Fathomline

The Marianne went down forty metres with her cargo still aboard. You have a lamp, eleven minutes of gas, and a line clipped to the shot at the surface.

Swim down. Let yourself in. Bring something back.

THE LINE IS THE ONLY WAY OUT

Your guideline pays out behind you as you swim, and it is the only thing in the wreck that knows the way home. Three hundred and forty metres of it. Lose sight of it in a silt-out and the compass on your HUD points you back — if you have gas left to follow it.

SHE IS A SHIP, NOT A MAZE

Cabins with bunks still made up. A galley with pots on the rail. Heads, a messroom, a workshop, the engine room. She lies over at thirty-four degrees, so nothing inside reads as a floor and you have to navigate by what things were rather than by which way is up. Four ways in: the cargo hatch aft, a hatch forward, down the funnel casing, and the gash she tore in her port side.

WHAT YOU CAME FOR

Cut stones — quartz, garnet, emerald, sapphire, the occasional diamond. The good ones are deep in her, behind collapsed structure or a locked door. Three pairs of hands to start with, and every stone you carry makes you heavier and slower on the way out.

What you surface with is banked. What you are carrying when you die is not.

KIT, BOUGHT WITH WHAT YOU BRING UP

A cutting torch for the compartments the collapse has sealed. A sonar pinger that opens the water for six seconds when the mud takes your view. A catch bag for two more stones.

SHE IS NOT EMPTY

A wreck is the best reef for a mile. Fish that bolt when your lamp finds them, crabs on the plate, and one conger that has a hole somewhere in her. It will come out to watch you first. Crowd it and you lose gas and your view at once.

CONTROLS

Keyboard — W A S D to swim and strafe. The arrow keys turn you and look up and down; the mouse stays put away unless you press L for it. Space to rise, Ctrl to sink, Shift to fin hard. E take, F lamp, Q reel back along the line, C cut, R ping, X to level your trim, P to pause.

Touch — left side of the screen to fin, drag the right side to look, buttons for everything else. Landscape.

Runs in the browser, nothing to install, no account, no ads. Your progress is saved in the browser you played it in.