For most of us, the ocean is a fundamentally alien space. Deep-sea biology, and the world in which it thrives, is so distinct from life on the surface that what lies below is, as a game designer might put it, a place of infinite possibility. Anything could be down there.
In Song of the Deep, the new 2-D exploration game from Insomniac Games, what's down there is your father. You play Merryn, the daughter of a fisherman who vanished beneath the waves. You build a submarine to go after him, and find a world beyond imagining. Forests of giant luminescent kelp strung over ancient clockwork machines, elaborate ruins dotting the sea floor, mermaids and talking seahorses and leviathans the size of skyscrapers.
Song of the Deep, out now on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, seeks to conjure the wonder and terror of this world, filtered through the sensibilities of Irish folklore and children's animation. At times, it does a splendid job. It conjures something else alongside it, though the spectre of videogame tedium, fast behind like a shark. It can't quite escape.
Insomniac Games
