Deep Tether: Salvage Dive

You hang from one cable. Every metre down is worth more. Every metre is also air you still have to spend climbing back out. Deep Tether is a one-thumb, portrait salvage game built on a single question: keep going, or turn around? ONE CABLE, ONE THUMB Drag anywhere to steer the pod down the trench. Hold to reel home. The winch on the boat above is the only way back, and the drum has an end: reach it and the line stops paying out. THE RETURN LINE A marker on the oxygen dial shows exactly what the climb home will cost, cargo weight included. Above it you are safe. Below it you are betting the pod on what you are carrying. The marker never lies to you; upgrades only buy you more rope. A HUNDRED REAL ANIMALS, AT THEIR REAL DEPTHS A coelacanth at 350 metres. An anglerfish at 1,000. A colossal squid at 1,300. A hadal snailfish at 7,000. A hundred living things are drawn in the dark as you pass them, each named, each with one true thing about it, alongside sixteen wrecks and records down to the bottom of the trench. Seeing one costs nothing and is kept forever, even when the pod is not. SOMETHING DOWN THERE IS LISTENING Floodlights, speed and sonar all make noise, and noise draws attention. Nothing can be killed. Cut the lights, hold still, and it passes you by; in the dark you can hardly see what you came for. CUT THE CARGO OR LOSE EVERYTHING Cable tension builds from cargo mass, a snagged line and deep currents. Near the limit the metal starts to complain. Drop the heavy safe and keep the rest, or hold on and hope the drum holds with you. THE SHIP IS THE PROGRESS A longer drum, a better scrubber, heavier clamps, stronger lights: every upgrade turns up as a real part on the boat you come back to. Salvage contracts keep pushing you deeper than you meant to go. AND THEN THERE IS BELOW 900 METRES Past the wreck belt the salvage runs out. The water opens, the dark is total, and the only thing left to bring home is what you saw. That water is not handed to you. It is bought once, by a crew that has finished everything else. HARSH, BUT FAIR Lose the pod and you lose whatever was not insured. The map remembers where it fell, and a later dive can bring it back up. Air and a safe return are never for sale, at any price. Ads are optional, always rewarded, and never interrupt a dive. Sign in with Apple, Google or e-mail to carry your ship between devices, or play as a guest. A game by Nexisia.