From the Depths

just another one of those games where shit explodes and you have to spend 15 minutes figuring out why and what did.

fun game, difficult, but fun. the building is an in-depth mess of physics which kills my computer to degraded mode, but hey, it's still pretty damn fun.

watching the things people make while what i manage is a bath tub with a massive rail cannon is, fun.

great for creativity and those who have time to kill.

TL;DR
I'd recommend this game to anyone who loves getting their hands dirty into figuring out complex systems, being able to make diverse creations in block building games, and like ease of use when building.

General

First steam review I've done, so my structuring may be a bit bad. I love playing building/engineering games for vehicles and so far From the Depths takes the cake as my favorite block building based one.

The Building Experience

The building system is very intuitive, all the tools and blocks make it much easier to make good looking (and even smooth sometimes) creations. Having all sorts of transition and slope blocks really helps. I love the complexity of this game where you have to (mostly) build very in-depth weapon, engine, armor, resource, and etc. systems. Having to plan for space and designing armor really brings motivation to actually making a good craft. e.g. designing an advanced cannon as the main battery and building a ship around that gun would give opportunity to styling the ship to the gun and vice versa. I had trouble in other games like Space Engineers(SE) where I wasn't really motivated to designing a good looking craft that would theoretically house planned systems that don't exist in game because what was the point? This is subjective ofc but I enjoy more complex or in-depth building games because it sparks my creativity, need to make a fighter jet? Better make sure it's sleek because there's air resistance. Your ships heavy? Better make sure you have enough props and engine power. The amount of customizing you can do is simply fantastic. I like FtD's building system of mouse and/or keyboard based building. It makes it much easier and quicker to make thousands of blocks when I can just look in the direction I want to build and hold left click and I can use the fill keybind in areas that would other wise take forever to fill by hand. Decorations open up infinite possibilities for shapes to make. They are purely cosmetic and don't affect the physics of your build, they can replace or not if you want their anchor blocks and take the form of the in-game meshes (meshes of things that aren't even buildable normally too like a sphere). And they can be resized, moved, or even rotated to create smooth and complex shapes. The block size feels nice, it's not too big or too small. Big enough where making big creations isn't a huge hassle and small enough to be able to make *some* minor details(usually better to do really small stuff with decorations). The block selection menu is the most enjoyable one I've used so far, the selection menu is divided into different categories which don't usually take more than like 3-4 presses to get the block you want and that you would usually expect to be in that category. It makes it very easy to get the block you want, and if you're having trouble you can search it up from the bottom left.

Gameplay

Warning this game will suck out many hours out of you so don't be like me and get too sucked in where you miss IRL stuff. The campaign is very fun with diverse factions, waters, and terrain, with their own strengths and weaknesses which require to have to specialize or have a general craft for dealing with them. Heck for a game about mostly naval combat you can make aircraft, spaceships, and even tanks making you have to plan for those, flushing out and giving more purpose to your vehicles that you make. I've been playing on the Neter campaign and having a blast. The fleet system of being able to take control of multiple craft and giving them orders makes the large scale combat parts of the campaign a lot easier. Being able to set the resource type is also a huge help, creator, cargo, and user which helps a bunch with resupplying and resource management on a map scale.

Criticisms and dislikes

My major criticism for this game is probably how confusing and buggy the AI systems can be and the lack of in-game help for it; I've struggled with making planes fly themselves without them trying to go to space (literally) or them deciding to fall out of the sky randomly because the AI doesn't know how to move. Another is getting ships to be stable which I did eventually find out through the steam forums. If your ships don't have have a desired pitch to be at (I think it was in the manouver tab) a degree it will probably just nose up or down as it pleases. I've haven't tried much of breadboards but from what I've seen they are much better for aircraft in general than AI is.

Idk how to end this so here ig

Well, here I am. Almost 2000 hours into a game and I still haven't finished any of the campaigns. I have completed numerous tutorials and the basic game missions, but the campaign. Nope.

I could spend another 1000 hours just designing the crafts I would like to use. Another 1000 to decorate them with the amazing mimic features. Let alone the 100s of hours I would spend messing around with intricate weapons systems.

If you love sinking hours into building your own crafts, weapons, engines and god knows what else (the community has made guns that launch slabs of rams at lightspeed into craft) then this is the game for you. Sure the learning curve is like a cliff with bears and the bears are on fire. But its fun, the community is helpful and the devs are always actively developing the game.

Buy it, have fun, suffer, learn, destroy.

Incredible game

Once you get past the VERY steep learning curve, you'll find one of the most entertaining and customizable experiences. You can make literary everything in this game. Physics aren't too restrictive, neither is the building. If you're the creative type, you'll love it.

Well, they broke the game. I used to have fun, playing for hours, hunting small pirate ships, and now even the weakest of pirate ships poses a threat to anything i can spawn in. Way to go, thanks for making the game playable only for people with engineering degrees and can build ships faster than I can print one.

This game is perfect for anyone who wants to build and use physics only downside is it takes some figuring out but once you have the hang of it the game is so fun.

I think this game is incredible and there are a lot of really cool ideas here. Lots of modular designs and mechanical depth that, while complex, allows for a lot of customization and control over what your designs do well. It's a bit of a learning cliff in that you have to really be willing to spend hours tinkering and learning what you're doing to get a lot of mileage out of it, but if you're that type of person then this game is for you.

That all being said, there are some pretty big problems with it. The biggest one in my opinion is the UI/UX sucks. The UI is clunky and overbearing, giving you a bunch of information that you aren't necessarily given context for. As I've owned this game for a while, I've been able to see this part of the game improve significantly, and it really is way better than it used to be, but it's still unintuitive in a lot of ways. The UX is in a similar state; there are loads of tutorials for basically all the systems in the game, but they only help so much and there aren't really reference materials for a lot of the things that I would like references for. Some of the building aspects aren't consistent, with some blocks having a model of their placement available while others are a box with an arrow to show you which side is forward, and sometimes forward isn't consistent across blocks.

Ultimately I think a lot of this game's problems stem from technical debt, which if you're unfamiliar is basically like building a house out of sand and then later realizing that there are way better ways to do that, but applied to programming. It's not a great metaphor, but it's simple enough that I hope you get the gist of it. There are a lot of reasons that can happen, inexperience, engine limitations patched with jerry-rigging and workarounds, etc, and none of them are malicious in their origin, simply a fact of designing a game for as long as it takes to design games, and FtD is not young as far as games go.

This game has a STEEP learning curve, but it is 100% worth it if you enjoy the process of building, testing, upgrading, repeat until you have a decent craft. 10/10 game that runs well even on lower end computers.

Absolute Peak Cinema, if you want a game that requires a full navel engineering degree this is the game for you.

how does some one play thins game every button does something new every time i cant do it you need a PHD just to build a simple boat iam crying nothing make sense this game should be used as punishment but looks cool hopefully i can play one day

I would recommend this game.
Things i thought were good:
Extremely wide variety of blocks and weapons
Extremely wide variety of enemy units
Fun to play with friends
I felt satisfaction after the Deepwater guard capitulated
You can create vehicles that work in many types of terrain, with weapons that work against different types of enemy vehicles
You can capture enemy ships and sell them for materials (capitalism is so fun)
You can insult the hell out of enemy teams
Variable graphics

(Bugs that affected me)
I loaded into a battle and i was stuck in freecam and then i lost 4 hours of progress (note i had been playing campaign for 8 hours)
Despite setting accuracy required to 0.1 my weapons would still fire.

Do note that this game took me 100 hours to get a "grasp" on.
Despite that, From the Depths is a game i heavily enjoy.

Its great for creativity, every campaign and adventure is something different.

I haven't even started a campaign and I can't stop playing. The designer is tough to grasp at first but there are plenty of resources in game and on youtube to better understand how different systems fit together, how to best stack them in a tight space, how armor works, the trends of different factions and how you can improve your own designs. Just designing a craft, making it look unique and building bigger machines with layers of defenses, and I'm not even at the different scenarios of trying out those crafts in a RTS style campaign or an Adventure where you slowly build up on a craft. For the most part everything is viable if used properly, each system has resource requirements or countermeasures if you work to understand it. An enemy can shoot with lasers but you can get better at long distance attacks, apply smoke machines, or put more of your vitals under water where they're protected from lasers. Cram is easy to learn, heavy, slow, but it's fun and some of the early factions use it a lot demanding you learn it first, how to counter it or the benefits of a big cannonball of high explosives before the heavy resource demands of plasma and railguns. Overall a well put together if complex builder for warships and spacecraft, but I have been experimenting with the land campaign where smaller tanks are more useful than trying to carry one large boat.

Why not take a game that was already hard to play and make it even worse with a new camera system? Great idea

Game is great, Breadboards make me want to shove my dick into a pasta press and make tagliatelle with it

Overall would recommend!

hundreds of hours of fun and I'm leaving a negative review because of the recent camera update. completely unplayable now and I refuse to spend dozens of hours relearning camera and build controls in an already complicated game because these devs decided to change them for no good reason. Would maybe be bearable if you could at least disable the middle mouse button to free look which is beyond annoying anytime I want to move the camera. Can't use the argument that its more user friendly either becuase the Ui is more overloaded and complex now.

i may not be the best at the game, but i do find it addictive to simply mess about with hull designs and turret shapes. just tickles my brain in all the right ways

I'm terrible at this game and its hard and at every turn it only gets harder, would recommend.

300 chaozhillion dollars to the military industrial complex

play this if you are willing to spend 6 hours building and tuning a weapons platform and system

Amazing game.
It's a physics based sandbox, with weapons you make yourself, with minecraft like block system,
and even a scripting language to control a lot of aspects of your vehicle.

There is no achievable limit to what you can do.

good game its just my brain is to small to make guns without a prefab and i dont even know how to make the ais cuz im stoopid man :(

Great game, great graphics at high settings, and piss lazers.
Anyway when i bought a game i didnt know into what rabbit hole i would dig into, and honestly i like it!
You may or may not need a PHD to construct a ship, anyway buy it, i am not asking.

Pros

• Potentially can build anything you want, assuming you get past the learning abyss.
  
• Good Soundtrack.
  

Cons

[list]

There is no map in the creative mode that has land and water. It's either land, water, space. All biomes should be able to be messed with at once, ie: start land, build watercraft, build a spacecraft. While all are fighting together.

[*]The tutorial is annoying... So one of the things tasks you with building a boat... For every block you put down he repeats the "place a block here" or "Rotate the block"... When you rotate the block it will spam telling you to rotate the block until it is in the orientation it wants. There is another tutorial mission where it makes you fly an airship.. Yet it doesn't tell you how to control the vehicle correctly at all.

Conclusion

The controls are over complicated and the learning curve is too steep. I am not out here trying to spend 100hours just to learn how to build something. I'll just play trailmakers instead, which is another over complicated mess in terms of mechanics and whatnot. At least the controls in that are bearable though, and the building is done in a comprehensible way. For some reason all these games in this genre want you to use 100% real physics and have a PHD in engineering just to be able to play them. This is when games are taking realism way too far, and they just need to make it accessible for everyone. I refunded this game, as said i'm not going to put in the time that i already don't have trying to learn a game that will take too long to understand. If your willing to deal with everything i have mentioned and you have a lot of free time or an engineering degree this might be your game.

Recent updates have been tough to adapt to but necessary, it's easy for us older players to forget but some of the previous game mechanics weren't really fit for purpose and were confusing for new players - I never quite thought about it at the time but hiding a ships wheel under the bow of a ship to control it from that point was really quite goofy. The game itself is obviously a labour of love and I've never played a game quite like it. My most recent build is a functional aircraft carrier which I've attached to my profiles screenshot section. The level of shear customisation at every level is stunning - Spending the time building a anti missile system and watching your cannons take out enemy salvos from the bridge is a perfect example of how this game stands out from the rest.

Assuming new players are willing to lock in through the early parts of the game then this game is like crack, I rate it a 5 stars and wish the devs nothing but success. Cheers

As other reviews have mentioned, this has a very long learning curve. At the time of this review I am finally starting to feel confident in my knowledge and skills in what I am doing and can make relatively decent ships.
However regardless of that, getting to this point was a lot a ton of fun as I haven’t had a game challenge my brain like this since Kerbal Space Program. If you can push through the initial awkward stage that involves learning the controls, camera, how to build things, and learning some of the janky UX/UI things (I would say it takes at least 10 to 20 hours) then I highly recommended this.

I'm a certified engineer now, thank you for the hard-knocks college certificate.

Was my favorite game for a very long time but I just cant keep going after the recent camera update, I feel so disconnected from the world and from the avatar character. It removes all of the fun I used to have in the adventure gamemode.

Would 100% recommend buying it only if you use an older version of the game, otherwise don't bother, they will probably change everything again after you learn it anyway :(

The recent camera updates are so clunky and unwelcome its making me less likely to play this game, that being said i do love boat game enough to power through. I cant stress this enough, I like the old camera system way more.

I finished my first ship!

At time of writing I have just finished my first fully functional ship. 45 hours, 5 failed prototypes, probably a few extra hours watching tutorials online, and who knows how many hours doodling plans while bored at work.
That's scary for sure. who would want to play a game where it'll be 45 hours before you can get started? Well its taught me two things:
1) while the game has more of a learning cave then a cliff once you do finally find a way out of said cave to understanding the feeling of finally finishing your creation is so very satisfying.
2) the depth this game has can be scary but once you master it you truly have control. I've seen some truly amazing creations, and now it's my goal to build things even half as impressive.

if you do not have the time and effort to sink into this game then make no mistake you will not have a good time it. but if you want something with enough depth that you can build anything from ships to submarines, planes to spaceships, mech walkers to tanks, then this game will reward you for your time and effort.

this game doesn't have a learning curve, it has a learning wall. that's covered in spikes. with lazer defence. and giant guns. and a bunch of mega nerds telling you you're doing everything wrong.

very fun and has TONS of content, but its very complicated and hurts my brain sometimes

good game but the constant screen tearing and wierd new camera just makes it painful to play

use to be a pretty hot game, but every year the devs decide to "update" their game and change something that no one asked for. newest one being camera modes. all whacked out of place

Amazing game, Like a sandbox game, mashed with a rts game for the campain

I love watching the boats I have spent hours building absolutly demolishing the enemy

This game is for people who have time to burn as it takes time to understand the mechanics.
10/10

love its really fun just making a battle ship to blow up towns from the enemys

looked like a cool game, watched some youtube videos of people playing it.

Get the game, and what in the holy hell is this building system? i can't tell what is what, everything looks like some weird hollowed box, barely figured out how to put on a propeller because there was an arrow on one of the sides of the box, get to trying to make an engine and all it can say is "rotate the object".. How am i supposed to rotate it? i have no indication of what is forward or backwards on these parts, everything looks the same, got the engine by pure luck down, and couldn't get the next piece no matter what orientation i rotated it into. Immediately uninstalled and requested a refund.

i can't recomend this game to anyone, if there was an option to see objects how they are while building rather then some weird box that looks the same as any other part, maybe i could actually build something. now i understand why it takes people hours to build anything on the videos i watched, i'm sure they had to sit there rotating things constantly trying to get something to work till they pure fustration of it gots it ingrained in your memory out of pure spite.

If you are willing to spend 250 hours+ just learning the game and basic mechanics then you can play this and have fun but trust me it takes time because its very complex. Very fun game would recommend.

this game is absolutley amazing for anyone whos into or lokking into the sandbox genre (tho maybe not that last one) the games a bit dificult when starting out but if you do the tutorials youl be fineas of wrighting this i have 113 hours and i have owned the game for about 4 dayspls if your thinking abt buying it do it

After playing for 150 hours i can confirm that i have finished the tutorial and defeated the easiest campaign. This game is very fun, it makes you tackle challenges like never before. From building humble rafts to constructing a fleet of enormous battleship, this game has it all. I really suggest consuming some tutorials on Youtube since that's the only thing that'll help you past early game. My gratitude to the community for helping me along the way, make sure to visit their discord for professional help. Great game 8.5/10

This game is my new autistic hyperfixation, it operates so far on a policy of "Do you want to build X? Cool here's an assortment of tools figure it out." that delights and excites my brain and keeps me occupied. Fantastic games if you're autistic about Boats like I am.

I've played a lot of vehicle building games and i have to say this one by far has the worst building mechanics out of any of them. I was really motivated to learn to play this and ended up refunding it 10 minutes later.

This game is incredible!

Craft your own masterpiece of destruction and see it can hold up in the fires of war. I lost so many but eventually... victory and it was sweet.

Rambot is my guy

peak autism simulator, you get to spend 30 hours building a ridiculously complex boat and watch it blow things up

It was a really fun game and I recently tried to get back into it but with all of the camera reworks it will take way to much time to get back in to the game having to rebind all of my keys(again). Also the thing I have most about the rework is the use of the number pad because it is such a unused thing on a keyboard. Overall was fun before the camera update now its not.(prob wont play too often).

The light is going out.

Yes, there's a couple of new weapon types and some reworks. Some DLC with alternate avatars and posable mannequins. Yes, the light hasn't gone out completely yet. But its fading is unmistakable now. Dying the slow death of decay and sickness.


Crystals have been a distant memory for quite a while. Now, so too fuel and ammo. Both just magically summoned from specific types of generic material storage. A feat that was already accomplishable on vehicles with the fuel and ammo processors for those who wanted it, but now mandated from on-high, with no alternatives. One resource to rule them all. The message to those who enjoyed the old systems written plainly and irrefutably in the new mechanics. "Fuck you if you enjoy mildly complex logistics. You'll do things like the zombies want to, or not at all."


Insult to injury, now we randomly have "commodities" as a new "resource", mostly for bribing the other factions. Factions who all are bizarrely keen on including the player in their weird weekly random diplomacy battles for some reason. Gone is the ability for the factions to simply not have an opinion on the tiny random no-name with a tiny "base". Gone is the ability for the factions to naturally begin to aggro as you grow and expand. Don't want to engage in the suspiciously artificial diplomacy meetings? Congrats, literally every faction will gang up on you and attack, because the random child of a meager pirate family doesn't want to engage in weird LARPy council meetings and battles with decadent aristocrats.


The character upgrades are gone too, now. Were they overpowered? Sure, but it's a single-player game, and they were fun. Doesn't matter though, brutally murdered all the same.


But, the light going out is visible in other ways as well. There's new cover art, with the obligatory suspiciously diverse cast. But, not satisfied with merely providing a face for the different factions, the robot avatar that has been with the game so long is now magically depicted as some kind of Asian woman, for literally no reason whatsoever. Rambot was merely a robot avatar for the player, staying out of the way and making no statement in any direction. Now though, it has received the same treatment that so many other things have. Dumbing down of systems that worked fine, turning a beloved thing into a "minority" to appease the diseased appetites of degenerated ex-humans, etc., etc., etc.


The light is going out. That is undeniable. There may yet be some fun to have here, stashed away in forgotten nooks somewhere. Scavenging for the last bits of fun left in a dying world.


Requiescat in pace, From the Depths; you will be missed. Though not by the vultures picking at your flesh.

Must admit for this review, the games learning curve is a literal wall.... but there are tutorials for this game that make it easier to learn to play. Once you figure things out and begin designing competitive designs, you will thoroughly enjoy this game!

it is complicated when you first start but then it gets fun

Big ships, bigger guns! :>

A mix of engineering and pure insanity, there's no other with the same versatility
Even though the tutorials are NOT helpful and generally outdated :<

I've followed this game for multiple years, put in 2k Hours and then the Camera Update happened. There was a community test build before the update, that I entirely missed because I was running mods and didn't want to be on the unstable branch because of this.

I've spent the last three months using the new system, I can work with it and I can get some of the advantages it provides. It took me awhile to rebind controls (I didnt touch the game until the Dual control hotfix) and then unlearn/relearn muscle memory because the keys to fire your weapons got changed.

There are some nice newer features such as ability to zoom in without needing Binos and I guess some people like the Orbit Cam. This does not mean I wish to continue using it, I feel disconnected from the world being a floating orb with an option to spawn in a even more useless than before avatar. I swapped to the old system today and felt much more at home with the simpler controls.

That being said, I do recommend this game to anyone willing to put in the time to learn the systems. It is a very complex game with a learning Cliff rather than a curve. Once you've overcome this it can be a way to waste away thousands of hours perfecting craft and designs. The campaign is rather fun and a good way to learn is to jump into the designer and load in then tear apart the campaign craft to learn how they tick.

I do recommend reverting your version to the pre camera update build in the steam Betas area, F3 can be used to swap to a mouse based building mode aswell. These two changes make the game alot more similar to other games such as stormworks or any other building game making the transition alot easier. There are ingame tuitorials aswell as plentiful videos out there to get you up to speed. If you want to learn more, or improve the discord folks, in most matters, are quite helpful aswell.



Also, I'm calling out the people in the discord who are going to call me a Clown for posting this. You know who you are, you can't ignore the chunk of the community who isnt happy about this update forever.

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME it will only lead you to wast time on soimthing you will never achieve i wasted 4 hours of my life on a ship what tips over no mater what i do only get this game if you have a phd in engineering for ships