Loddlenaut review

Who knew that oceanic clean-ups could be so calming?

I love a demanding gaming challenge, whether it’s unifying the warring states with the disadvantaged Nanbu clan in Nobunaga’s Ambition or attempting to slay The Nameless King in Dark Souls III. But sometimes, I just want to chill the hell out, not double my systolic blood pressure, and get all grouchy. Over the last few days, Austin-based developer Moon Lagoon’s Loddlenaut has provided a superbly relaxing experience, tasking me with cleaning up GUP-14’s polluted oceans. With a playtime that lasts about five to six hours, it’s a succinct experience, but one that I might return to while commuting home after a strenuous workday.

Originally a student project crafted at NYU by Ricardo Escobar and Jin-Young Sohn, Loddlenaut begins with its unnamed, dive suit-clad protagonist swimming about a spherical biome. A brief tutorial introduces you to the basics needed by a subaquatic custodian. You’ll learn to fire your bulbous bubble gun at bits of contamination left by an ethically bankrupt corporation, freeing underwater flora from being coated with toxicity. The environmental marauders also left soda cans, bottles, and pieces of machinery scattered all about. You’ll pick up and drop off at a row of color-coded recycling machines located back at base.

All the Tools a Healthy Ecosystem Needs

Like most games built around a crafting component, you’ll be dutifully rewarded for your efforts. After the recycling kiosks gulp down any salvaged items, they’ll spit out reprocessed resources. These can be spent to make life easier, from upgrading the power of your gun, extending the range of your dive-suit’s boosting ability, or even expanding the capacity of your oxygen tank. Alternatively, you can order single-use items that will help streamline your efforts, with helpful tools like purifier bombs, fruit-producing pollinators, or rings to replenish your oxygen tank. Here, Loddlenaut channels the same gameplay loop of PowerWash Simulator, scaling up the power of your tools as you approach bigger jobs.

Your ever-dwindling supply of air is one of Loddlenaut’s few stressors, faintly discouraging you from wandering out into unchartered territories. But even that’s a minor inconvenience, as some types of rescued sea life produce bubbles that replenish a bit of oxygen. You’ll also feel a trace of inconvenience at the size of your inventory. But between the ability to enlarge your carrying capacity and floating depots that offer both temporary storage and the ability to fast travel, it’s almost petty to criticize the sporadic need to swim back to home base. GUP-14’s oceans favor density over size, so it never takes too long to return.

Sisyphus with a Bubble Gun

But there is one design decision that’s poised to be contentious: each area will gradually become re-contaminated. Loddlenaut’s structure is based around the clean-up of five main areas. For each zone, your efforts are quantified, with your bespectacled supervisor pushing you toward a 100% clean-up. For a brief moment, wiping away every last trace of environmental damage feels like an accomplishment. But Moon Lagoon wants to remind us that real-world clean-ups aren’t simply a one-and-done affair. As such, the cleanliness consistently erodes over time without regular maintenance. It doesn’t make for a gratifying game mechanic, but it’s a conscientious message to convey.

For those who grow uninterested in non-adversarial clean-up duties, Loddlenaut offers a secondary undertaking. Periodically, you’ll encounter the game’s eponymous sea creatures, who begin as a vibrant little blob that are routinely coated in goo. If you’re interested, caring for them offers some Tamagotchi-style fulfillment, as you ensure they’re clean, well-fed, and happy. Effectively, you can ignore this part of Loddlenaut altogether since the creatures never perish. But you’ll miss discovering how different foods can influence their growth.

A launch update removed the sporadic instance of judder when rotating around GUP-14’s oceans. Now, the game performs flawlessly on lower-end systems like the Steam Deck, solid sixty frames-per-second fluidity. Everything feels wonderfully responsive as well. Instead of having to tap away to shoot at contamination, a trigger-hold automatically targets muck, which is incessantly satisfying. When it comes to flaws, Loddlenaut has few. But one irritant was a strict requirement to follow a checklist given by your supervisor. Sporadically, you can’t progress until you do exactly what you’re told- which contrasts against the game’s otherwise relaxing atmosphere.

Let’s ‘Naut Forget to Chill Out

We need grueling games that dare us to ‘gid gud’. But we also need games that don’t demand our complete concentration and attempt to push our reflexes to new limits. And if you’re looking for a game that just lets you explore and restore a ravaged ocean, Loddlenaut fits the bill quite nicely. Built around a simplified crafting system, there’s incentive to explore the game’s waters – even with the absence of direct conflict. It’s neither a long experience nor a blemish-free one. But it’s one game that you shouldn’t miss if you appreciate a bit of digital tranquility.

Loddlenaut was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.