Indie Game of the Week 488: Loddlenaut

The more video games you play the more hyperspecific niches you come across that perfectly reflect what you're looking for out of your gaming, or at least to slake a certain type of hunger you might have at that moment. Over the years I've really found myself appreciating underwater exploration games, between sub-aquatic exploraction games like Aquaria or Song of the Deep and diving sims that might have a scavenging/nature photography angle to help explain why anyone would want to spend significant time several hundred feet beneath the waves on a regular basis. Moon Lagoon's Loddlenaut finds its own niche lying somewhere between an underwater explorer and a busywork sim by way of a PowerWash Simulator, wrapped up together by an environmentalism-themed framing device.

I've no idea how any of this stuff works underwater. It's the future? Let's go with that.

The protagonist is a diver astronaut (that is, he goes underwater on alien planets, sort of like Subnautica) to rid prior sites of unscrupulous corporate colonies of the pollution such institutions typically leave behind. GUP-14, colonized and named by the Guppy Corporation, is one such ocean planet left in a sorry state after the company has come and gone; filled as it is with piles of garbage, a venomous dark purple gunk covering structures and floors, and clouds of deadly microplastics suffocating the local sealife. You are assisted by a somewhat persnickety supervisor, Dave, who pragmatically details the plan going forward while resisting the urge to comment on what Guppy has done to this planet, gently (if also often passive-aggressively) instructing you on what your next goal might be or how you might overcome any immediate obstacles in your path, like trash that's too sturdy to break down without an upgraded laser. The UI has this sort of faux friendly corporate simplicity to it, using graphics like those you'd see on an internal PowerPoint presentation, but given the game's themes it sort of fits the assignment.

Loddlenaut is built similarly to an Astroneer type of game: you start small by recycling the trash you find nearby into crafting materials to expand your operation, first by extending your oxygen meter (thankfully not a particularly attention-demanding mechanic here) and building oxygen-replenishing rings as waypoints across this ocean world and then eventually crafting a means of moving deeper underwater with a reinforced diving suit, a vacuum for hoovering up those microplastic clouds, and other boons to make your life easier such as upgrades to your trash-detecting scanner or to your underwater jet for quick traversal. As you continue to clean up GUP-14, you'll eventually see a means to help out the local fauna and flora further with a botanic side-quest of sorts where you find seeds then plant them around biomes to increase their biodiversity, which in turn boosts that location's ability to resist more pollution drifting in from outside while helping out the local loddles—the titular fish-like creatures with a wide number of evolutionary paths—propagate and grow into all manner of different forms. It is, in effect, similar to a game I played fairly recently named Ultros: the standard gameplay loop you're introduced to at the start eventually gives way to a horticultural twist where you're nurturing plants and monitoring your little pals like it's some deep sea Chao Garden.

Loddlenaut knows the type of audience it's likely to draw in, and so there's a permeating feeling of serenity from its style and music that matches both the attractive underwater aesthetic—presented with a borderless, minimalist style that compensates for its lack of graphical oomph by presenting its world as one that is both soft and ethereal—and the unhurried gameplay of gradually restoring these beautiful ecosystems by washing off goop and picking up after a malignant capitalist nightmare after it has already swept through the region and taken almost everything of value. Between the upgraded scanner and a rolling completion percentage available from the world map (which also helpfully breaks down what type of pollutants are still in the area) it's not going to keep you guessing for long where that last 1% of junk to clean might be hiding, and there's that whole naturalist second half waiting for you when the straightforward task of cleaning the place up is done.

Naturally, this sort of game won't be for everyone—it's more fun to create messes than clean them up in most cases—but if the chill vibes of an underwater exploration game of an Endless Ocean or an Everblue sort has ever appealed in the past, Loddlenaut is keenly aware of what it's doing to recreate that vibe. Likewise, if you find yourself spending hours on menial tasks in those job simulator types, it has the juice there too. It's also not a game that's likely to outstay its welcome at a roughly 5-6 hour runtime, which also has the benefit of making the regenerative effects of your efforts apparent after a relatively short duration. For as much as a self-avowed Souls/Ys fan like myself might otherwise balk at filthy casual gaming, I've got to admit that those like Loddlenaut can really hit the spot after an exhausting week.

That the pollution puddle cleaning gizmo is just a giant dog scrubbing brush you can ride around in should give you some idea of how nauseatingly cute this game can be.

Rating: 4 out of 5. (So far.)

<- Back to 487: Blast Brigade vs. the Evil Legion of Dr. Cread