Blackbox

Oceans are still pretty tough to explore, mainly because of the huge pressures and the lack of visibility. Even now, most of the ocean is largely unexplored, since it would very costly to do it with anything other than robots with cameras on board. On the other hand, it can be pretty exciting to explore it yourself, only without all the risks and dangers that come with the job.

Blackbox is a virtual reality experience designed to provide you with a trip deep beneath the ocean in the search for a sunken city. Unfortunately, the game is not interactive at all, which means that all you can do is look around and hope that the journey is worth the time. Depending on your past experience with VR sims, this may or may not be a hit, although it’s pretty basic to say the least.

The adventure starts in a cave, and you are in some kind of old submersible that kind of blocks your front view, which is obviously annoying. The roof is transparent, on the other hand, so at least you do not have to worry about that. Speaking of which, the submarine navigates by itself, which means that your only task is to watch the windows for anything interesting.

Besides the darkness and the occasional shark or whale that passes near you, there are plenty of other reasons to be afraid at certain points during the journey. Saying any more would qualify as a spoiler, but it would seem like there’s something quite terrible lying on the bottom of the ocean. The atmosphere is very creepy, and you can actually feel scared if you are new to the genre.

As far as the graphics are concerned, there’s nothing particularly exciting about the game, and in fact it could have used a bit more work in the level design department. The environments are way too barren and unimpressive, although you could argue that nothing lives so far beneath the surface. On the other hand, the shading and the textures are pretty sub par as well.

In the end, Blackbox might not be the best virtual reality experiences out there, but at least it doesn’t require a very powerful PC, which means that anyone can give it a go. Everything is pretty slow as well, so there shouldn’t be any problem with VR sickness.