Strange Terror From the Deep is a 2019 indie stealth horror game developed and published by Dave Microwaves Games, as a standalone sequel to the 2018 indie stealth horror game Strange Terror From Beyond The Stars!, also by Dave. It centers around a small group of survivors trying to escape a seafloor lab, while avoiding a monster.
The plot is that the player, either Jay or Alice, works at a seafloor lab delivering dangerous live monsters to clients in exchange for money. One night, some crew members enter the monster containment when human screaming is heard, only to be ambushed by the monster, who promptly escapes and begins killing everyone. It's up to the player to either find a way to escape or kill the monster.
The game was released on January 10th, 2019 with positive user reviews. It currently holds a 4.4 rating, based on twenty-one reviews.
In mid-2019, it was announced a major update was coming
, doubling the map size, adding two new monsters, and fixing broken AI. Unfortunately, due to motivation and overwork issues, this update was cancelled in late 2021. Dave has gone on to say he might work a tiny bit on the unfinished update and release a playable (yet still unfinished and buggy) version on his Patreon.
It is unknown if there will be a third Strange Terror game, but it is unlikely given this game's fate.
This game includes examples of:
- Acoustic License: Despite the lab being a quiet facility at the bottom of the ocean, the monsters somehow cannot hear what should be loud echoing noises, like a door slamming open and shut, a heavy ladder being placed, and Dr. Salmon shouting to the player through the door.
- Air-Vent Passageway: The Devourer can travel through the lab's ventilation to ambush the player.
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Johnny and his coworkers, all heavily drunk, decided it would be a good idea to infuse him wih shark DNA.
- Alone with the Psycho: Mostly. Dr. Salmon is alive, but trapped in a room, and whichever main character the player isn't using is implied to be alive in the facility somewhere, but for the most part it is just you and the monster alone.
- Aquatic Mook: Almost every enemy in the game is based off some kind of marine life. Strangely, it's always possible to drown the monster to kill it.
- Artificial Stupidity: The monster AI and pathfinding is pretty good, but sometimes does stop chasing the player for no reason and sometimes does get stuck on furniture such as chairs and planks.
- Ascended Extra: After being a minor character in the original game, Alice got Promoted to Playable in this one.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The explosion endings are quite cool, but some of the most complex to get.
- Big Bad Ensemble: The game features 21 different monsters, 15 regular ones and 6 rare ones.
- Blood Lust: The Devourer is listed to have an endless lust for blood, and have already tried to eat 6 staff members prior to its escape.
- Cruel and Unusual Death:
- Blubby's bio states it gobbled a worker whole when they first found it.
- The Abducted, when they were still human, was kidnapped and had their stomach gutted like a fish, then thrown into the ocean.
- When Sunky catches you, she hangs you upside down from the ceiling by a hook in the naval.
- Demoted to Extra:
- After being one of the special monsters in the original game, Dave is merely an easter egg in this one.
- In the pre-release versions, one of the crew could be found heavily injured, and would talk to the player. He still appears in the full version, but his lines were removed and he's already dead when you find him.
- Didn't Think This Through: One ending has the player blow up one of the corridor walls to escape, and then promptly drown in the rush of water that comes in when the wall is destroyed.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Abducted is a human woman who was abducted.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: Sunky's ability is that she'll put eyes on the walls, which teleport the player to a random location if they get seen by them.
- Fan Boy: Batfish's bio states it is so obsessed with the 1966 Batman show that it dresses and acts like the titular character.
- Genetic Abomination:
- Crubby Claws, a normal worker whose friend infused him with crab DNA.
- Experiment 024, a normal guy named Johnny, whose friends decided to infuse him with shark DNA while they were all heavily drunk.
- Giant Enemy Crab: Crubby Claws, a villainous man crab.
- Glowing Eyes: Almost every monster has these. Some gain them in their killing animation, such as Lil Pete, whose eyes are normally plain white, but glow green when he kills you.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: After the characters find the empty broken monster container in the starting cutscene, a pair of luminous red eyes can be seen behind them, followed by the screen going black and human screaming and inhuman roaring both being heard.
- Gone Horribly Wrong:
- Crubby Claws is said to have been a normal worker whose friend infused him with crab DNA as a joke, expecting it to do nothing. It ended up turning him into what he is now, an aggressive humanoid crab.
- Anguish is said to originate from a scientist using themselves as a test subject. One experiment went horribly wrong, mutating the scientist into this creature, and making it aggressive and crazy.
- Puffy was genetically created to be a companion, like an aquatic dog of sorts. It worked for a while, but it eventually tasted human flesh for the first time, and decided it liked that more than algae or clams.
- Gutted Like a Fish: The Abducted, back when she was still human, was kidnapped and gutted, then had her body thrown into the ocean.
- Hazardous Water: If you don't reset your life support often enough, you'll drown, complete with a high pitched panic theme in the moments before you do.
- He's Back!: Larry Hawkins was one of the best researchers before his demise. One day, he returned. Nobody knows how or why, but he was from then on violent. Rechristened "The Diver," he was contained and is one of the game's monsters.
- Interface Screw:
- Experiment 024 vomits fish guts on the player during his chase, temporarily blinding them.
- ???'s special ability is that at random the screen will become dark and ???'s "face" will flash around on it.
- Ladder Physics: The ladder in this game acts more like a very steep staircase than a ladder.
- Locked Door:
- The player can lock some doors behind them when in dead end rooms to prevent the monster sneaking up on them.
- The Atlantean Survivor can use his magic trident to temporarily block doorways, providing the player with no option but to wait for it to vanish or go around another way.
- Mean Boss: While he did attack them, the crew's actions towards Larry Hawkins are excessive. They contain and sell him like an animal, and even log him with their other creatures.
- Non-Linear Sequel: To Strange Terror From Beyond The Stars. Besides a few shared characters, the two games aren't overly connected. You can play this first, or not play the first game at all, and still understand what's happening.
- Oh, No... Not Again!: Dr. Salmon finds himself trapped in a small room thanks to a malfunctioning door again, after the exact same thing happened in the previous game.
- Our Zombies Are Different: The Diver and The Abducted are both dead humans come back, yet they're both still intelligent and sneaky.
- Posthumous Character: The lore section in the menu contains several notes from Captain Harry. The last note has him state the monster finally found him, before the writing cuts off with a trail of blood on the page.
- Recycled Set: In-universe. After the events of the previous game, when a bunch of alien monsters broke into a space lab and ravaged the place, it was repurposed into an undersea lab. Place seems to be cursed or something, because yet again monsters themed to the lab environment ravage the place.
- Recycled Title: Multiple Larrys work at the lab.
- Reused Character Design: Being a Dave game, a lot of the humans look very similar, and most are identical in all but hair.
- Robot Me: One of the upcoming killers is a mechanical version of Berry titled "Mecha Berry."
- Sanity Slippage: Mad Squid was an intelligent humanoid squid, who actually worked at the lab at one point, but he went insane and became violent.
- Scary Jack-in-the-Box: When you get caught in one of Mad Squid's bear traps, you need to escape quickly, otherwise the attached jack-in-the-box will explode.
- Self-Insert: Dave himself appears as an Easter Egg inside one of the shower stalls.
- Sequel Escalation: This game has a lot more content than the original.
- Shared Universe: While the two universes aren't connected, Berry is a character who can travel between universes. His appearances in Around the Clock at Bikini Bottom come after this game, and the ending of that game reveals he's going to be coming back to this one.
- Shout-Out:
- Taco Timmy is stated to be "a joke that escaped from the Dave Microwaves Games discord server."
- Jazz Salmon is also a reference to one of Dave's friends. Said friend also is the voice actor of the Dr. Salmon character.
- Count Orlok, known both in this game and more commonly as Nosferatu, also appears in this game as a killer.
- Shock and Awe: Medusozoa will tap into the lab's electricals to zap you.
- Static Screw: ??? regularly causes this when nearby.
- Super-Strength: One of the obtainable items is a metal ladder at least twice the size of the characters, yet holding it doesn't effect your speed at all.
- The Bus Came Back: A few of the rare monsters originate from Dave's older games.
- ??? is the main antagonist of the 2018 game Wails For Freedom.
- Sunky is a new character, yet belongs to the Unky species, which originated in the 2017 game TUNKY.
- The Many Deaths of You: Besides all the ways the monsters kill you, you can also drown, have your life support run out, be electrocuted, and also blown up.
- Too Dumb to Live: Two of the endings fit this.
- One has the player activate bombs in a corridor, then enter the corridor and get blown to bits by their own bomb.
- The other has them set the bomb off right, but then promptly drown in the rush of water entering the lab.
- It's also pretty stupid of the scientists in the beginning to enter the monster containment room to investigate strange noises, and also not bother to bring any protection with them.
- Unknown Character: ??? is a strange monster. They're entirely black and glowing white, and are considered one of the rare monsters. Not much is known about it, as its stats are all listed as unknown, and its bio merely says "Have mercy on our souls" in heavily corrupted text. Its post-death cutscene also doesn't make it very clear what's happening to you.
- Unwilling Suspension: Sunky's post-death cutscene shows her having killed both Jay and Alice and hung both their corpses from the ceiling by the naval.
- Was Once a Man: A lot of the monsters' bios state they were human at some point, but became monsters due to various reasons.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Don was a minor character in the original game. His corpse can be found in this game.
- Weird Crossover: Baldi, yes, THAT Baldi, appears as one of this game's killers. They even got the game's creator to record new lines for this.
- World of Weirdness:
Word of God states the lore was written without a good deal of thought, and is going to end up being rewritten. - You Can See Me?: Being 2D and double-sided, Jazz Salmon can see things behind him just as well as things in front of him.
