Lantern: Circle the Deep

Your submarine leaves a glowing wake, and the wake is the weapon. Fly a closed ring around a shoal and everything inside it is crushed. There is no fire button and nothing to aim — what you cast, you cast by flying it. WHAT YOU DRAW • The ring — close a loop and it crushes what it caught • The wave — weave, and the water rolls out behind you and shoves them off • The spiral — three loops the same way round, and two arms of shot wind out of the hull • The king tide — three of them charge it, and it floods the floor YOUR LINE Escorts fly behind you in a line, and the line is armour you can see: a hit tears the last ship away before it ever reaches your hull. An empty berth is crewed again fifteen seconds later, up to a capacity you widen with levels, ranks and hulls. Nothing you kill joins you — the line is a thing you are given and keep losing, not a snowball. A DIVE • 20 depths, each colder than the last, each ending in something bigger • 28 upgrade cards — 8 weapons and 20 passives — and 4 pairs of them that fuse into something neither half could do alone • 18 creatures that all light themselves, so a hundred of them stay legible • Endless mode once a depth is cleared, if you would rather not surface WHAT YOU KEEP • A permanent ledger: 16 upgrades across offense, survival, utility and earnings, bought with what you surfaced with • 5 hulls, each opened by playing a particular way • A locker of hulls, drives and rigs to fit, and pets that swim with you • A codex that fills in as you meet what lives down there ONE HAND, ONE THUMB, PORTRAIT Press anywhere and drag to steer. That is the whole control scheme. No energy. No timers. No waiting to play. Open it, dive, and it is a two-minute run or a twenty-minute one depending on how the water goes.