Tangaroa Deep

Astrobolism
A neat submarine simulation that makes very effective use of a few simple mechanics. Graphically, the background gets darker as you descend, which is so simple it sounds trivial, but works really well. Also simple, and very effective, is an air meter. Now, this isn’t a hardcore simulation where you have to monitor your air and pressure levels or anything like that, but, just having a little meter which is slowly depleting and showing how much longer you can breathe works wonders to increase the tension. And the story does get quite tense, by slow degrees, and really puts the reader in the head-space of a person who might plunge deeper and deeper into an abyss from which there is likely no return. Very nice.
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Christopher Huang
The dialogue is well-written, and does a lot to add flavour to the story. Merely seeing the marine wildlife–reading their descriptions in our case–would be a lot less interesting without the commentary. It adds personality, “showing” rather than “telling” the enthusiasm surrounding the prospect of diving for science. The presentation also adds to the immersion (no pun intended) by gradually darkening the background as our hero goes deeper into the lightless ocean depths.
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Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling
Astrid Dalmady’s Tangaroa Deep tells the story of a deep sea dive, and of the disturbing unknown under the ocean surface. It’s kind of a gambling piece: the deeper you go, the more danger you’re in, but the more interesting your discoveries, so it’s up to you to decide when you want to cut your losses and ascend. (Perhaps we should think of this as an alternate version of the gauntlet: you can bail at any time and get a happy ending for many parts of the story, unless you push your luck too far, in which case…)
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Narrativium
Tangaroa Deep does an excellent job at immersing you in the claustrophobic terror of a deep-sea dive.
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Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Good IF asks its player a question. Here, it’s “when do you stop chasing notoriety?”
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The Telegraph
15 of the best video games you may have missed in 2016
...a browser-based text game that manages to be creepy purely through the medium of words (and a cleverly-implemented use of color).
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