Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

Submariner starts from a pleasingly strange place: you are a scuba diver descending through an isometric undersea labyrinth to find Nigel Lobb and free the mermaids under his control. The first rooms establish the mood quickly. You are not charging through a power fantasy; you are feeling out dangerous spaces, watching for trouble, and trying to understand how far you can safely move before the sea life closes in.

The 160-room structure gives the game real weight. Progress comes from careful planning, timing, and practice, so each successful stretch feels learned rather than handed to you. Jellyfish, giant crabs, poisonous bubbles, and hostile mermaids make the route dangerous, while the promise that there is no simple solution suggests a game more interested in persistence than a single obvious path through its challenges.

That can also be where frustration sets in. Submariner asks you to accept repetition as part of the deal: make a mistake, rethink the route, improve the timing, and try again. If you enjoy compact Spectrum action games that make you earn familiarity with every hazard, the room-by-room progress can be absorbing. If you want clear direction or rapid rewards, its deliberately punishing rhythm may wear thin.

Keyboard and joystick support at least give you a choice in how to tackle that precision-focused challenge. A joystick suits the immediate, arcade-like movement, while keyboard play may appeal if you prefer a more deliberate feel. Either way, success depends less on reflex alone than on remembering what each dangerous room has taught you.

Graphics

The game uses an isometric overhead view, giving you a clear look across each undersea room as you guide the diver around its threats. That angled perspective is a sensible fit for a game built on positioning and timing, helping you judge routes around creatures and poisonous bubbles instead of treating the action as a flat side-on chase.

Story

Submariner’s story is knowingly simple: Nigel Lobb has control over deep-sea lifeforms and mermaids, and you head underwater to stop him. The name may initially suggest a certain comic-book hero, but this is its own eccentric Spectrum-era villain hunt.

There is little stated motivation beyond saving the mermaids and reaching Nigel, which means the plot functions more as a reason to enter the next dangerous room than as a source of dramatic momentum. That is not fatal for this kind of action game. The immediate stakes are easy to understand, and Nigel’s controlled sea creatures give the hazards a basic through-line.

Still, do not expect the narrative to carry you when a difficult section tests your patience. The satisfaction comes from surviving the underwater maze, not from uncovering a detailed mystery. The spare setup works best when you treat it as colorful framing for a tough arcade adventure.

Overall Experience

Submariner is an uncompromising little undersea challenge. Its strongest quality is how naturally its premise and structure meet: a diver navigating 160 hazardous rooms feels like a genuine expedition, even with a minimal story. You gradually trade uncertainty for knowledge, and that transformation is the game’s real reward.

Its age and design priorities are plain in the emphasis on practice and the lack of an easy route forward. Yet that is exactly why it may click with you. Each room can become a small problem to master, and the hostile collection of crabs, jellyfish, bubbles, and controlled mermaids gives the journey enough variety to keep the pressure on.

Give it a chance if you like demanding isometric action and have the patience to learn through failure. Submariner will not charm everyone, but its focused challenge and unusually large room count make it more than a novelty. For a player willing to meet it on its own stern terms, the eventual sense of progress is worth the dives back in.

Retro Replay Score

7.1/10