Deepen is a great indie cosmic horror fishing game that eases you into it with solid fishing mechanics and some mutant catches. The story and gameplay are engaging and kept me on the edge of my seat from start to finish, which is why I’m so elated that its latest and final DLC, Iron equipmentis the best reason to start a recent save file.
Excavator: Iron Platform is both a story and world expansion to the base game, preserving the core experience to the point where you’ll have a better time if you start the game over rather than continuing from a nearly completed playthrough. The DLC’s centerpiece is a massive oil rig, evident from every part of the map, looming in the distance like a giant metal behemoth waiting to come to life and chase you across the seas. Thankfully, The Iron Rig doesn’t do that. It does something far more sinister.
A recent world beneath the surface
You do not have access Iron equipment IN Deepen until you reach the third major location in the base game. This way, you’ll know what you’re doing and have most of the gear you’ll need when you finally decide to visit the massive metal structure. This is the DLC’s greatest strength, as it helps keep the story and progression of the base game intact. The way you slowly gain recent technology and upgrades throughout the story helps you master them all, and Iron equipment It’s about increasing your power, so it’s not worth interrupting the process right away.
However, you’ll notice the DLC’s impact from the moment you set sail on a recent save file. Strange crates now appear in specific locations throughout the map. Of course, the game teaches you to mine everything you can, so those crates quickly fill your stash when you’re saving them for a rainy day. That rainy day is when you arrive at the oil rig just after reaching Stellar Basin.
The chests you collect are used to build and unlock parts of the platform, allowing you to meet and greet the strange recent characters it introduces. They are just as strange and haunted as the inhabitants of any other location in the game, but each one seems to be trying to escape their past. They add a lot more flavor to the gameplay, and I had a lot of fun working with them to unlock recent features of the platform and exploit their services.
After a while, true nature Iron equipment is revealed. When activated, an oil rig accidentally causes a huge fissure in the bedrock beneath the seas you thought you knew so well. This causes a stout black substance to rise to the surface and forces recent species of fish back into the ocean that previously only appeared as fossils. It’s clear that Black Salt Games had a lot of fun with these creatures, as you have antique fish, crustaceans, and even things we don’t fully understand in 2024, like the monster Tully.
As you might expect, you’ll be given quests that revolve around these recent species and this dim substance, but the cosmic horror subtext of the base game only grows with this recent development. You have no idea what’s going on, and the events in the DLC only get worse over time, adding to the overall narrative of this cursed collection of islands.
The most vital thing on this journey Iron equipmentHistory evolves over time because it happens Deepennatural progression. It takes you through each area of the game in the same order you progress through the main story, which allowed me to see them all in a whole recent lightweight. Progression also affects the gear you have to exploit in those areas, as it changes over time. Despite completing an area, you’ll still have to upgrade your gear with strange recent rods and gear if you want to go back and continue Iron equipmentHistory .
While some of the residents of previously visited locations mention Ironhaven and the dim goo that covers their local waters, many others do not. I found this a bit more strange than usual Deepen simply because these are huge changes to the setting, and I expected to see more mention of this in dialogue. However, it’s a strange game with strange characters who fit into the world equally well whether they mention the changes to the setting or not.
Iron equipment‘s characters more than make up for it. They are incredibly talkative and weird and walk the line between unnerving and making you feel like a real friend. They are super unsettling and you don’t feel like you are a part of any of the Deepencommunity. It fits perfectly, because they are outsiders, so they shouldn’t be like any of the locals. Black Salt Games hit the nail on the head, because they really define this space-haunted community as a motley crew of outsiders, all clearly hiding from their pasts or trying to hide their intentions in the most remote place on earth. The problem for them is that this place holds just as many secrets as they do.
Iron equipment gives you more reasons to fish and mine for materials, but it can be a bit of a chore if you don’t take advantage of the recent gadgets you can catch from the set. Standard equipment like trawler nets and crab traps have been changed to let you collect the stout, black liquid that rises from the depths and gather materials scattered across the ocean by wrecked ships. You’ll also need a recent set of fishing rods to catch each recent fish and crustacean the dim liquid brings with it, as the infusions provided by the set protect your line from the unknown substance.
This speeds up progress a bit in both the base game and the DLC, but also extends the gameplay time by about seven hours. Iron equipment joins the base game, it doesn’t feel less substantial. I tried playing through the DLC story in tandem with the base game and nothing felt lifeless. The initial story helps you understand the basics, and Iron equipment allows you to spread your wings, so to speak.
For all recent technologies Iron equipment and adds a recent speed at which you can get it, Deepenattention to detail can be its own undoing when it comes to DLC. After getting upgrades for my engines, which added recent abilities but also significantly increased my speed, I found that traversing the world became more hard. I kept hitting rocks I’d never hit, even when my ship was fully upgraded in the base game.
I want to emphasize that this only happened in a few places, like the Collector’s Island and areas where there are a lot of objects to avoid as you travel. It’s not a deciding factor by any means, but it was frustrating for me because I knew I shouldn’t be ramming these things, and the only difference is that Iron equipment gave my boat more power than I can clearly handle.
I fell in love with Deepen all over again during the game Iron equipment. It fleshes out the game in ways I never thought I needed, and makes it feel completely recent. Every point the base game made about humanity’s impact on the world and the unknown implications of… well, the unknown, is reinforced by the DLC. It’s a great reason to play again, a fantastic excuse to stay in bed all weekend and play a cozy horror game, and a recent way to ponder what lurks just beyond your sight the next time you gaze out into the vastness of the ocean.
