Name: Drint
Age: 29
The sea has always been a part of me, from my years as a sub-liner captain to the depths we now call home. When the Surfacers betrayed our trust, it solidified my resolve. The Mind had a vision, a sanctuary beneath the waves, and I, alongside my brother, helped him orchestrate his escape. Our expertise ensured our community could safely settle on the seafloor, but it came at a cost – the loss of my brother. That memory is a wound that never heals.
The Mind helped me put that all behind me. That’s why I became a Diver for him. He was the thing that brought life back into me. He said my duty was to carry on where my brother left off, to honor his memory and mission. I thought of him constantly. That made me realize my love for the sea. The Mind had the big ideas, I helped him action them. I will never leave our home now. I am only interested in securing it. His behavior has become erratic, but I know that’s only because he’s desperate to keep us safe.
As a Diver, I stand guard, vigilant against the threats that lurk in the shadows. Despite the challenges and the pain, my commitment to our cause is unwavering. Above all, my primary goal remains: the survival and security of our people. We are a community bound by shared experiences and the vastness of the sea that conceals us. We may be vulnerable, but together, united in purpose and trust, we will endure. It's my duty, my responsibility, to play my part to the best of my ability. My brother would have done the same.
-o-
Name: Trembath
Age: 36
Among the many inexplicable tendencies of people, their love for the mundane tops the list. I mean, why gather around the trivial when there's a vast, indifferent ocean to explore? Diving, you see, is my chosen escape from the theatre of the absurd we call society. While others engage in whispered secrets and shared glances, I've always been more at home with the unfathomable depths and the tales of my rather... unique upbringing. Ah, childhood - a delightful medley of humiliations, pain, and my grandmother's eccentric ideas of child-rearing.
I thought when I became a Diver, I’d find others like me, people who preferred to be alone. None of you are anything like me. I never fit in here. When I came to the base, I tried to be more like you people here. I changed my name, I changed my ways. People still ignored me, cast me out.
None of you know what it means to suffer. I suffer. I have been in constant pain my whole life. One of the few things that removes my pain from me is swimming, particularly in the pressure of the deep. It’s why I am a Diver. It keeps me alive. And away from people.
I wish I had had that recourse when I was young. My father was too traditional, too regimented to have a deformed child. He was a prominent Officer, he served the Surfacers. I was sent to live with my Grandmother. She had been married to one of the Landed on the surface, and she kept all sorts of strange courtly rituals. I had a very strict upbringing, with many rules to follow. None of them made sense. I was not allowed outside in the day, not allowed to engage in any kind of sport or pay. More often I was put with other girls, and kept inside with dolls and tea time, and long idle hours. In the city, my grandmother had remarried a pumper, and we didn’t live like the Landed at all. She said he was friends with the Mind, before we were yanked from the shores. She would often tell me about her conversations with the Mind, as though they were close confidants. I found out later all those stories were lies.
But they sparked a curiosity. That’s what led me to the Mind. I can relate to him, even now in his great suffering and pain. He may not be as pleasant to be around anymore, but he was always a little abrasive. He has a tremendous energy, and that is what has fed us all and truly kept us alive all these years.
You all have your own ulterior motivations for messing with this poor soul, trapped in a SubVee. Let him sink. That’s what will happen to all of us anyway, in some form or another.
-o-
Name: NcNist
Age: 22
In times past, as a Surfacer, I walked alongside those blinded by misguided ideals. Chief among the devout, my mother. She was a high-ranking Officer of the Commission. I served the Surfacers too, for a time. She made me do terrible things for them and their murderous ideologies. But I suppose she imbued in me a respect for dedication, even if I disagreed with her path. When the coup began, the Mind's manifesto opened my eyes, and I recognized that not all who claimed to be right, truly were. I almost saw him killed, you know. The first time.
I've always believed in a code of ethics, even during my youthful days of anarchy. Many misunderstand anarchy as chaos, but it's the ultimate order, people held together by strong ethical bonds. The coup forced my hand, and while I sided with the Mind, his recent behavior with the Krake and our base gives me pause. His once great intellect now spills scattered, paranoid rhetoric.
Throughout my life, various prisons constrained me: the service, family, even my fellow Surfacers. Yet, in our underwater base, I understand my confines and choose my actions deliberately. Every day, I'm faced with choices, and with each, I'm reminded of our responsibility to uphold the ethical order that binds us. The Diver's code is not just a set of rules; it's the very fabric that holds our community together.
To return to the story of Sub-Verge’s creation. Once Chris had the TicTacs working, it wasn’t long before we got an interface roughed in over it. The earliest version of the game looks surprisingly close to the final result. At least in terms of layout. What you’ll notice missing here is the fantastic art.
For that, I needed Tiia Reijonen. She’d been the Art director on an earlier prototype, KUU, and we’d worked on a number of projects together, starting from our time at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland where I was teaching and she was a student. Her powers of imagination have always astounded me. I asked for some sort of vehicle that the divers could be piloting, and got these fantastic jetscoots (or Seagways, as we jokingly called them). I really want to ride one: they look like a hybrid of Star Wars speeder bike and seahorse.
I asked for a Bathysphere, and one appeared.
But how would those handles work?
Oh, like that, with an incredibly satisfying ker-clunk! And who is driving?
Well, it’s you. And we don’t know what you look like. But you’ve got to have protective gear on in a SubVee, since look what you can do, when it all comes together:
Those animations were combined and programmed by Chris. Added to the diver portraits like those you saw at the top of the post, the game really started to take shape:
Chris did a fantastic job of getting it all to work. But then he decamped for Australia, for work, but also for better weather — he’s a diver himself, and warmer waters were calling. Around the same time I applied for, and was lucky enough to receive a grant from the New Zealand Film Commision’s Interactive Development Fund. CODE NZ didn’t exist quite yet, and the Film Commission was the only funding body in New Zealand that gave grants for interactive work.
So I had some money to develop the game further, but I needed help. A friend of mine, Michael Fallik, had been giving me sage advice about the game and game industry for a few years. He was a producer on What Remains of Edith Finch, among other games, and he really understands the business side of things. But among the many good bits of advice he offered, one was “You should meet this guy, Jason.”
Jason Heebl had been tinkering with games in his spare time for many years, and as American dads in New Zealand, we connected on many levels. When I asked if he’d be willing to have a crack at Sub-Verge, he was game, and we plunged back into the project.
Wishlist Sub-Verge:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3487020/SubVerge/