🚀🌕Review: Deep Sixed - *”Space…the final fron-…ah, damn, the microphones knackered, again”* 🚀🌕

Game Title: Deep Sixed

Platform Reviewed: PC (Steam)

Developer: LRDGames Inc.

Rating: Ice Cool

Deep Sixed is one of the most unique and fun video games that I’ve played in a little while and the only real downside is that it’s so well-designed that its specific nature may be off-putting for some, but those that click with it will find an absolute gem of a gem that will capture their imagination for a long time to come.

In Deep Sixed, you play an unnamed female prisoner who has their sentence ‘bought out’ by a mega-corporation and is jettisoned into Deep Space in a one-man ship that isn’t in the best condition. Your mission?  Map out deep space where the main threat is that your ship could fall apart if not properly maintained!

At first glance, Deep Sixed can seem quite daunting, and rightly so! The tutorial explains how your vessel is split into sections courtesy of the onboard artificial intelligence which guides you around and shows you to how to re-route power, pick up items scattered around the ship (which can be used and combined at temporary fixes for certain things), use the weapons and most importantly, how to traverse the randomly-generated reaches of space.

Accompanied by a gentle, bubbly ambient soundtrack and with bright, colourful hand-drawn graphics, you’ll spend the days pottering around and exploring space whilst ensuring that your ship doesn’t fall apart. There is a quest log in the game as well as random events that occur as you zoom around exploring and logging everything that you see.

The fun, tension and main bulk of the game comes from working through your list of objectives whilst cobbling together repairs for the myriad things that can go wrong on your travels. Whilst there are ways to fix things properly, the items are expensive and so you’ll need to earn tokens before being able to afford them and that means maybe putting some gaffa tape on that hole in the hull or hoping that you don’t need to fire your lasers for a while because you’ve channelled the power elsewhere in order to cope, it’s all janky, thinking-on-the-fly fun that is so well-designed that it’s hard not to love.

I’ve never played a game in this genre before that puts you in the position of convict / intrepid space explorer / maintenance woman but after an hour or so of keeping my little ship chugging along as I solved the various problems that often pop up, sometimes relying on me to get my head stuck in the maintenance manual to find out what a specific error code means, it really sucked me in and made me want to complete my mission, it may be a bucket of bolts, but it’s all I’ve got!Summary:

Deep Sixed is a very clever, unique game with a charm and polish to it that makes it playable, fun and gives it a real depth without getting bogged down in technical knowledge. It reminded me of Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes in how it manages to capture a very specific premise so well whilst also giving such a sense of satisfaction whenever you avert a crisis or fix up your little ship enough to make the next trip. It’s a game that I heartily recommend you take a look at…and bring a spanner.

Right, I’m off to give the oxygen unit a kick.

❄️ RATING: ICE COOL ❄️

Ratings Explained

ICE COOL (Great Game Recommended)

MELTING (Recommended with reservations, one to consider if you are a fan of the genre)

MELTED (Not A Recommended Purchase)

Review By Britt