I was actually in the mood to play spooky games this week, more or less because they were demos and not full games.

Don’t judge.

This week I woke up in a submarine and was told to drill for oil or I would die.

This week is The Oily Depths Demo.

The Oily Depths is a psychological horror game from Ryan R. Burns. The demo is still up, has no release date, and no price.

As mentioned before, you wake up in a shitty bed in a submarine to a voice barking at you over a comm system, informing you that it is time to rise and shine and start work.

Work consists of looking for oil. Going to the drill room, looking at the computer for instructions. The computer tells the player if it is rock or oil, and the player figures out how to make the oil drill function. Flipping a switch switches between drilling and using the hose, using the left and right clamps to make sure the drill/hose is tight and pressing a button to start the process.

Almost immediately after the onboarding section concludes, the voice then yells at the player to continue the shift by navigating to another potential spot to drill for oil. This requires going to the helm and navigating to another spot based solely on instinct because the mini-map tells you borderline nothing other than where obstacles, a descending meter position, and an X mark the next drilling spot.

In no time, the player will become comfortable with the controls. Then, the voice screams that your pay is being docked, and you receive payment in oxygen. As a result, the next destination and drilling are timed. Make the time and live or die, I guess.

This demo had got me real stressed REAL FAST.

There is much more to the sub that you call home and work. It has a hammer and a fire extinguisher for when mistakes happen, and they will happen. When they do, you have to be quick to repair the hull or put out a fire, or you are going down with the ship.

The horror comes in the form of frantically trying to drill for oil while trying to fill a quota to not die, and when it is done, the player falls asleep and dreams about the unimaginable horrors that dwell in the deep waters with you.

The Oily Depths has a lot of metal and grime, so lots of grays, browns, and blacks are in the color palette. The game looks like a PS2 game.

No coherent voices come out of that speaker in the corners of my submarine room, just an eerie “blah, blah, blah.” Maneuvering through the water makes the hull creek, signaling to me that at any point, I can just die. The drill makes a loud “CLANG” sound as it moves, just like I think heavy machinery would, and the locks “SNAP” into place, giving me the reassurance that the oil won’t just shoot up and sink my sub.

So far, The Oily Depths has my interest. I like the repetitive nature of the gameplay loop, and when you introduce something that makes me stress, like a timer, then you have me hooked. The navigation can be fast and frantic, and under time constraints, it can lead to some really scary moments. I do really want to play more of it.