Sonar Shock

[Tweed]

I just picked this up recently, but I'd been keeping my eye on it for awhile. It's an intentionally janky first-person horror RPG done in the style of System Shock 1. You take on the role of an unlucky crewmate onboard a gigantic top-secret Russian submarine at the end of the Soviet Union and everything goes to ****. It borrows from Lovecraft and Russian folklore so there's shoggoths and rusalkas on top of other unspeakable horrors and you have to try and keep your sanity up. My sanity hasn't dropped too low so far, but as it goes down you get the usually creepy sounds and whispers, my inventory has opened by itself.

This is an actual, real, pound-me-in-the-*** RPG with experience and stats. You get xp for killing monsters and level up, every time you level you get one stat point which can be spent any way you see fit. There's eight stats to raise and a psionic system for magic which doubles as your sanity. There's a limited shop/barter system that uses vodka (wodka) for currency or you can just drink it for some hps. Character creation is a bit interesting, you have three slots and four traits to pick from for each slot which can give some unique bonuses like cannibalism or being able to pray at crosses to restore sanity, but you can only pick one of those traits for that particular slot (slot 2 traits are for slot 2) so that gives at least some replay value. From what I've heard there's multiple endings. I don't know how far I am into the game yet, but I've liked it so far.

Difficulty comes in three flavors, Oiler which lets you save everywhere and gives you tons of ammo, Cadet which gives you lots of ammo and makes enemies easier, and Deck Officer which is how it's meant to be played with limited saves provided by save items found in the game and limited ammo. Sonar Shock builds on System Shock's method of reloading by making you manually reload your weapons by going through the motions, you have to take out the magazine or slide new shells into the gun and in some cases you have to rack back the slide to chamber a new round. In some cases this has to be done with every new round such as with a lever action rifle. Melee is also an option and being able to punch or beat foes to death is helpful to conserve ammo, there's also the option later on to use psionics or you can throw certain objects at enemies to kill them as well.

Anyhow, I'm enjoying it. Two things I don't like though is how a lot of the level resets when you save and quit which means certain enemies (certain enemies, most of the level seems to stay clear) can come back which means spending ammo you might not have. The other is that this has gone for keybinds too, I've had to rebind my keys more than once.

Oh and there's no strafing, continuing the jank Shock theme.

[DagothGeas5]

Looks like an amazing game, thank you for sharing!

[Kalarion]

Nice overview.

Now make a gameplay video.

[Element]

30% off right now as well