Submarine Game

Submarine Game is a deep-sea exploration game where you pilot a small yellow research sub from a ship on the surface down to the floor of an ocean trench. Flood and blow the ballast tanks to sink and rise, ping sonar to map a dark sea cave, and photograph 20 real deep-sea animals in the depth zones where they actually live. You can play it free in your browser with no download, on a keyboard, a mouse or a phone’s touch screen.

How to play

Your sub moves like a real one: instead of steering straight up and down, you change how heavy it is.

• Ballast: hold Dive (S or Down) to flood the ballast tanks and sink, or Rise (W or Up) to blow them out and float up. The tanks stay where you leave them, so the sub keeps drifting until you even them out. Hold X to trim the tanks and level off.
• Thrust: Left and Right (A and D) run the propeller. On a phone or with a mouse, hold on the water and the sub thrusts and trims its ballast to head there, with the headlight pointing at your finger.
• Photo and grab: aim the headlight beam at a creature and press Photo (Space, F or Enter) to add it to your creature log with a short fact. Samples sit on the seafloor inside a pulsing yellow ring. Get close and press the same button to grab one.
• Sonar: press Q or Sonar to send out a ping. For a few seconds it outlines the seafloor, rocks and cave walls in green and marks nearby animals, samples and finds.

The water gets darker the deeper you go. The sunlight zone is bright, the twilight zone fades to dim blue, and from the midnight zone down the only light comes from your headlight, the base stations and animals that glow on their own. L turns the headlight on or off.

Air, power and the pressure hull

• Air runs down the whole time you are underwater. Power runs down as you use the propeller, headlight, camera and sonar. With an empty battery you lose thrust and light, but you can still blow the ballast to float up.
• Dock to refill. Surface beside the research ship or park next to one of four seafloor base stations. Docking refills air and power and repairs the hull, and every station you find becomes a place to start your next dive.
• Hull rating: the sub starts rated to 400 m. Go deeper and the hull creaks and takes damage until you rise. Hitting rocks too fast, or sitting in the scalding water above the black smoker vents, also hurts the hull.
• Upgrades: photos, samples and finds earn research points. Spend them on a stronger pressure hull (up to 11,000 m), a bigger battery, extra air or a longer headlight, from the main menu or from the pause menu while docked.

If your air or hull runs out, the sub makes an emergency rise and the dive ends. Everything you have logged stays saved, and you can dive again from the last place you docked.

Missions

The Missions list has 28 goals: photograph all 20 creatures, collect 5 seafloor samples (cold-water coral, black smoker chimney rock, a whale fall bone, a manganese nodule and trench mud), find the sunken steamship, find the dinosaur fossil hidden in the sea cave, and reach the trench floor below 10,800 m. Deeper zones pay more points, so each hull upgrade opens up the next set of animals. Progress saves automatically in your browser.

Tips

• Trim early. A sub that is still sinking hard will overshoot, so ease off Dive before you reach the depth you want.
• Ping before the cave. The tunnel bends, and a boulder narrows it partway in.
• Look for glows. Lanternfish, hatchetfish, comb jellies, vampire squid, gulper eels, anglerfish and Atolla jellyfish make their own light.

FAQ

Is Submarine Game free?

Yes. It is free to play with no account and nothing to install.

Are the sea creatures and facts real?

Yes. Every animal is a real species or group placed in the zone where it lives. The zones follow the usual ocean layers: sunlight to about 200 m, twilight to about 1,000 m, midnight to about 4,000 m, the abyss to about 6,000 m and the trenches below that, down to about 11,000 m at Challenger Deep.

Does it work on phones and Chromebooks?

Yes. On a phone or tablet, hold on the water to steer or use the on-screen buttons, and touching the game won’t scroll the page. On a Chromebook or laptop, use the arrow keys or WASD.

Can I pause?

Press P or Esc, or tap Pause. The game also pauses if you switch tabs.

Want more of the ocean? Try Ocean Game for guidebook dives in a research sub, or Fishing to cast a line into deep water.