Video Game / Death in the Water

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The Ocean is full of secrets and mysteries, and diving into it's depths is like opening a Pandora's box of horrors.

It's like The Ocean Hunter remade as an FPS. So now you can control your character.

Death in the Water is a pair of underwater-themed First-Person Shooter games made by Lighthouse Games Studio that involve the player controling a human diver facing against the sharks with a speargun. The series is actually a Creator-Driven Successor to the same developer's earlier Shark Attack Deathmatch games that first debuted on Xbox Live.

The first game - released in 2019 - is a horde style shooter that pits you against the increasing number of Great White Sharks in open water with the sole goal involving surviving as long as possible and killing most sharks you can with a spear gun before you'd inevitably become snack, not unlike the likes of Devil Daggers. The follow-up, simply titled Death In The Water 2 and released in 2023 is a much more full-featured game, including a more detailed world, proper campaign mode in addition to the horde survival mode, increased weapon and enemy variety including a wider variety of shark breeds. The story of this installment goes like this:

Blackwater Bay has always been shrouded in mystery and fear, where its waters are infested with hostile marine life, disappearing ships and planes a regular occurrence, and assorted rumors from locals about ghostly sirens to humungous krakens haunting beneath the surface. Only the best bounty hunters dare to venture and explore it's depths, and you're one of them.

Death in the Water (1 and 2) contain examples of:

• Almost Out of Oxygen: You can suffer from oxygen shortage in the second game^note As well as the earlier Shark Attack Deathmatch games. DITW1 does not limit you by oxygen., given that you're diving around deep ocean trenches. Find a spare oxygen tank or you'll suffer a Non-Standard Game Over.
• Antagonist Title: Death in the Water. Turns out "Death" is an ancient, powerful giant octopus and Final Boss of the game.
• The Beast Master: Unusually, DITW2 has a case of an animal mind controlling other animals, as Death is proven to be the source behind aquatic wildlife becoming more agressive than usual.
• Blackout Basement: The deepest, darkest parts of the trenches have you navigating your way through with your suit's flashlight being your only source of illumination. Sharks and sea snakes tend to ambush you from the dark in these areas.
• Blinded by the Light: Introduced in 2, the Flash Bang, an underwater flash grenade that can disorientate hostile marine life. Given your enemies come from deep, dark ocean trenches and have never seen light their whole lives, it works like a charm.
• Blood Is Squicker in Water: Injuring an enemy underwater will result in a small cloud of red spreading out.
• Bounty Hunter: DITW2 has you play as one volunteering to investigate Blackwater Bay, hoping to find underwater treasures during your hunt. It doesn't disappoint.
• Camera Abuse: Getting chomped upon by hostile aquatic monsters will have your screen splattered with blood (presumably yours).
• Cement Shoes: In DITW2 the player can encounter long decayed corpses of unfortunate sailors executed this way.
• Critical Annoyance: Low player health is indicated with a looping hearbeat sound.
• Combat Tentacles: Death the Kraken can damage the player with its tentacles as it moves around.
• Derelict Graveyard: You eventually find out what happened to the various missing ships (including a plane!) when you reach Blackwater Bay's deepest trenches and come across a seemingly endless field of destroyed ships. You even explore a monster-infested Shipshape Shipwreck in one area.
• Early-Bird Boss: Death The Octopus is encountered as soon as in Dive 5 of DITW2, but the player is tasked with fleeing to the nearby Oil Rig instead of directly fighting it that soon. It's not until near the end of the game when the player have amassed enough firepower by this point to face Death as the Final Boss.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Of course. You might dismiss the marine life as defending their territories, until you manage to skewer an underwater enemy with the harpoon - while underwater predators like sharks in real life would more likely attack another injured animal because of the blood, here the sharks promptly ignores the clouding blood and comes straight for you.^note At least until you throw a limited supply of bait to distrach them. DITW2 does spell out that the sharks behave this way because of Death's mind control powers.
• First-Person Ghost: Averted in the second game that does include body awareness, letting you see your body if you look down or even whenever you simply backpedal.
• Flunky Boss: The final encounter with Death has it siccing sharks and sirens on you in addition to directly confronting you. Killing his minions does affect his lifebar the same way like you're directly hurting it (which in itself remains a key).
• Giant Squid: Huge, black octopuses appear as recurring enemies, including the Final Boss, Death itself.
• The Goomba: DITW2 has the Lionfishes. Painfully slow enemies whose spines deal Scratch Damage thanks to your thick wetsuit, and they die in a single harpoon shot. The first mission has you hunting them as a training mission before you move on to sharks.
• Guns Firing Underwater: Justified with the Kraken (an underwater shotgun) - it's been specifically modified to fire charged pumps in the deepest depths.
• Harpoon Gun: Being a diver, your default weapon is your trusty harpoon launcher. DITW2 also has the Poseidon harpoon launcher that can be considered the game's equalivement of a sniper rifle, being slower to reload yet able to kill most enemy types in a single hit.
• Impossible Item Drop: Sharks, sea snakes, octopi, lionfishes and the like will constantly drop tokens after they're killed in DITW2. Said tokens either increase your score multiplier in the campaign or provide experience points in Survival mode.
• Minimalism: The first game, being a relatively simple wave based shooter that simply pits you in open ocean against sharks, trying to get as much kills as one can before getting inevitably eaten.
• More Dakka: A bit downplayed compared to the usual examples, but DITW2 does contain the Hellfire, a rapid fire pellet gun with visual design styled after a minigun.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Big Bad of 2 who is responsible for making much of the aquatic life hostile is straight up codenamed Death.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: The "siren" enemies are the evil variety of mermaids, depicted as fish-human hybrids who attack you with spears.
• Sea Monster: You think? Death The Octopus itself is notably larger than submarines.
• Scare Chord: DITW2 pronounces each time the player gets hit with this.
• Short-Range Shotgun: The Kraken shotgun does not have much range (not like you'd expect shell based weapons to reach much underwater) but it would tear through lesser Sharks and even Sirens in a single point blank shot.
• Slippery as an Eel: Alongside sharks and sea snakes, ferocious moray eels - far larger than any real-life species - are another enemy.
• Threatening Shark: Expectedly for an underwater-themed action game, sharks are the most common enemies you encounter in every stage. They come in several varieties as well, from the common, stereotypically-ferocious Great Whites to Mako and Tiger Sharks.
• Underwater Boss Battle: The final encounter with Death in DITW2 stands out as a proper boss battle.
• Underwater Ruins: The second half of 2 has you exploring these as you get closer to Death.

Your next descent into darkness awaits...