Here’s one way to feel good about your job this morning.
https://www.facebook.com/hiddendeepgame/videos/430472317392592
If you shouted Tremors! you wouldn’t be too far behind when in fact, all Łukasz Kałuski’s ever wanted to be is a movie director bang in the middle of the 90’s. Sci-fiction. Predator/Aliens/Flashback/The Thing type work history.
Now call him ambitious, but a trio of successful Amiga releases 20 years ago led him down a path that’s roundabout 1,500 meters past the bottom of the ocean floor. Pretty much where the first group of researchers exploring anomalies disappeared without a trace.
After a full 564 days of contact, that is.
At this point he’s penning the fate of a second team with all the realism he can muster. Hidden Deep begins with its own physics simulation and destructive terrain engine, making use of neat little motion capture/rag-doll type movement to crank up the suspense.
Work’s aplenty that in between strange encounters with the other kind, you’ll have plenty of responsibility over a team while engaging in some running, jumping, swinging and diving of your own.
The snippets of game-play demonstrated towards the end of last year show off a host of tools available to this end; winches for horizontal traversal, Prometheus-inspired scanners for the unreachable, some terra-unveiling gadgetry and massive diggers to put your underworld research into action.
I’m also ready to play the expert and say the audio’s brutal. There’s something deeply unnerving listening to the man’s boots echo against the abyss before his screaming takes over; I’m not sure a soundtrack is on Kałuski’s to-do list but as it stands, no background music works and how.
If you do decide to follow the mystery across either of Facebook/Twitter at this point you won’t find much history; that’s because Hidden Deep was previously Halved-Circles Mine and in development since at least 2013.
It’s come a long way with Kałuski hoping to finally make his directorial debut Q4 2018; a pre-release demo is likely. Judge for yourselves how this one turns out by playing the game at London’s EGX Rezzed, anywhere between the 13th-15th of April this year.
