Underwater cities haven’t got the perfect observe report—it is onerous not to consider the misplaced metropolis of Atlantis, the perils and disasters of Sealab 2020, and naturally Bioshock, the place Andrew Ryan turned Rapture right into a violent theme park full of psychopathic slicers and guffawing vampire kids.
However let’s give a metropolis on the backside of the ocean one other strive, we could? In undersea metropolis builder Aquatico (opens in new tab), the floor of Earth has turn into unlivable (that is actually simple to consider) so humanity is pressured to begin over on the ocean ground. And this time, you are in cost. A brand new deep dive gameplay trailer from writer Overseer Video games you may watch above lays out the varied programs and strategies you may use to construct a thriving underwater civilization in Aquatico. Possibly the fourth time would be the appeal?
Issues aren’t fairly so simple as they may be on the floor, since every part your metropolis wants, together with oxygen, electrical energy, and oil should be transported through pipelines to all your varied buildings. An influence outage does not simply imply the lights exit, but in addition the temperature plunges since you’re leagues deep surrounded by darkish, frigid water. And I haven’t got to spell out the significance of maintaining the air provide. Aboveground cities might wrestle with air pollution and site visitors snarls, however residents hardly ever asphyxiate if a pipe bursts.
Building supplies like iron, glass, and plastic might be gathered from the ocean ground, traded for with different undersea bases, or manufactured by your individual industrial buildings. I assume it is good that each one that plastic we carelessly dumped into the ocean for many years can nonetheless be put to make use of—now you may construct stuff with it.
When you can make use of fleets of aquatic drones to carry out jobs like constructing, gathering, and even meals manufacturing, do not forget the explanation you are doing all this difficult work: to assist a human inhabitants. That is the place undersea domes are available, together with the Aquatico’s multi-level constructing system. Above your busy factories and community of pipelines you may place big oxygen-filled domes in your human residents the place they’ll have a house, elevate a household, go to eating places and faculties and church, and luxuriate in all of the comforts of the floor world. They will even have pets—you may catch a glimpse of canines and cats strolling round underneath the domes together with all of the folks.
And for the reason that depths of the ocean are nonetheless largely unknown, you can construct submarines to discover the abyss to find new sources, discover misplaced human settlers and convey them again to your metropolis, and probably even uncover mysterious new types of undersea life.
Aquatico is due out January 12 (opens in new tab), and there is a free demo you may play forward of its launch. I performed it again in September and loved the finely detailed buildings and animations, the nippiness sci-fi soundtrack, and watching my little submersible drones rising kelp on undersea farms. There’s additionally a brand new diary posted at present by developer Digital Reef Video games on Aquatico’s elaborate meals system (opens in new tab). I simply hope your residents like fish.