Building & Simulation · 2023 · FakeFish · online
Barotrauma
A submarine under the ice of a Jovian moon, and nobody can man every station at once.
What it is about
Beneath the ice of Europa a submarine travels through crevasses and caves, and you are the crew. Contracts lead from one outpost to the next: deliver cargo, recover somebody, clear out a nest.
The boat is not a vehicle but a machine with its workings exposed. The reactor wants tuning, cables genuinely run from switch to device, water flows into whichever rooms it finds, and the injured need the right treatment in the right order. All of it can be taken apart and rebuilt in the editor.
Play is online only, with two to sixteen people. Bots take any unmanned stations. There are also modes where part of the crew is secretly pursuing different goals.
Our verdict for couples
A word first: this game wants more than two people. A submarine has a reactor, a helm, weapons, a workshop and a medical bay, and playing as a pair you spend the whole time running between them while the bots at best avoid making things worse. If you can bear that, you get something no other game has: a machine with genuine physics, where every cable actually leads somewhere and one wrongly turned valve floods the engine room. With two, such moments become very precise memories, because it is always clear who did it. Almost nothing is explained, and one of you should enjoy reading wiring diagrams.
Pros
- Every station genuinely has to be understood
- Campaign, workshop submarines and custom missions without end
- Extraordinary amount of game for the price
Cons
- With two there are simply not enough hands
- The bots break more than they fix
- Almost nothing is explained
Suitable from
Gamer
- Conflict potential
- Heated
- Cosiness
- Draining
- When you can stop
- Only after an hour or more
- How long it lasts
- No ending
What other co-op fans say
The reviews almost without exception tell stories rather than pass judgement — who operated on whom, who shot whom, and why that was funny. That says more about the game than any score. The same important note appears twice, and it goes to precisely our question: below three people it gets thin, five or six is ideal, and the bots are little help with two either. The controls also draw criticism for feeling cumbersome.
- “probably the best co op game out there only issue is needing at least 3 people to play and having 5-6 for best experience in my opinion. Still a incredibe game with 2 friends a must play.”
- “Praise the Honkmother. Its a good game, its part submarine sim, part horror action. better with friends for sure.”
- “The game is good however the bots being dumbasses is a very big problem even when we are 2 players”
Summarised by machine from 60 Steam reviews, not written by our editors. The quotes appear verbatim in those reviews.
If you like this one
Runs on the same devices as this game.
Grounded
Shrunk to the size of an ant in your own back garden: the sprinkler is now a natural disaster.
A turn-based role-playing game where the scenery is deadlier than any weapon — and where you are allowed to double-cross each other.
Survive the next winter together. Nothing is explained, dying is frequent.
Four soldiers spread democracy, and the biggest threat is your own airstrike.
Related in the magazine
- Guide
When you're both good at this
Almost every co-op recommendation is written for uneven couples — including our last one. For two experienced players the problem inverts: difficulty isn't what's missing. Needing each other is.
- Guide
When one of you never plays
The usual advice is: pick something easy. It is wrong, and wrong from both directions. What actually helps are four design patterns — and a list of what does not.