The Deep iPhone game ($3.99) brings the world of deep sea exploration to your iPhone with a creative puzzle-fueled adventure game. The sea-based iPhone game features you as the main character, someone ostensibly on vacation who is thrust into the role of a Jacque Cousteau-esque explorer. You’re tasked with retrieving various items from the sea and returning them to a salty shopkeeper.
Of course, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. You can only remain underwater for a limited amount of time before you need to come up for air, and pretty much everything in the sea that touches you decreases that time even further. It’s a unique way to make what would be a simple “find the key, open the gate, grab the item, get to your boat” adventure a bit more challenging.
Aiding in your quest is the ability to level up your diver through the use of gold you collect on your expeditions. You can use the gold to purchase items or abilities from the previously mentioned shopkeeper, including fins to swim faster, better breathing apparatus so you can stay underwater longer, and explosives to break down rocks that block your path. The upgrade system is well done, and gives the treasure you collect some actual worth in the game.
The missions themselves tend to run together a bit. If you’re not a huge fan of the dungeon sequences in a game like “The Legend of Zelda,” where you generally mill about looking for the key to unlock a gate, then you’ll tire of The Deep quickly. If that is your cup of tea, there is plenty here to entertain. While the sea is a lot different than a dungeon, the premise remains the same.
This is a solid game, and the graphics and sounds impress as well, but the iPhone game still seems slightly thin to charge $3.99 for what you get. That said, if you have a few bucks burning a hole in your iTunes account, The Deep is a pretty good way to spend them.
