History VideoGame / Submerged

* BarbieDollAnatomy / EyelessFace: ''Sunken City'''s current inhabitants... aren't very human-looking anymore.

* DoesNotLikeShoes: Miku is always barefoot. It doesn't tend to be a bother, despite the post-apocalyptic ruins. Taku is equally content to walk barefoot on splintery planks and coarse rubble in ''Hidden Depths''.

* OrbitalShot: A nice one plays each time Miko sets a Lookout tower's beacon alight.

* AntiFrustrationFeatures: The game adds fast travel option, as well as more detailed information on how much of the collectibles you'd collected from the main attractions. There are also lookout towers which reveal the position of nearby collectibles. Justified as the map is larger and has much more collectibles than the previous one.

* OrbitalShot: A nice one plays each time Miko sets a Lookout's pyre alight.

* ThreateningShark: Subverted; while a huge shark's fin and tail do cruise by Miku's boat at times in the first game, it's a harmless whale shark cruising for plankton. The second game's "shark" is likewise harmless, [[spoiler: and is even one of the more beautiful Planimals in the game]].

* BarbieDollAnatomy / EyelessFace: ''Sunken City'''s current inhabitants... aren't very human-looking anymore.

* LeParkour: Miku (and in ''Hidden Depths'' also Taku) uses incredible skills to get around those ruins, mostly of climbing ledges.

A sequel, ''Submerged: Hidden Depths'', was released in April of 2022.

* BambooTechnology: The former colonizers of the ruins from ''Hidden Depths'' left behind some fairly complex mechanisms - elevators, drawbridges, cargo slings - cobbled from wood and rope.
* BarbieDollAnatomy / EyelessFace: ''Sunken City'''s current inhabitants... aren't very human-looking anymore.
* BloodlessCarnage: Despite the open wound on Taku's stomach, and the game saying you need to 'stop the bleeding', there's not a drop of blood to be found.
* BoatsIntoBuildings: One of the Seed sites in ''Hidden Depths'' is the ''Marinelli'', a massive cargo ship that got lodged on top of an industrial site during the global flood. It was later used as a platform for one of the seafarer settlements.
* BotanicalAbomination: [[spoiler: The Big Man, the usurper who'd convinced the second city's residents to exploit its Seeds for electricity, was seized by the Mass and remade as a ''gigantic'', frightening humanoid of twisted Black Plant tendrils. Partway through the main quest, it rises from the depths to wade its way around the city, stopping to watch Miku's progress ominously with each subsequent Seed she retrieves.]]
* BrotherSisterTeam: Only in the second game, as Taku is too injured to assist Miku in the first.
* CatapultNightmare: After finding a supply crate, Miku will catch some shut-eye. At one point, the inhabitants surround her sleeping form and one reaches toward her menacingly, then she bolts awake revealing it to be a dream (maybe.)
* TheCorruption: As Miku progresses, she develops a worrying cough, and her skin begins turning green-and-grey like ''Sunken City'''s inhabitants. In fact, it almost seems as though she is being overgrown with algae (and if you look closely, the same can be seen happening to her boat). This same condition also afflicts much of the marine wildlife.
* DisappearsIntoLight: Those collectible Planimals which inhabit the buildings of ''Hidden Depths'' do this when they retreat from Miku, dispersing into clouds of drifting sparks. Groups of collectible sea Planimals (dolphins, pelicans, etc.) also disperse as speck-clouds if they collide with objects such as the boat; in their case, the specks are dark, probably to make them visible against the sunlit water.

* TheDriver: Taku spends most of his time steering the siblings' boat in ''Hidden Depths'', although he does take a turn at searching the smaller logbook-sites.
* DrowningMySorrows: After their mother was lost at sea, their dad turned to the bottle.
* FertileFeet: Carrying one of the second game's Seeds grants Miku this quality, as pink flowers sprout up in her path even from bare boards or concrete. Proximity to the Seeds also makes the Black Plant's vines turn green, opens its barriers, and sets its Planimals and green figures to blooming.
* FesteringFungus: More like Festering ''Alga'', but its effects upon Miku and the ''Sunken City'''s wildlife are comparable.

* FriendlyPlayfulDolphin: Pods of dolphins occasionally pass Miku's boat, splashing about and whistling cheerily to one another.

** Prior residents of the second game's city made a practice of gathering old electronics from pre-flood days and arranging them in piles like shrines, sometimes with decorative adornments.

* LanguageDrift: Miku in ''Sunken City'' is ''almost'' a HeroicMime, but the few voice lines she does say (mostly after delivering supplies back to the home point) indicate this trope is in effect; if you listen closely, you can pick out a few words clearly derived from English.
** It's easier to tell the siblings are speaking a pidgin form of English in ''Hidden Depths'', mostly because they have each other to talk to, so say a lot more.

* {{Planimal}}: All of the collectible creatures in ''Hidden Depths'' are animal-shaped vegetative constructs generated by the Mass.

** Averted in ''Hidden Depths'', in which both the old pre-flood buildings, and the abandoned outposts constructed on top of them, periodically lose bits and pieces to the sea as the siblings watch.

* SceneryPorn: ...but it's rendered so beautifully with such deep attention to detail it's arguably more beautiful. The blend of architecture and nature reclaiming it is jaw-dropping.
** The games even include specific vantage points from which to view and appreciate the spectacular scenery: a giant crane in the first one, and seafarer-built "lookout" stations in the second.
* SchizoTech: Justified by the AfterTheEnd setting. Miku's family has a motor boat, but survives by spear-fishing. It's not clear where the ''fuel'' for the engine is coming from, though.

* SprintMeter: The boat's boost meter. The amount of time you can boost can be increased by collecting boat upgrades.

* SurprisinglyHappyEnding: Over the course of the first game, Miku gets increasingly infested with the algae while the city inhabitants watch. The impression is that she's either dying or turning into one of them. At the end [[spoiler: the inhabitants gather around her and somehow draw the algae out of her, and she and her much-recovered brother leave in their boat.]]

* TouchedByVorlons: Miku's brush with the Mass in the first game leaves her with a strange connection to it and its creations in the second.
* {{Transflormation}}: Miku and Taku discover stationary human-like figures shaped from plant matter scattered all over ''Hidden Depths'''s city. Miku surmises these are its former inhabitants, transformed by the Mass. [[spoiler: At the climax, the fearsome Big Man monster changes into a gigantic and unmoving tree.]]

* ApocalypticLog: The collectible City History secrets, which reveal the story of the global flood and rise of the Mass in ''Sunken City'', and that of the seafarers' ill-considered cooperation with the Big Man in ''Hidden Depths''.