Under The Waves

Introduction

Under The Waves puts you inside the diving suit of Stan, a professional North Sea diver who has taken an extended underwater maintenance posting to escape the world following a devastating personal loss. Developed by Parallel Studio and published under Quantic Dream's Spotlight label, it released 28 August 2023 and sits at a lifetime Mostly Positive 77.8% across 2,027 reviews. This review reads a substantial share of both the negative and positive samples and finds a genuinely well-crafted narrative experience whose reputation is complicated less by what it is than by what a significant share of its own buyers expected it to be.

A story that lands, for most who find it

Where this review's sample agrees most consistently is on tone and atmosphere. Reviewers repeatedly compare Under The Waves to Firewatch — "man gets job far away from anyone to avoid dealing with emotional family issues," as more than one reviewer summarises independently — and several describe becoming genuinely attached to Stan and the people around him as the story unfolds. The underwater visual design draws similarly strong, specific praise, with reviewers citing bioluminescent environments and a real sense of oceanic scale as reasons to play regardless of other reservations. One reviewer frames it plainly as "a game for adults," built around loss and isolation rather than spectacle.

The expectation problem

The single clearest and most avoidable source of disappointment in this review's negative sample is a mismatch between what buyers expected and what the game delivers. One of the most-upvoted reviews in the entire corpus exists specifically to correct this for future shoppers, opening with "WHAT IT IS NOT: A RPG... A survival game: no bars to fill except oxygen, crafting on its bare bones." Several negative reviewers describe exactly the disappointment that review anticipates — going in expecting something closer to Subnautica and finding, instead, an easy, story-first experience with light puzzle and traversal mechanics layered around a linear narrative. This isn't a flaw in the game itself so much as a marketing and positioning problem, but it's worth stating clearly here: judge Under The Waves as a narrative adventure with an underwater setting, not a survival game, and much of this review's negative sample resolves itself.

Controls and accessibility, a real and separate problem

Set apart from the expectation mismatch, this review's sample surfaces a specific, credible technical complaint: keyboard-and-mouse controls are widely reported as poor, to the point that the game itself displays a warning recommending a controller instead. Reviewers without access to one describe the resulting movement as genuinely difficult to enjoy, one calling roughly 70% of the game's movement sections "torture" on keyboard alone. A related, separate complaint concerns visual accessibility: the game ships with no individual graphics options and no in-menu way to disable motion blur, film grain, chromatic aberration or letterboxing, forcing some reviewers to manually edit configuration files to make extended play comfortable. Both issues are specific, reproducible and worth flagging plainly rather than folding into general dissatisfaction — they affect a meaningful share of the PC audience regardless of how they feel about the story.

Final Verdict

Under The Waves tells a genuinely affecting, well-realised story in a striking setting, and readers who approach it as a narrative adventure rather than a survival game are likely to find exactly what several of its most thoughtful reviewers describe: something closer to Firewatch or Gone Home, underwater. What holds the score back are real, specific, avoidable problems — controls that struggle without a gamepad, and visual settings the game simply doesn't expose to players who need them. At its current steep discount, this is an easy recommendation for the right audience; play it with a controller, and set your expectations before you dive in.