Shrouded Depths

Shrouded Depths is a short horror game that I found surprisingly effective for how little time it gives me. I play as Thomas Sencher, a man who enters the Devil’s Strait looking for his wife Ruth, who has been missing for years. I arrive on an old ferry with nothing much besides a rusty harpoon gun and the captain to guide me, but things quickly become much stranger once I head below deck. I liked the basic setup because it gives the whole game a clear purpose from the beginning. I am not just wandering around a scary place. I actually have someone I am trying to find. The exploration is where most of the atmosphere comes from. The ferry starts off feeling like an ordinary old boat, but the further I go below deck, the more the environment starts changing in ways that do not make much sense. Corridors become strange and the layout feels increasingly unnatural, which made me more curious about what was waiting around the next corner. I liked that the game uses the ship itself as part of the horror rather than constantly throwing enemies at me. There is a nice feeling of being trapped somewhere that is slowly becoming less believable. The harpoon gun gives me a way to defend myself…

Awful Free Game but Not The Worst Free Game I've played. They give you 4 harpoons to carry, and you can only carry 4 a time as they are heavy (fair enough) and you can collect more on the wlls of the ship if you run out. What makes this game bad is the following: 1) You don't even need a weapon. theres no danger except the plant things that shoot out the walls and to be honest you can just walk/run past them and take the damage and ignore them. 2) Game is quite short and easy to finish 20 minutes to finish. 3) You can finish the game without firing one harpoon 4) The Plant boss at the end? Theres a cutscene voiceover and ithen it instant kills you as they dont give you time to do anything so you have to retry a few times, eventually getting it right. 5 You don't fight the big plant at the end, You just turn and run and make it to the escape hatch 6) Story didn't really make much sense and terrible voice acting It's a free game so not like it cost anything. OK attempt. Not the worst game ive played here. 4/10 rating. If you want a free game to play for 20 minutes checck it out. At least it has achievements.

In terms of narrative, worldbuilding, art design, pacing, and atmosphere, this is off the charts and super impressive. While short it is free and very appreciated from the devs to just give this gift away for us to play. The script and VO are also excellent and really set an engaging premise leading to some cool twists and story beats. it's not just your typical lovecraft coded psych horror in a swamp is what im saying, and id recommend it to indie horror fans who can handle a bit of rough around the edges. I o have a nitpick though. aiming and shooting feels a bit weird, but that isnt really my problem. its the enemy design and placement. basically every enemy in this is a vine that pops out of a wall really fast and retracts really fast. you have a gun that you need to hold r to wind up and fire and limited ammo. tbh this kind of enemy seemed more like an obstacle and less an enemy to me. so my initial reaction was to try and avoid it, and not even shoot it. part of that was timing my shots was difficult, skill issue maybe but i dont know, it just seemed like that wasnt the intent by the design. the design at play here is fast moving, high damage, like a trap,, the intent that …

I enjoyed, and found the enemies to be unique in design,

20 minutes of poor controlls and very boring story, it's not new, it doesn't say anything new, and it leaves you with nothing. Should you play this? Not unless you are tired of roblox games and wanna try something new, even then this game is subpar to most roblox games.

Voice acting was very good and the water-color looking art was unique and enjoyable. I saw there was an achievement for not skipping the credits so I got that too. Only downside is there are no fish in this game. I was kinda expecting fish