I've had a lifelong fear of large bodies of water, maybe because I grew up smackdab in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. It's bad enough that I can only tread water in a lake or, heaven forbid, the ocean, for a few seconds before I start getting panicky. I learned I was thalassophobic when I was a young child and water-skiing in a nearby lake. I wiped out, and when my head was briefly under water, I opened my eyes and looked down toward the bottom of the lake. I didn't even see anything, but I knew I never wanted to see it again.
What would be immeasurably more terrifying than that experience would be actually seeing something. A fish, some seaweed, anything to remind me I'm not being supported by land. What would completely paralyze me with terror would be seeing something really big, like a shipwreck. My palms genuinely get sweaty just thinking about it, and so, it makes absolutely zero sense that I decided to play a new horror game demo at Steam Next Fest that is literally, explicitly about taking pictures of shipwrecks on the ocean floor.
But that's what I did! Call me a masochist, or maybe just a horror fan, but I like being scared, and goodness this game, The Void Below, is the scariest game I've played this year. The premise is simple: you're solo-operating a malfunctioning submersible with the objective of investigating a mysterious phenomenon that's causing ships to sink more regularly than normal. You use sonar to locate the wreckage sites, exit your submersible, and take pictures of various points of interest. Occasionally, you'll also have to leave the submersible to do repairs. Your oxygen tank depletes rapidly, compounding the stress of having to be near big things deep beneath the ocean surface.
Of course, this being a horror game, shipwrecks aren't the only big things lurking down there. As you progress through the very brief demo, you'll get to know each other more and more.
To clarify, I won't go as far as to say The Void Below is scarier than Subnautica. In fact, I don't want to compare the two games at all despite the overall similar vibes, but I will say playing The Void Below triggered my thalassophobia more deeply and more efficiently. There were times in the 30-minute demo that I had to pause the game and pet my cat for a minute to slow my heartrate, and despite Subnautica's consistent ability to make me feel profoundly uncomfortable, I don't remember feeling an actual physical response.
I won't try to identify the attributes of The Void Below that make it so triggering for me, but I will heartily applaud it for its visuals and sound design. Despite the PS1-era pixel filter, the ocean depths in this game are convincing, meaning it's complete and utter darkness anywhere you look that isn't highlighted by your submersible's search light, which illuminates sediment thinly obscuring massive ocean trenches, plant life, and to my horror, shipwrecks of various shapes and sizes. There is no music; just the sound of your little water capsule moving from wreck to wreck, and here and there, the thundering howl of a Leviathan.
