Barotrauma

I own a railgun for submarine defense, since that's what the founding Europans intended. Four clowns break into my sub. "What the Jove?" As I grab my Renegade's hat and Model 6 Impierta Railgun. Blow a crawler-sized hole through the first clown, he's dead on the spot. Draw my handcannon on the second clown, miss him entirely because I don't have enough weapons skill and nails my crewmate's Petraptor. I have to resort to the detonator mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with C-4, "Tally ho lads!" the explosion shreds two clowns in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off nearby Molochs. Fix boarding axe and charge the last terrified buffoonist. He bleeds out waiting on the medical doctor to arrive since bleeding wounds are impossible to heal with morphine. Just as the founding Europans intended.

Great game, hardest part is getting your friends to play it
Edit after 400 hours: You don't get your friends to play this, you make friends while playing

>Playing as security
>people are rebelling against captain
> find rebellion leader
> Take them out on a mining mission
> drag them to go on scooter
> take off radio and handcuff
>Take out their oxygen tank from suit
>Watch them die
>Come to ship, blame on mudraptors
>Captain pays me 300MKs
>waste all the cash on ethanol and get drunk
>die
10/10 experience, would recommend

A traumatic experience in dealing with teamwork.
Its pretty fun playing along with friends and sometimes random players.
Tagged along a server i randomly joined one time starring:
* An American Captain whos wholesome taking care of all of the crew and wishes everyone well on his submarine
* His right hand veteran whos taking the role of the Assistant and keeps the rest of the crew in check if someone is doing or commiting tombfoolery while the captain is busy steering the vessel.
* A (totally)licenced Medic who happend to have the most ASMR voice ive even heard for a while, will take care of you in his utmost capabilities, hugs and kisses included.
* The new hired Mechanics, who sometimes faces a grim reminder on why wearing a divingsuit despite the diving mask works aswell in the ballast tank.
* Our commited Engineer, huddles in the engine and reactor room, but mostly stops by the doctors office to snatch and drink all of the ethanol we recently bought from the shelves, and goes back to the reactor room.
* Then theres me, taking the role of the Security officer. Forgetting to remind our new hired Mechanics on why wearing diving suits are important during critical moments, and arresting tomfooling players. But also have the role to steer the main guns of the submarine and keep everyone safe, usually expected assistants, but thats mostly fine... ive only accidently shot the captains right hand man twice... i also installed some raving lights on the submarine which is nice to boost the morale...
The game is pretty fun with others, drag and force a few friend onto your doomed expedition and venture into the unknown together. Praise the honkmother.

in the 4 hours i have played i have experienced:
-clown healing players with hammer
-doctor making me od on fent
-security guard arrests me then throws me out of the airlock to perish to some raptors
-mechanic welding the only exit to my room shut
-engineer disconnecting the signal interceptors so we cant do shit
-captain 1tapping me in the head after i sunk the boat
-using c4 to suicide bomb my ship after my teammates said im shit at the game
truly one of the games of all time

Barotrauma is, without a doubt, one of the most understated games of all time. While it suffers from some issues on several departments, it provides a mix between survival horror, management games and social simulators that's quite difficult to come by on other titles. Also, the game has a flourishing mod community, which enriches the experience to the point where it sometimes feels like a completely different thing.
I must say, however, that the current price feels a bit too steep, so maybe wait for a sale.

Barotrauma is a game inspired by the underappreciated cult classic Space station 13, ​and has brought the outdated aspects into a new era to create another generation of ​masterful complexity and mystery. It is the perfect game for people who enjoy ​detailed systems, exploration-heavy gameplay and causing chaos to unsuspecting ​players.

To address it first, the multiplayer of this game has it’s own aspects which are fun but ​isn’t as content heavy as the campaign. Multiplayer is mostly focused around the ​Among Us formula of having a team of players working to achieve their goals before a ​randomly selected traitor prevents them. This is incredibly fun, and parts of the game ​mentioned later in the review will show how hilarious certain situations can be as a ​result of this, but it is more focused on trolling than playing the actual game. I don’t ​know if this is due to the community gravitating towards what they enjoy, or a result ​of their gameplay style that has caused this but every random server will have this ​approach. If you want to get into barotrauma, play the campaign first then you will ​know all that is available to you in multiplayer. I will never get tired of overdosing my ​friends on morphine when their back is turned to cause chaos in random servers.

When describing the gameplay of Barotrauma, simplistic is not the word by far. ​Players are mercilessly dropped into the game to figure out for themselves what to ​do, and tasks have to be learnt via practice most of the time to get the hang of. This ​does leave a barrier of entry at the beginning, but amongst the people I played with it ​took roughly 2-3 hours to get the basics finetuned. The game places you on a ​submarine which has numerous machines that must be monitored to allow for ​exploration to new places. This creates some very stressful moments as when things ​go wrong they tend to go very wrong. One such example is a hull breach at the top of ​the sub. This could cause the sub to flood, short-circuiting electrics and causing the ​sub to sink at a rapid pace. If the ship crashed, then the entire bottom of the sub will ​breach, pressurising the inside to that of the watery depths and killing the whole crew. ​All of this could have been prevented if the initial breach was fixed fast enough.

And that scenario is what makes players feel a sense of achievement. The game has ​various designated jobs for players to pick, each having their own contribution ​towards the sub. Captains steer, security keep the peace, mechanics fix broken parts ​of the sub, every role has a unique application. Additionally, each job comes with ​unique bonuses in the form of talents. These talents are exceptionally fun and out of ​all the games I have played, its one of the best at getting the player to look forward to ​new ones. In late-game, mechanics can create large exosuits to fight attackers, ​assistants can raise monsters as pets to guard the crew, or specialise in being a clown ​which gives stats for wearing squeaky shoes.

This brings us onto the world and the campaign story. There is so much humour ​brought from Space Station 13 in this regard which makes the game give this novelty ​humour that can’t be neglected. You can get quests to help a random stranger, who ​once on your sub will reveal he is hiding a giant tamed mudraptor (one of the many ​enemies in the game). You will be instructed to make the sound of your favourite bird, ​in which the response is a distant bike horn and a quest from the faction of clowns. ​Humour aside however, the story and atmosphere is truly unique. The ambience of ​wreckages and the deep waters as you mine for crystals or look for scraps is bleak and ​scary. There is an indescribable feeling you get when going to repair an abandoned ​tower, swimming through flooded rooms with floating bodies and graffiti never ​knowing if you will be jumped by a Husk (the game’s zombies) or pirates. The Story is ve​ry much designed that you have to look for it. It is mostly built around mysteries, an​d being given small clues as you go through the game through small quests or un​recognisable items. The story is also non-linear which is always impressive, and tied to​ who the player decides to help. Will you help a militant autocracy with their iron fist ov​er the seas? Or maybe help the sworn enemy of the clowns, a group of cultists tr​ying to bring back their Lovecraftian god and plague the world with the husk in​fection? It’s up to you to decide, all of them are equally interesting.

T​h​e combat is creative, and makes players have to delegate jobs to both defend and at​tack. Gunners will deploy depth charges at large eldritch horrors big enough to sw​allow the sub whole, while mechanics and engineers run around frantically fixing da​mage. Enemies are varied in their approach, everything from small swarms of cr​awlers that will get in the ship and eat the crew alive to large hammerheads that ram th​e ship. All the guns feel fun to use, and you can fight them with the various handheld we​apon’s if you are ballsy enough to fight them one on one in a diving suit.

O​v​erall this game will always be a neesh title. It offers a very specific type of gameplay an​d enjoyement, which for some could be too complex or too stresseful. However, if th​is sort of game does appeal to you, it is probably the best in the genre at it. It is re​ally hard to find a single fault in the game, the only one coming to mind would be to ha​ve 3-4 more quest types in the early game. Therefore I give it a perfect score.