The Pale Deep

The Pale Deep follows a series of cadets sent on doomed missions aboard Diving Bell vessels on Neptune. Each lost cadet teaches you more about the planet’s ecosystem as you investigate its inhabitants and descend toward an ocean of water and ammonia—and whatever lies within it.

Observe and evade

You have no weapons. Instead, you use a foghorn, a decoy launcher and research tools to distract, scare and hide from Neptune’s inhabitants. A camera and radar help you watch for danger, but they cannot reveal everything; a sudden drop in temperature, for example, may signal a presence.

Learn from each mission

You can record discoveries in a mission database and consult it when facing familiar creatures. But previous knowledge may not help if your equipment fails under pressure or you encounter something no one has seen before. Effective tactics for dealing with Neptune’s inhabitants are randomized for each playthrough, so knowledge from earlier runs or watching others does not provide a reliable solution.

Develop your equipment

Missions also help Research & Development make progress on better equipment. As cadets explore deeper into Neptune, they contribute to research on the planet and its ecosystem.