Splash Screen - Deep Black Reloaded Verdict

Some indie games put up a real challenge. When an indie game, developed by a really small studio, aims for the sky, for production values that, given the circumstances, are outstandingly high, can it be forgiven to be... Not very outstanding when compared with games developed by much bigger teams with bigger budgets?

Developed by Russian developer Biart, an independent team of 15 people, it’s a really amazingly good looking indiegame.

Deep Black: Reloaded is such a title. Developed by Russian developer Biart, an independent team of 15 people, it’s a really amazingly good looking indiegame. The problem, it’s a game that feels much more like a really badly designed title from a big studio.

Deep Black is a third person shooter that seems mostly inspired by Gears of War’s gameplay mechanics. The game adds a third dimension to the mix, since half of the game takes place under water. This is a place Biart have some experience with, since the last title the studio produced was an underwater fishing action game of sorts. So their custom built game engine appears to be built for exactly that purpose. Make underwater sections fun.

Which works well enough to not be a big annoyance. Movement in three dimension has been done better by bigger studios, but then again I have to remind myself, that this is not one of the big guys. The underwater parts are what supposedly makes this game unique. I can’t help but get the impression though, that especially that part has been ripped from GRIN’s Dark Void, which itself wasn’t necessarily a very good game to begin with.

What is somewhat of a nuisance is the inability to jump in and out of the water at any possible point. At least in Dark Void the player could launch into the skies at any given moment. Here the player has to use a special ladder to get from or into the waters, which robs the game some of the dynamics such a two-tiered system could have allowed.

The parts on solid ground are very reminiscent of Gears of War, though the overall mechanics and implementations are of course a lot clunkier. This 15 men strong Russian team surely is not Epic Games, and that’s okay. The cover mechanic being crucial while being context sensitive is a bit problematic. Not every piece of environment that could be used as cover serves as such. And with the opposition being pretty good shots and the player character not being too keen on eating more than a few bullets at a time, this quickly leads to some hairy situations.

It might have been better for Biart to focus on tight gameplay first, and then wrap some nice visuals around that.

Overally, the question Deep Black confronts me with is, can I rate this game like the bad AA or AAA production it looks like? Because that’s the first impression I get. If this indeed was a big budget game that was just sloppily executed, well, then it would really not be a good game worth any one’s time. As an independently developed title? Well it’s a slightly different story.

But it doesn’t make the game a lot better knowing where it comes from. Sure, a lot of effort has gone into this custom engine which really is a laudable achievement. It’s not a game that’s entirely without merit considering its roots. However it’s just not a good game. It might have been better for Biart to focus on tight gameplay first, and then wrap some nice visuals around that.

Independently developed games should ideally not be like this. Being free from big publishers means independent studios can take paths and approaches, tackle topics that other developers can’t. So it’s sad to see what’s obviously a talented team wasting their efforts with a game that just apes the big guys instead of innovating on its own.