The Drowned World

[Scarabium]

Were the designers big fans of J.G. Ballard's "The Drowned World" by any chance?

[UppercutEd]

I honestly hadn't heard of it until just the other day when someone elses suggested it.

There's also an old anime which someone put me onto at GDC - again, hadnt heard of it, either :)

The actual moment of inspiration for Submerged was a GTA mod that raised the ocean levels, leaving a city sticking up out of the water!

[ShawnS]

Originally posted by ed:

I honestly hadn't heard of it until just the other day when someone elses suggested it.

There's also an old anime which someone put me onto at GDC - again, hadnt heard of it, either :)

The actual moment of inspiration for Submerged was a GTA mod that raised the ocean levels, leaving a city sticking up out of the water!

HA! For real?? Having only heard the relation between you guys and BioShock I kept boating around going "oh yeah, look at this! For sure, they've had this idea for almost a decade!". It's great to hear some more stories behind it. Thanks for posting.

[Aggrocore]

I can't say Water World didn't come to mind a few times...

[Strez]

Originally posted by Motherfudger_666:

I can't say Water World didn't come to mind a few times...

Yeah we had more than a few Water World jokes going around the room while we were making the game. I think the only direct inspiration we took from it was Miku's clothing is fashioned from reclaimed and found items, much like the clothing of the characters in Water World.

[Strez]

Originally posted by ShawnS:

HA! For real?? Having only heard the relation between you guys and BioShock I kept boating around going "oh yeah, look at this! For sure, they've had this idea for almost a decade!". It's great to hear some more stories behind it. Thanks for posting.

You can check out Ed's blog post explaining a bit more about the origins of the idea for Submerged here

http://blog.uppercut-games.com/post/90718482506/submerged-making-somewhere-else

[JohannZA]

Originally posted by Scarabium:

Were the designers big fans of J.G. Ballard's "The Drowned World" by any chance?

This was my first thought when seeing this game on Steam. It's like the developers read the book and recreated its environments.

Note, that's no slight on the game's quality; I like the look of what I've seen here and have added the game to my wishlist with the intent of buying it in the future.

[Rezilia]

It's cool to know this game wasn't based on political nonsense or 2012 Mayan stuff, but just a normal concept of a flooded world like such stories used to be - pure, serene, not based on fear.

Btw the anime you're thinking of is probably Aria, which is set in a terraformed Mars called Aqua that is mostly water.