''Song of the Deep'' is an
action-adventure
The action-adventure genre is a video game hybrid genre that combines core elements from both the action game and adventure game genres.
Typically, pure adventure games have situational problems for the player to solve to complete a storyli ...
video game developed by
Insomniac Games
Insomniac Games, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Burbank, California and a studio of PlayStation Studios. It was founded in 1994 by Ted Price as Xtreme Software, and was renamed Insomniac Games a year later. The company is mo ...
and published by
GameTrust Games
GameStop Corp. is an American video game, consumer electronics, and gaming merchandise retailer. The company is headquartered in Grapevine, Texas (a suburb of Dallas), and is the largest video game retailer worldwide. , the company operates 4,5 ...
. In the game, the player controls Merryn, a young girl who crafts a makeshift submarine to search for her father who went missing while fishing. The game was released in July 2016 on
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
,
PlayStation 4
The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 in February 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013, in North America, November 29, 2013 in ...
, and
Xbox One
The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third base console in the Xbox series of video game consoles. It was first released in North America, parts of ...
. The retail chain
GameStop
GameStop Corp. is an American video game, consumer electronics, and gaming merchandise retailer. The company is headquartered in Grapevine, Texas (a suburb of Dallas), and is the largest video game retailer worldwide. , the company operates 4,5 ...
published the game, under the brand of GameTrust Games, the chain's first foray into such distribution.
Plot and gameplay
''Song of the Deep'' has the player control Merryn, a 12-year-old girl who loves her father, a fisherman, especially when he tells her tall tales of his adventures. When her father goes missing at sea one day, she has a vision of him being trapped at the depths of the ocean. Determined to find him, she crafts a submarine and gear to explore the ocean, and is startled to see that many of her father's tales were actually true.
The game plays as a two-dimensional
side-scroller
''
A side-scrolling video game (alternatively side-scroller), is a game viewed from a side-view camera angle where the screen follows the player as they move left or right. The jump from single-screen or flip-screen graphics to scrolling graphics ...
in the style of a
Metroidvania
Metroidvania is a sub-genre of platform video games focused on guided non-linearity and utility-gated exploration and progression. The term is a portmanteau of the names of the video game series '' Metroid'' and ''Castlevania'', with games in th ...
game. Areas of the game's world require the player to locate special improvements for Merryn and her equipment to surpass obstacles and explore further. While there are enemies in the game that can harm Merryn, the game is aimed less towards combat and more on exploration and puzzle solving, with some emphasis on the nature of how objects behave underwater.
Throughout the gameplay, a narrator tells players Merryn's progress and things seen in Merryn's point of view. The narration is performed by
Siobhan Hewlett
Siobhan Hewlett is a British-born Irish film, television, radio and theatre actress as well as being a producer, poet and artist. She hails from a theatrical dynasty stretching back to the 19th-century.
Background and early life
Her great-gr ...
.
Development
Insomniac's chief creative officer, Brian Hastings, considered ''Song of the Deep'' as a "passion project",
wanting to create a heroine that his daughter could look up to.
Hastings wanted this heroine to be different from the typical female hero found in video games, which tend to be "pretty", "sexy" or "badass", and instead give the heroine attributes that would reinforce positive qualities about his own daughter, "intelligence, creativity, kindness and resilience".
A further influence for the heroine was the favorable feedback that Insomniac has received over the years from fans, praising with how the developers were able to create characters they could identify with.
''Song of the Deep'' was developed by a small, fifteen-person team at
Insomniac Games
Insomniac Games, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Burbank, California and a studio of PlayStation Studios. It was founded in 1994 by Ted Price as Xtreme Software, and was renamed Insomniac Games a year later. The company is mo ...
. Hastings compared this team to the original Insomniac team when they were developing the ''
Spyro
''Spyro'' is a series of platform games which features the main protagonist Spyro, a dragon. Since the series' introduction in 1998 with the PlayStation game ''Spyro the Dragon'', there have been numerous sequels and a reboot trilogy. Originall ...
'' series, capturing the same enthusiasm and commitment from the team for ''Song of the Deep'' as they had before.
Hastings found that with the smaller team, working on a new genre and gameplay space than previous titles, developers were often forced out of their comfort zone and would develop novel solution or work closer together as a team to resolve problems, making the group much more cohesive and effective.
''Song of the Deep'' narrative was inspired by Irish mythology, and its visual appearance from the
Cliffs of Moher
The Cliffs of Moher (; ) are sea cliffs located at the southwestern edge of the Burren region in County Clare, Ireland. They run for about . At their southern end, they rise above the Atlantic Ocean at Hag's Head, and, to the north, they ...
.
The choice of a Metroidvania-style game, according to Hastings, is "just something we've never done and we wanted to",
noting that the team are fans of this genre and makes a perfect approach for a game about exploring and finding secrets.
The approach to the game, focusing more on the exploration of the world rather than combat, was to make the game more like a "children's science museum on an alien planet".
The game is presented interspersed with artbook as if from a children's book, and Insomniac worked with
Sterling Publishing
Sterling Publishing Company, Inc. is a publisher of a broad range of subject areas, with multiple imprints and more than 5,000 titles in print. Founded in 1949 by David A. Boehm, Sterling also publishes books for a number of brands, including AAR ...
to release a companion children's book for the title.
The retail chain
GameStop
GameStop Corp. is an American video game, consumer electronics, and gaming merchandise retailer. The company is headquartered in Grapevine, Texas (a suburb of Dallas), and is the largest video game retailer worldwide. , the company operates 4,5 ...
published and distributed the game through its stores and on
Steam
Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization ...
, under the
GameTrust Games
GameStop Corp. is an American video game, consumer electronics, and gaming merchandise retailer. The company is headquartered in Grapevine, Texas (a suburb of Dallas), and is the largest video game retailer worldwide. , the company operates 4,5 ...
division. The partnership between GameStop and Insomniac grew from a conversation about a year prior to the game's announcement, between Insomniac's
Ted Price
Insomniac Games, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Burbank, California and a studio of PlayStation Studios. It was founded in 1994 by Ted Price as Xtreme Software, and was renamed Insomniac Games a year later. The company is ...
and GameStop's Mark Stanley, in charge of the company's development of new ventures. Stanley has spoken to Price about GameStop reaching more directly to players. Price had shown Stanley ''Song of the Deep'', which had already been in development for some time, and their approach to the game's world. The two saw opportunities to work together to promote the title favorably for both companies, and formed the distribution agreement. Price notes that while GameStop has been fully supportive of the effort, Insomniac has full creative control on the title.
Stanley affirmed that GameStop is staying out of the creative process, and decisions such as GameStop branding would be made to make sure Insomniac and the game are successful. GameStop also considered using its
ThinkGeek
ThinkGeek was an American retailer that catered to computer enthusiasts and "geek culture". Described as a "Sharper Image for sysadmins", their merchandise has been likened to "toys for adults, novelties designed to appeal to both your inner child ...
marketing division to produce tie-in merchandise for the game. Stanley considers this their first foray into working this closely with a developer directly, and used the experience to explore other potential options for GameStop.
Reception
''Song of the Deep'' received "mixed or average" reviews, according to video game
review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
.
GameStop reported that 120,000 units of the game had sold by August 2016, with about 80% of these from retail sales.
References
External links
*
{{Insomniac Games
2016 video games
PlayStation 4 games
Side-scrolling role-playing video games
Video games featuring female protagonists
Video games developed in the United States
Video games with underwater settings
Windows games
Xbox One games
Insomniac Games games
Metroidvania games
Single-player video games