Deep Saturation

Deep Saturation is a short horror game set aboard a weathered research vessel on a mysterious lake. You play as a limnologist specializing in dissolved gas dynamics, sent alone to collect data, document anomalies and transmit findings. The experience is designed to take 1–2 hours.

The monitoring mission

After the 1986 Lake Nyos disaster in Cameroon, which killed over 1,700 people, international monitoring protocols were established for similar geological formations. Decades later, satellite monitoring detects CO2 signatures resembling Lake Nyos before its eruption, but at levels beyond anything previously recorded. An unlisted lake also shows impossible depth readings and unexplained thermal anomalies.

A research consortium dispatches the single-operator Deep Saturation monitoring vessel with instructions to collect data, document anomalies and send the results. The previous three monitoring teams have gone silent. Alone, with failing equipment and increasingly disturbing data, you must investigate and try to complete the mission before the lake claims you or you discover what happened to the other teams.

Navigate and investigate

You steer through dense fog to predetermined coordinates, deploy scientific equipment into the depths and photograph what lies beneath the surface. A primitive, tethered deep-water camera provides your only visual information: it produces single-use Polaroid-style photographs that may reveal more than expected. You have no downward-facing windows, sonar imaging or direct view of the underwater world, so you rely on radar, coordinates, analog instruments, equipment sensors and the photographs to complete your data collection.

Patience and scientific method are central to the investigation, even as the equipment degrades and the data becomes more disturbing. The game builds its story through accumulated readings, environmental details and equipment failure, while communication with the outside world breaks down.

Equipment and atmosphere

The vessel uses an analog interface with CRT displays, mechanical controls and radio static. Thick fog restricts your vision, and the isolation feeds paranoia as you work with failing equipment and face the unknown depths. The game’s horror draws on scientific responsibility, real-world limnic disaster research and monitoring protocols, as well as the uncertainty of what the lake contains.