Enslaved on an unknown planet, a stolen Nauticrawl is your only hope of escaping the wretched life you were born into. But now that you're at the helm, you have a whole new set of problems. The craft is full of levers, buttons and gauges that make no sense to you. And even if they did, where would you go? This stolen Nauticrawl is both your only chance of escape and the likely instrument of your demise. Sentinels are approaching, it's time to move!
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Nauticrawl is a game where you learn how to operate a mysterious machine, and discover the secrets of the world by using it. It's relatively short, maybe 4 hours? I thought it was a real gem. Learning how to use the machine was fun and rewarding. The game has a rich atmosphere, and manages to convey a lot of mood and action with a limited interface. The limited window into the game world serves to make this the most immersive game I have ever played. I thought the story was interesting, and the ending was satisfying, although it is open-ended. Definitely recommend this one to everyone. Just don't be frustrated if you fail a few times because you don't know what to do; it's part of the learning process.
Learning how to play this game is half the fun
We need a proper name for titles like this where you have a load of buttons and levers and screens that require careful balancing and management.
Whatever you call it, it rules. Nauticrawl is peak Marine Job Horror. You play as an escaped "worker" stuck inside a strange machine that you stole. Merely getting something to turn on is a complicated affair at first. But eventually screens flicker to life as you begin to get a feel for it. Soon you're slowly crawling along the ocean floor, with nothing but a basic radar image to guide your way. It requires patience and forward thinking.
There's a turret tower and a destroyed nauticrawl nearby. Your cloak might last long enough to reach that nauticrawl, but will you have enough battery to get out of there? Has the poor worker who'd attemped to escape before you left a crumb of the fuel you desperately need?
It's all a gamble, and when you're winning, oh baby!
Whatever you call it, it rules. Nauticrawl is peak Marine Job Horror. You play as an escaped "worker" stuck inside a strange machine that you stole. Merely getting something to turn on is a complicated affair at first. But eventually screens flicker to life as you begin to get a feel for it. Soon you're slowly crawling along the ocean floor, with nothing but a basic radar image to guide your way. It requires patience and forward thinking.
There's a turret tower and a destroyed nauticrawl nearby. Your cloak might last long enough to reach that nauticrawl, but will you have enough battery to get out of there? Has the poor worker who'd attemped to escape before you left a crumb of the fuel you desperately need?
It's all a gamble, and when you're winning, oh baby!
"As stated by the royal court due to recent plunders, all belongings of the deceased pilot are to be considered property of the local authorities."
When you first start playing Nauticrawl, you will be completely and immediately overwhelmed. This is by design. The cockpit that you occupy is full of levers, and clicky buttons, and pull cords, and none of them are labelled. You're expected to play around with them, hit switches until anything happens, and then inevitably get a game over for what seems like literally no reason. It is confusing, and it is unfair.
Eventually, you'll stumble your way into hitting the right switches. It doesn't take too long, but it stops just before your frustration can set in. The murky, bassy rush of water around your Nauticrawl gets interrupted by beeping monitors and rolling engines, and you can start to figure out what each of these individual pieces do as a whole. You'll continue to make mistakes that cost you the game; you'll ram into a wall and break critical systems, or get caught by a patrolling drone, or simply run out of gas and battery and leave yourself stranded on the sea floor, but each of these failures teaches you something new. You won't lose the same way twice, because you've learned the two things that make you lose: ignorance, and carelessness.
The Nauticrawl starts to feel like a second skin. You flick off monitors as you move, because you know where you're going to go before you take a step. You redirect battery power from the vestigial components you've identified. You know exactly how much time you've got to loot guard towers before the security drones spawn, and you know how to evade them if they do. Try as they might to stop you, the royal court doesn't stand a chance. You've figured out how to use their machinery better than they can.
The Nauticrawl turns from an oppressive, horrifying machine into a symbiotic tool. You take the vehicle that has been used to enslave you, and you turn it against the royals. You will walk through them. They have contented themselves with autonomous guards and slave labor, and, in doing so, have ensured that they will be usurped. The drones are easily outsmarted and outwitted; you carry the flame of a popular revolt. Those forced into Nauticrawls outnumber the members of the royal court.
There's a moment at the halfway point that I won't describe beyond the fact that you get access to additional tools, but they're responsible for blowing the entire world of the game wide open. It's the exact turning point where Nauticrawl turned from something I liked into something that I loved. This relies a little on some very forced contrivances for the player's sake, which seemed like a bit of a step down after all of the learning needed to get this far in the first place; it feels like a developer losing confidence in a player who, by getting this far, should already be trusted to figure things out by themselves.
This is a minor blemish on something that is otherwise so wonderful as a holistic experience. Nauticrawl is an unforgettable title that effortlessly forces to player to work through the confusion and persistence required to learn something without a manual better than any of its contemporaries have ever even attempted.
When you first start playing Nauticrawl, you will be completely and immediately overwhelmed. This is by design. The cockpit that you occupy is full of levers, and clicky buttons, and pull cords, and none of them are labelled. You're expected to play around with them, hit switches until anything happens, and then inevitably get a game over for what seems like literally no reason. It is confusing, and it is unfair.
Eventually, you'll stumble your way into hitting the right switches. It doesn't take too long, but it stops just before your frustration can set in. The murky, bassy rush of water around your Nauticrawl gets interrupted by beeping monitors and rolling engines, and you can start to figure out what each of these individual pieces do as a whole. You'll continue to make mistakes that cost you the game; you'll ram into a wall and break critical systems, or get caught by a patrolling drone, or simply run out of gas and battery and leave yourself stranded on the sea floor, but each of these failures teaches you something new. You won't lose the same way twice, because you've learned the two things that make you lose: ignorance, and carelessness.
The Nauticrawl starts to feel like a second skin. You flick off monitors as you move, because you know where you're going to go before you take a step. You redirect battery power from the vestigial components you've identified. You know exactly how much time you've got to loot guard towers before the security drones spawn, and you know how to evade them if they do. Try as they might to stop you, the royal court doesn't stand a chance. You've figured out how to use their machinery better than they can.
The Nauticrawl turns from an oppressive, horrifying machine into a symbiotic tool. You take the vehicle that has been used to enslave you, and you turn it against the royals. You will walk through them. They have contented themselves with autonomous guards and slave labor, and, in doing so, have ensured that they will be usurped. The drones are easily outsmarted and outwitted; you carry the flame of a popular revolt. Those forced into Nauticrawls outnumber the members of the royal court.
There's a moment at the halfway point that I won't describe beyond the fact that you get access to additional tools, but they're responsible for blowing the entire world of the game wide open. It's the exact turning point where Nauticrawl turned from something I liked into something that I loved. This relies a little on some very forced contrivances for the player's sake, which seemed like a bit of a step down after all of the learning needed to get this far in the first place; it feels like a developer losing confidence in a player who, by getting this far, should already be trusted to figure things out by themselves.
This is a minor blemish on something that is otherwise so wonderful as a holistic experience. Nauticrawl is an unforgettable title that effortlessly forces to player to work through the confusion and persistence required to learn something without a manual better than any of its contemporaries have ever even attempted.
Ich mag wirklich das Konzept von dem Spiel, leider hat die Ausführung zu etwas arg monotonem Gameplay geführt.
Ich hätte mir erhofft, dass man sich noch mehr mit der Steuerung hätte auseinander setzen müssen und das weniger mit Text und mehr mit anderem Feedback erklärt/gezeigt wird.
Vor allem beim "Hauptmodus" des Gefährt gab es eigentlich nur eine Spiel-/Steuerungweise, welche man benötigte. Man musste eigentlich nie seine Spielweise der Umgebung anpassen, da diese sich eigentlich nie wesentlich änderte.
Das Ende war zumindest ziemlich cool.
Ich hätte mir erhofft, dass man sich noch mehr mit der Steuerung hätte auseinander setzen müssen und das weniger mit Text und mehr mit anderem Feedback erklärt/gezeigt wird.
Vor allem beim "Hauptmodus" des Gefährt gab es eigentlich nur eine Spiel-/Steuerungweise, welche man benötigte. Man musste eigentlich nie seine Spielweise der Umgebung anpassen, da diese sich eigentlich nie wesentlich änderte.
Das Ende war zumindest ziemlich cool.
always intriguing