Having just remarked in relation to an unremarkable title we're commenting only because the present dearth of trailers, it's nice to see the flip side to that.

Barotrauma is a novel and incredibly successful (2.5 million copies sold) indie game we'd never heard of and probably wouldn't have noticed in a typical week. They've announced an early access exit this month.

Barotrauma is a 2D co-op survival horror submarine simulator, inspired by games like FTL: Faster Than Light, Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress and Space Station 13. It’s a Sci-Fi game that combines ragdoll physics and alien sea monsters with teamwork and existential fear.

In the not too distant future, humanity has fled to Jupiter’s moon [Europa]. With its irradiated icy surface, life can only be found in the ocean below. Travel through a punishing underwater world and discover what lies in the depths of Europa. Stay alert: danger in Barotrauma doesn’t announce itself.

Confession time - we are a dimension snob.

Even before covering games professionally, there were a huge number of titles competing for our attention and failing to bring all 3 dimensions to the table felt like an easy filter.

But this isn't a typical 2D sidescrolling platformer or RPG.

It's a sophisticated futuristic off-world submarine simulator in which players can take on different crew roles with both solo and co-operative modes.

Begun by lone developer Joonas Rikkonen in 2014 and taking an unusual development route, eg. releasing the source code to facilitate mod creation.

Later being joined by a small team of developers.

That level of co-operative specialised ship play is something we haven't really seen in games by big developers and for all that it's short a dimension, Barotrauma looks artful.

We can understand its success.

Barotrauma is available now (early access) on PC (Steam) and going 1.0 on March 13.

[ Main Image: Barotrauma. Credit: Daedelic Entertainment via Steam. ]

References

Daedelic Entertainment (February 28, 2023). Barotrauma: Making Of | Barotrauma 1.0 Release coming March 13th! YouTube.

Steam. Barotrauma. Daedelic Entertainment. (viewed March 3, 2023)

Wikipedia. Barotrauma (video game). (viewed March 3, 2023)