Developer Arika Publisher Nintendo Format Switch Release Out now
Arika has been working with Nintendo for two decades now, but even the Shinagawa-based studio must have been surprised when it got the call to make a new entry in its genteel scuba-diving series. It has, after all, been 17 years since the Wii original and 14 since follow-up Adventures Of The Deep.
Perhaps, though, its resurrection is about more than just a trawl through the archives, the delay to Switch’s successor having left Nintendo – keeping its biggest guns in reserve for its arrival – with an empty release calendar to fill. An audience that looks back on their Wii with nostalgic fondness is reasonably well catered for here – albeit in some ways more than others.
Luminous’s central conceit seems to stem from a desire to live up to the series’ name. On Wii, its oceans were never really close to being endless; rather, you would explore several relatively compact bodies of water. But the fictional Veiled Sea you’re tasked with charting this time is, essentially, boundless. Sure, during any given dive the explorable area is limited to a 10x10 grid, with invisible barriers at its edges – though if you’re alone you’ll be swimming for hours before you cover every nautical inch of it, let alone scanning and documenting its occupants. But this is just a single procedurally generated instance, given a unique 16-digit code. On your next dive, the layout will have changed, likewise the marine life you’ll encounter. Yes, Endless Ocean, after a fashion, is now a Roguelike, too.
It’s an improbable and unexpected development: the appeal of Arika’s series was always that it felt so unfashionable, its purposely languid approach appearing out of step with other games – which was even more the case with its spiritual forerunner, 2001’s firstperson Everblue. Though there is a sense that perhaps the medium has begun to catch up – you’re unlikely to find as many complaining about its slowness as was the case back in the early ’00s, players having since acclimatised to a much broader palette of pace and tone.
In that light, Arika’s biggest deviations from its formula can seem slightly odd. Luminous feels much more eager to chivvy you along from one discovery to the next. Given there are more than 500 species to find and document, it’s understandable that it’s less interested in forcing you to take your time getting to know them properly. As soon as you’ve scanned a new fish, their name will appear, along with the size of that particular specimen and a short bio, voiced by your AI assistant. But there’s no opportunity to pet or feed them, and no aquarium where they can be transplanted – although the inability to remove them from their habitat makes sense from a narrative standpoint, given the theme of maintaining nature’s delicate equilibrium.
You’re unlikely to find
