What From the Depths is
From the Depths is a building and combat sandbox where you assemble voxel vehicles block by block and then take them into battle. The component list runs past 1000 blocks, plus separate sets of parts for missiles, torpedoes, depth charges and bombs, and for building cannon shells. You can put together battleships, planes, submarines, space ships, hot air balloons and other craft, arming them with cannons, lasers, mines, bombs, missiles, torpedoes, propellers, rudders, jet engines, wings, hydrofoils, anchors, repair bots, air pumps and automated control blocks.
Damage is simulated rather than scripted. Every block you lose or add changes how the vehicle behaves: drag, inertia tensors, buoyancy and sealed compartments all update based on the design and the damage taken. A hole in the hull matters, and a vehicle cut in half by drills really does come apart.
Playing it with friends
Multiplayer covers both cooperation and competition. In co-op designer you and your friends build together on the same vehicle, which is useful when one person is sorting the engine, another the weapons and another the armour. You can also play the entire single player campaign together as a co-op campaign, and there are adversarial modes for when the group wants to fight instead of cooperate.
The campaign itself is a strategic map with hundreds of islands and eight unique factions to take on, and there is a large map with AI fleets to contend with. Alongside that you get creative mode for pushing a design to its limit, a story mode of missions focused on adapting a design to a role, and adventure mode, which starts you on a raft with a fleet to build and a dangerous universe to cross, fighting or running from enemy fleets as you go.
Before you start
Expect engineering to be the core of the game. Customisation goes deep: missiles and torpedoes are assembled from warhead types, fuses, IR seekers, laser beam riders, thrusters, navigation algorithms, sonar seekers and buoyancy compartments; cannons combine four barrel types and lengths with auto-loaders, warhead types and ammo boxes; engines are built from crank shafts, cylinders, carburetors, super chargers, exhausts and fuel injectors, with electric engines and generators as backup. AI is configured by slotting AI cards into motherboard blocks on an AI mainframe, then adding radar detection, laser detection and tracking, and local weapon controllers for partial or full control — enough to make anything from a drone to a fully automated aircraft carrier.
There is a tutorial tag on the game, and the learning curve is real, so budget time for reading and experimenting in creative mode before committing to a campaign. The workshop lets you share and download vehicle blueprints, planets, factions, campaigns, missions, multiplayer maps and mods, and a built-in editor covers planets, campaigns, missions and multiplayer maps, with a modding interface for adding your own changes. The game runs on PC, Mac and Linux.