part of this can be attributed to a pre-existing love of the setting. An exploration-focused 2D roguelite, Feed The Deep is set in the deep ocean, and as a general rule, I’ll play any game about underwater exploration — especially with a horror theme, such as it offers.
And what a theme it is. Deep in the ocean, a horrible creature lurks. Impossibly huge and unimaginably malevolent, it poses a threat to all human civilization, and it cannot be destroyed, only appeased — and appeasing it is the player’s job. Obtain a piece of bait and deliver it to the creature, calming it… until its hunger starts to grow again.
This grim work is accomplished mostly by careful searching and upgrading. The narrative establishes that things are getting dire for humanity — they’ve already been forced to move to floating cities as the oceans rose, and constant monster attacks are taking their toll. Not only is the player required to find the bait and deliver it to the Deep, they also have to search out gold and energy in underground caves in order to pay for the upgrades they’ll need to survive.
As with most underwater titles, limited air supply is the primary antagonist. Also deadly is the dark. There are monsters to be found, but they’re less dangerous than getting lost and running out of oxygen. The player’s flashlight — even when fully upgraded — doesn’t penetrate far into the abyss, and many surfaces are covered with patches of silt that destroy visibility completely.
With these factors in mind, navigation is the key gameplay mechanic, so most threats are built around damaging the player’s ability to tell where they’re going. Taking a hit from an enemy will rotate the screen a random amount, forcing the player to either watch which way air bubbles rise, or drop a heavy item to see which way is down. Rushing back to an air pocket is usually a good idea when threatened, but some enemies are able to teleport the player to a random place on the map, which means reaching even temporary havens becomes a nightmarish ordeal.
However, Feed the Deep isn’t satisfied with offering this already-compelling core experience. No, each of the seven modes available offer meaningful changes to gameplay that completely upend how the player deals with the labyrinths. One offers a glut of monsters and automated cannons, but arms the players with respawning bombs which allow them to tunnel their way through cave walls. Another robs the player of air pockets and forces them to constantly search for power cells to keep their rebreather going. Perhaps the most devious mode hides the bait somewhere among a warehouse worth of boxes and challenges the player to figure out which crates have key items and which are packed with deadly beasts.
There’s an oppressive tone that pervades Feed the Deep‘s gameplay. With poor visibility in the dark caves and walls that seem closer every time the flashlight swings between them, players never get a chance to relax and feel like they’re doing well. Hit points are extremely limited and the air reserve can’t be raised much higher than two minutes, so a single mistake can ruin any run, and Muscat does a great job of riding the edge of unfairness. Likewise, maps are just big enough that so that their randomization upon starting a new run doesn’t seem too inconvenient– the player can get a sense of their layout in just a couple of minutes, but there’s plenty of room to surprise with hidden threats and secret supplies.
Even the story is unusually good for the genre. There’s almost no dialogue — just a few exchanges between the player and their controller back at base. Most of the story is offered via dozens of text logs, two or three of which spawn during a dive. They offer surprisingly compelling glimpses into Feed the Deep‘s backstory, chronicling the lengths humanity went to in order to find a way to survive the creature’s threat, and their questioning whether survival is worth the price they’re asked to pay. Likewise, the path to unlocking the true ending is one of the most intriguing I’ve come across in ages, as it asks the player to engage with a series of Gameboy-style minigames that don’t just have to be completed, but also played in unexpected ways to reveal their secrets.
A great roguelite doesn’t just ask players to keep coming back for more, it creates a gameplay loop so satisfying that it makes it impossible to stay away. It makes players desperate to delve back into its world over and over again to experience every potential way the world can be reshaped. Feed the Deep, with its simple controls and bold graphical style, achieves this as well as any roguelite I’ve played — I’m still diving back into the depths, feeding the Deep over and over.
Rating: 8 out of 10
Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Luke Muscat. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. The game has no multiplayer modes.
Parents: The game was not reviewed by the ESRB, but I’d say it’s roughly a T thanks to Cartoon Violence. If it weren’t for the bleak theme I’d call it an E10, but as cute as the graphical style might be, this is still a game about feeding a horrible monster to keep it from destroying humanity.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are no audio cues that will affect gameplay, I played the game largely without audio and had no trouble whatsoever. All story information is delivered via text. The game is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable.
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