Undersea Adventure

Once you wrap your head around the idea that you can build things underwater just like on land, you've got half of Undersea Adventure figured out. The other half is wrestling with a ton of units and trying to remember why you're doing this in the first place.

This is early-nineties strategy, back when computers were just learning what real-time meant. You build a colony on the ocean floor, gather resources, construct units and defensive structures. The goal is partly survival (because you'll get attacked) and partly reaching some kind of victory condition — which the game never spells out very clearly. It sets up a map, gives you some resources, and tells you to figure it out.

The actual gameplay is pretty grindy. When you want to build something, you've got to find the right spot, wait for it to materialize, then harvest from it. Units move around and fight, but not exactly briskly — more like watching work under a microscope. The controls aren't intuitive. Clicking, hotkeys, menus as thick as a phone book. And you're never quite sure if you're actually doing what you intended. The UI is quintessentially nineties — functional, but like it was designed by someone who just figured out what windows and buttons were.

You can fire it up in your browser these days and tinker around for a bit. It's not a game that pulls you back. It's neither bad nor compelling — just that average kind of experiment where the developer thought, "I'll make a strategy game, but underwater, right?" What remains is a glimpse into a time when computers absolutely held the future, it just wasn't happening in Undersea Adventure.

If you're the type who believes even an ordinary 1993 game might have something to say — and you can tolerate a clunky interface and sluggish pacing — there's something here for you. Most people will probably find something that did it better.