Platform:
PC
Released:
August 2, 2024
Publisher:
Team 17
Developer:
Sarepta Studio
Set in 1905, Thalassa: Edge of the Abyss follows a lone deep-sea diver as he explores the wreckage of a ship to determine how it sank, and the fate of its crew. That’s about as much as I want to tell you; like other great mystery games, it’s better to go in completely blind. Any further discussion of its mystery, themes, or gameplay will inevitably spoil just a little bit of the story. Even knowledge of the events of the prologue will rob you of the shock of how this game begins, which is vital in my opinion to get the most out of this tragic tale. If you want to go in with no spoilers, just skip directly to the summary at the end of this review.
Despite ranking Thalassa: Edge of the Abyss alongside other great mystery games, it’s not because its mystery is extremely complex or unique. Its strength is in the humanity of the characters and their motivations, rather than any bombastic plot twists. You play as Cam, a deep sea diver who takes some shore leave from your vessel Thalassa after experiencing a traumatising personal loss. During your leave, the Thalassa and its crew mysteriously sink to the bottom of the ocean, so you and the only other surviving crewmember Bailey set out to dive to the Thalassa’s resting place to try to find out why it sank, and the fates of the crew on board. Broadly, it’s about managing the grief of loss and the search for closure. What makes Thalassa great is that the gameplay integrates exploration and mystery-solving with its themes to great effect, tying your expectations of the genre in with Cam’s motivations.
Inspecting the objects around the sunken ship will either reveal a new mystery to solve or a new clue, and will be added to your Mysteries menu. Assembling the clues to solve a mystery is a little confusing at first, but it’s simple to get a grasp on as none of the mysteries are very convoluted to solve. Many of them are simple logical progressions, and many are solved with the application of Occam’s Razor; the most simple solution is often the correct one. This prevents the game from being too hard to solve and gives it more of a walking simulator vibe. There are many intermingling stories woven by the multiple crewmembers on board the Thelassa, and as you tread their footsteps through their final days above water, you can’t help but be dragged into the drama. Whose actions will make the fatal mistake that will doom them all? The easygoing mechanic Kedri? The inexperienced engineer Thomas? The nosey reporter Jessie?
The theme of loss is especially confronting in the prologue, enough to warrant a content warning for death and drowning, which the game thankfully provides. During the story, Cam will be haunted by this loss, hallucinating visions and voices of various characters. These voices serve as an inner monologue for Cam as he searches the ship for clues about why the Thalassa sank.
The ship and its contents are hauntingly beautiful, suspended in time by the deep seawater. Having briefly seen the ship in its full glory in the prologue, you really feel the tragedy and loss of its sad fate. The atmosphere on board is eerie, and there is always the feeling that something terrifying could happen at any moment. It wouldn’t have felt out of place at all for the story to turn supernatural, to introduce sea demons or a Kraken like Return of the Obra Dinn, another terrific nautical mystery game. But it never does; it remains grounded in cold, harsh reality, and that is crucial for the game’s theme of closure and grief.
You are in a very literal sense searching for answers to your questions, connecting the clues you find together like a big jigsaw puzzle to find out what caused the ship to sink. This is tied to Cam’s need to find the reason for the tragedy in the prologue, which is one of the main lines of inquiry to solve: what caused the accident, and more importantly for Cam, who’s to blame for it?
There are a whole host of mysteries on board the ill-fated vessel, which you will cover one by one. Many of them are interconnected, so solving one may provide you with a new clue for another. The ship is filled with as much atmosphere as it is water, which is helped by a great attention to detail. No effort was spared in designing the Thalassa’s many rooms and features. The ship has a real “lived-in” atmosphere, like you can believe that dozens of people actually lived and worked on it. Strewn around the ship are work items, clothes, books, crates, hobby items, and charts, all of which contribute to the haunted, abandoned vibe of the place.
Another nice detail is the sluggish movements of Cam in his diver suit, complete with an effect that makes the inside of his helmet visible when you look around. This didn’t pose a problem in the early game, as I was taking my sweet time inspecting every square inch of each new room anyway, but it sure becomes an annoyance later when the game insists that you backtrack through the multiple floors of the ship to inspect a new room. The game has you do this a bit too often, and also employs my least favourite trick of mystery games, which is having a visible clue only be interactable after a set point in the story. There’s no need for this; just let me pick up the damn key. I can see it right there on the floor! If you’re going to make a point of making your player character move at the speed of molasses, you’d better rethink backtracking mechanics like these.
Besides the backtracking, the only major strike against the game I can give is the game’s performance, which I found generally poor. Lagging and screen-tearing were constant, and in a game where the pacing is already slow, this can turn it glacial. This might be a result of the many high-detail objects the game has to render, but that doesn’t explain the constant slowdowns I experienced. Turning down the graphical quality helped somewhat, but it didn’t completely eliminate the problem. Even trying to open the map or switching menu tabs often operated on a constant lag — and you have to check that damn map constantly. I hope the game will be poatched later to improve the performance.
It’s easy to get into the role of Cam. Having experienced the tragedy with him, and having briefly met the crew of the Thelassa prior to its sinking, you share Cam’s incentive to find the truth. As more and more of the mysteries are solved, the answers begin to take shape. As an avid consumer of mystery stories and games, I found that my expectations as a player were a twisted reflection of Cam’s. I expected a big twist, that I would find a hidden villain behind it all, or perhaps that some or all of the crewmembers had made it out somehow. After all, we never saw the bodies, right? Everyone knows that if you don’t see the body, they’re not really dead. Thalassa takes advantage of these expectations to put the player in Cam’s shoes, so that when the answers Cam gets do not give him the closure he so desperately craves, we feel it too. Maybe I didn’t solve all of the mysteries? Maybe there is a secret ending that I missed? Maybe if I reload my game, return to the Thalassa one more time, I might find out what really happened.
Or, I could just move on. Sometimes, that’s all we can do.
8.5
Great
Positive:
- Gripping narrative about grief and closure
- The gorgeously rendered ship is a treasure trove of clues
- Solving the ship's many mysteries feels satisfying
Negative:
- Slowly backtracking through the ship is a pain
- Performance is annoyingly poor
Thalassa: Edge of the Abyss is one of those games that’s best played blind. It’s a grounded yet enthralling mystery that uses its light clue-combining mechanics to convey an emotional journey of closure and grief. Its puzzles get you thinking without ever being too hard, allowing the story to naturally play out in the lonely ruins of this sunken ship.
About the Author
Edie W-K
she/her
If it isn't video games, Edie doesn't care about it. She's been playing games since the N64 era, and only spent enough time away from her 3DS to earn a Bachelor in Games Design from RMIT.
