![]() On top of these glitches, there are also a handful of strange design decisions that feed into a picture of a game that may have needed a bit more development time. From sea lions clipping through the walls of my home base, a submarine that would often not let me leave without a full game reset, missions that wouldn't recognise when I had completed them, multiple save data corruption notifications (that were thankfully false but still irksome), to outright hard crashes, Under The Waves is not exactly a well oiled ship. I may not have seen any marine insects in my subaquatic adventures, but I did run into plenty of other bugs. This loop isn't without its rough edges, however. All of these missions progress or enrich the story in meaningful ways, too, cultivating a nice balance between narrative pacing and player agency within a compelling gameplay loop. Stan awakes each day, boots up his mission log to check in on daily tasks, and you're then usually free to tackle them in any order you choose, or go off track to find collectables such as treasures to decorate his homebase, or blueprints to craft new items and upgrades. I particularly enjoyed the cyclical structure that Parallel Studios puts in place to allow players to explore its small, but sizable open world, too. UniTrench's heavy industrial presence, signposted by the giant sprawls of oil pipelines, steel structures, and fleet of remote controlled drones, makes Stan's sightings of turtles, sharks, and other fauna feel all the more precious to discover. You're not going to find an ocean as abundant with life as, say, Subnautica's alien tides, but that's kind of the point. Parallel's bespoke visual style, which gives almost every asset a gorgeous, hand-molded quality, lends a fitting surrealism to Stan's existence beneath the sea, while the game's atmospheric music and soundscapes powerfully invoke the ambient serenity (or profound existentialism) of what it's like to be deep underwater. Under the Waves' playspace of open waters is stunningly beautiful and insidiously terrifying all at once. Thankfully, Surfrider's contributions aren't wasted entirely, as Under the Waves is far more poignant and powerful as a champion for marine conservation when it stops talking, and simply lets the ocean speak for itself. It all makes for a feeling of slightly overwritten messaging. Many of these facts, for example, are communicated via Stan's own personal diary logs, where he manages to somehow list off hard numbers about habitat loss and microplastics from memory, acting less like the character of his own story, and more as a vehicle for Parallel's desire to educate the player. ![]() It's an admirable and worthy attempt to shine a spotlight on the vital work of environmental organizations such as Surfrider's but, again, those worthy intentions are too often undermined in the delivery. This is partly explained by the fact that Parallel Studio has partnered with environmental NGO Surfrider Foundation to consult on its depiction of marine life, and the organization even features directly as a part of the story itself, alongside plenty of facts about ocean pollution, underwater ecosystems, and the marine conservation effort. This kind of parody is a perfectly effective vehicle for subtextual commentary, of course, but its impact here is often diluted in the tonal whiplash of Under The Waves's competing genre shifts, particularly in its gestures towards full-blown docu-drama territory. At times, it opts for corporate satire, with Stan's robot companion Merc often found cheerily spouting union-busting propaganda, or explaining that UniTrench records their employees' every spoken word for the sake of "privacy and freedom". Under the Waves certainly has things it wants to say about the devastating impact of corporate greed on ocean life, but struggles to find the most effective means to do so. Furnishing this central narrative is the mystery surrounding the true nature of UniTrench's work, and Stan's role within it, but it's here where Parallel's writing starts to lose its footing.
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