DIVE or DIE - Children of Rain
Image: Drop Rate Studio & Dear Villagers

We're a little late to this party, but the old ones are nothing if not patient. Another quiet indie hit this week as DIVE or DIE - Children of Rain, from Drop Rate Studio. Imagine Dave The Diver, only instead of cute and whimsical, it's intensely cursed, slimy, and full of mind-shattering, soul-devouring abominations below. So, mostly like Dave The Diver, really, but perhaps with a dash of Dredge for flavor.

Okay, that's just Dave The Diver again.

Despite any outward similarities, though, this one is far more likely to set off your Thalassaphobia. This is a full-on Lovecraftian apocalypse setting, with the ocean claiming all, and one last flood coming to wipe out the last few survivors. So you've got forty days to organize your little floating shanty-town into a productive enclave, sending your bravest out on diving missions to gather resources and figure out how to avert the death of all land-dwelling life.

Between high-tension underwater action sorties where you'll be fighting what you can, fleeing from the really big fish, and searching for increasingly haunted sites of power, there's a lot of town management to be done here, assigning resources and jobs to your townsfolk, and potentially sacrificing the least useful of them to the powers beneath. Everyone consumes resources each day, after all... This whole world is intensely cursed anyway, with even the most sane of humans having blank, pupil-less eyes, sickly complexions and surnames like 'Shoals', 'Driftwood' or 'Squall'.

While I'm no fan of the ocean at the best of times, and have been known to take a few deep breaths before trying to play Subnautica, this one's been high on my to-play list all week. From what I've seen of friends streaming it, there's some real (sickly) meat on its bones, with the choices made in town having tangible knock-on effects on your diving expeditions and vice versa. While the ticking time limit sounds stressful, 40 days is the easiest the game offers - plenty for most people to get through after an attempt or two, with additional, tougher challenges unlocked after completing the game once.

DIVE or DIE is out now for £16/$20 with a 20% launch discount running until August 4th, plus a few more discounts if you own other nautical-but-nasty games like SILT or We Need To Go Deeper. There's also a demo, and as of yesterday, the game is fully Steam Deck verified, too. Also worth a mention - Drop Rate Studio's previous game, the undersold but neat roguelike tactics game Wantless: Solace At World's End is 78% off until August 1st.