Sonar Shock

85%
Game Brain Score Based on 130 reviews
  • gameplay
  • graphics
  • story
Sonar Shock Game Cover
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"Sonar Shock" is a first-person dungeon-crawler with RPG elements, where you explore a Soviet super submarine filled with supernatural infestations. Customize your character and navigate through the submarine's four floors, collecting powerful weapons and uncovering its dark secrets. Interact with the crew, solve side-quests, and discover hidden treasures, all while facing your fears in this survival horror.

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Reviews

85%
Audience ScoreBased on 130 reviews
gameplay16 positive mentions
optimization4 negative mentions
  • Sonar Shock is a fantastic homage to System Shock, capturing its atmosphere and tension while introducing unique mechanics like manual weapon reloading and a sanity system.
  • The game features a rich, immersive environment with varied locales and a compelling story that keeps players engaged throughout their journey.
  • Despite some technical issues, the game offers satisfying combat and resource management, making exploration rewarding and intense.
  • The control scheme is clunky, lacking basic features like strafing and mouselook, which can frustrate players accustomed to modern FPS mechanics.
  • Performance issues, including severe frame drops and bugs that can lead to getting stuck in the environment, detract from the overall experience.
  • The save system, which requires consumable items to save progress, can be punishing and may lead to significant loss of progress if players forget to save frequently.
  • gameplay52 mentions

    The gameplay of Sonar Shock is a nostalgic homage to classic immersive sims like System Shock, featuring intentionally clunky controls and a unique weapon manipulation mechanic that adds tension to combat. Players appreciate the resource scarcity, sanity mechanics, and exploration elements, although some find the retro design and lack of quality-of-life features frustrating. Overall, the game offers a satisfying experience for fans of the genre, blending old-school mechanics with fresh ideas, despite some performance issues and a steep learning curve.

    • “Sonar Shock is a great entry in the already rare immersive sim-horror genre, offering a unique setting and gameplay.”
    • “The general gameplay loop of scrounging for supplies is very satisfying.”
    • “The thing I love most about the gameplay has to be the gun mechanics; having to reload and fumble with your gun in the middle of combat never fails to incite panic (I love reloading during a battle!).”
    • “Save disks... okay, so I died the first time I encountered a monster and I hadn't used the save disk yet, so I lost like half an hour of gameplay.”
    • “If you die and haven’t saved in a while, it’s back as far as you were, as I learned the hard way getting confident and then dying, losing 90 minutes of gameplay in the process.”
    • “This game has a lot of potential, but the aggressively retro design (can't look up or down, intrusive UI, saves require consumables, obfuscated mechanics, etc.) is too frustrating for me to engage with beyond the first thirty minutes.”
  • graphics33 mentions

    The graphics of Sonar Shock evoke a retro aesthetic that some players find charming, despite being described as low-budget and reminiscent of Minecraft. While the visuals may initially appear simplistic or cartoonish, they effectively contribute to the game's atmosphere, enhancing the claustrophobic and eerie experience within the Soviet submarine setting. Overall, the unique art style and sound design create a tense and immersive environment, even if some players wish for higher fidelity graphics and more fluid movement mechanics.

    • “Imagine if the original System Shock's visuals/design hooked up with the mood/feel of old RE4 and made a baby...”
    • “Each level of the submarine provides a different aesthetic to breathe in, starting with claustrophobic corridors and spreading into sprawling forested areas to a man-made frozen tundra.”
    • “The aesthetic... eldritch horror on a USSR sub, amazing.”
    • “I love retro-style graphics, but sometimes these are almost beyond retro and feel too much like Minecraft.”
    • “When you take a casual glance at the game, you’ll probably only notice the low-budget graphics, the somewhat confusing UI, and the Lego minifigure-looking NPCs.”
    • “The 'retro' tag goes beyond the visuals, making this game quite unique.”
  • story30 mentions

    The story in Sonar Shock is a mix of intriguing plot elements and humorous writing, offering a blend of survival horror and immersive exploration. While it may not be exceptionally well-crafted, it features engaging side quests and environmental storytelling that enhance the experience, despite some issues with clarity and pacing. Players can expect a fun, albeit slightly chaotic narrative that rewards exploration and offers a variety of challenges.

    • “It has an intriguing story, manages to have humorous writing without becoming bogged down in 'yes comrade' memes, is occasionally genuinely scary, and offers you interesting challenges and choices throughout.”
    • “The overall plot is intriguing, and the environment is nicely designed.”
    • “Great story, art, and genuinely scary!”
    • “The story is also yet another carbon copy of System Shock 2/Bioshock, so not much necessarily going on.”
    • “Sonar Shock doesn’t provide a backlog of conversations and offers very minute updates to quests, so if you leave something behind for a while, be ready to backtrack and guess how to resume that area.”
    • “The plot was often hard to keep up with, but it all came together nicely at the end.”
  • atmosphere29 mentions

    The atmosphere of the game is widely praised for its immersive and varied settings, blending elements of 70s-80s Soviet culture with a mix of humor and tension. Players appreciate the thick, oppressive ambiance that enhances the survival horror experience, complemented by strong art and sound design. Overall, the atmosphere is described as engaging and rich, making exploration and combat feel intense and rewarding.

    • “Atmosphere is crazy, humorous but also oppressive, yet always believable and immersive - and the setting includes a lot of varied locales ranging from what you'd expect to find on a submarine, to parks, and ancient libraries and temples, and it all fits together.”
    • “The best part about the game besides the gameplay is the atmosphere which oozes with 70s-80s Soviet themes and culture, and you'll be sure to find tons of vodka on your journey which has a dual purpose of being currency or a small boost of health.”
    • “The atmosphere is thick and very unpleasant (in the best possible way). Moment to moment gameplay is tense and exciting.”
    • “Sometimes it has a creepy and oppressive atmosphere and other times you're solving mysteries with actual Sherlock Holmes. I'm not saying this type of tone could never work together, it's just that the tonal changes were kind of off for me.”
    • “You'll be navigating environments that generally put you at unease with a mix of strong art style, sound design, and general atmosphere.”
    • “On the highest difficulty, it's really butt-clenching at times; the atmosphere is dense and convincing even with the a bit too overly comic art style of the enemy sprites.”
  • optimization23 mentions

    The game's optimization is notably poor, with frequent performance issues and bugs that can significantly detract from the experience, particularly during enemy encounters where frame rates can drop drastically. While some players have found temporary relief by restarting the game, many recommend waiting for patches to address these issues before diving in. Overall, the game has potential, but its current state is marred by optimization challenges that need urgent attention.

    • “The game is good, the performance is terrible; the game is in desperate need of better optimization.”
    • “Optimization is definitely not quite there, and I would warn anyone who wants to play this on Steam Deck against doing so.”
    • “There really is a good game under the hood, but the problem is it's seriously marred by bugs and inexplicably bad performance issues.”
    • “The game is good, the performance is terrible, the game is in desperate need of better optimization.”
    • “Really needs optimization; it gets unplayable at FPS levels if there are more than two enemies on the screen.”
  • humor11 mentions

    The game's humor is a blend of charming, tongue-in-cheek wit and satirical elements, effectively balancing lightheartedness with more serious themes. Players appreciate the clever meta-humor and immersive atmosphere, though some find the humor's reliance on personal context—like the use of friends' names—can be hit or miss. Overall, the humor enhances the experience, making it both entertaining and engaging, despite occasional typos and confusion in the text.

    • “The game just oozes charm and is equal parts hilarious tongue-in-cheek adventure and survival horror.”
    • “There's also a good dose of satirical humor in it, which suits this world - and the mood - very well.”
    • “The game will attack you with surprises and a lot of very clever meta-humor, which honestly caught me off guard a time or two, so be prepared!”
  • stability5 mentions

    Overall, the game's stability is characterized by frequent bugs and glitches, particularly affecting the user interface, weapon functionality, and dialogue system. While players enjoy the gameplay experience, they often encounter issues like hallucinations and erratic behavior when sanity levels drop, making stability a mixed aspect of the game.

    • “The lower your sanity drops, side effects like hallucinations, UI glitches, and enemies will begin to appear; it's always a gamble when using them if you're not prepared for the consequences.”
    • “The dialogue system is quite primitive and sometimes buggy.”
    • “It's buggy, a bit buggy.”
  • replayability4 mentions

    The game offers high replayability, primarily due to its skill system and build variety, which encourages players to experiment with different playstyles. While the dungeon crawler camera mechanics may be a drawback for some, the relatively short length of the game allows for multiple playthroughs to explore various character builds and strategies.

    • “If you can deal with a D-key dungeon crawler style camera turning, it's a pretty enjoyable game with decent replay value through its skill system.”
    • “It's essentially a stripped-down version of SS2 (including weapon stat requirements), but this works in favor due to how relatively short the game is, so the actual replay value potential can be seen pretty easily.”
    • “Probably has plenty of replayability due to build variety; I'll definitely come back to it at some point.”
  • grinding2 mentions

    Players find the grinding aspect of the game tedious due to frustrating movement and mouselook mechanics, which detract from the enjoyment of exploration and make simple tasks, like entering doorways, feel unnecessarily cumbersome.

    • “The aforementioned issues with movement and mouselook unfortunately turn this from fun to tedious more often than not.”
    • “This can make even entering a normal doorway unnecessarily fiddly and makes exploration quite tedious.”
  • music2 mentions

    The music in Sonar Shock is minimal, allowing the eerie ambiance of the environment to create a tense atmosphere. However, the hacking mini-game features a catchy tune that stands out as a highlight.

    • “The hacking mini-game song is a bop, 'bonk!'”
    • “Sonar Shock features very little music and lets the derelict ambiance of the multi-layered areas bleed into your ears, providing a seriously tense environment around every turn.”
  • emotional1 mentions

    Initially, the game may not resonate emotionally and can even feel disorienting, but over time, it develops a strong emotional connection with players, ultimately winning their affection.

    • “At first, it didn't convince me and even made me feel a bit dizzy, but little by little it has won a place in my heart.”
Positive mentions (%)Positive
Neutral mentions (%)Neutral
Negative mentions (%)Negative

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