Dive or Die: Children of Rain Preview

This article was produced in collaboration with Valnet Inc's sponsor, Dear Villagers.

We had the chance to check out a 60-minute demo of Dive or Die: Children of Rain, which blends an ocean of horrors with Eldritch Gods, and makes it clear that this isn’t a game where you’re tasked with saving the world, but instead, burdened with surviving it.

Civilization as we know it has drowned in unending Black Rain, which drives those exposed to its droplets into insanity and death. With oceans swelling, remnants of humanity are forced to seek refuge on mountaintops, where survival becomes a shared goal. Dive deep for resources, battle or evade terrifying beasts from beyond the depths, and see how many days you can prosper before the Rainmaker sweeps it all away and forces you to begin anew.

The Pressure of the Dive

Sacrifice Can Be Essential for the Survival of All

The gameplay for Dive or Die: Children of Rain is split between dives and management. Dives are the real meat of the game, where you’re tasked with diving deeper each run to earn rewards in the form of resources, as you wrestle with underwater threats and manage your oxygen tank. Diving is the core of Dive or Die: Children of Rain, and each daily dive is as terrifying as it is exciting.

When diving, players will have to watch their Health, Sanity, and Oxygen even more closely than what’s within their peripheral vision. There were countless dives where my oxygen tank dwindled, and every breath got me closer to my death. There were plenty of dives I took in which my diver did not return, whether they were killed by an enemy I should have outrun, drowned due to my greed for collecting more loot, or simply because I got lost in the maze-like ruins of the underwater world. You’re essentially on a timer, and if you fail to surface before your oxygen runs out, then you’re going to remain a victim of the cold abyss forever.

Each dive is essential for collecting resources, such as food, morale, and building materials, which progressively ease the burden of your responsibilities, but make dives no less challenging, for the deeper you dive, the greater the risk. Although you learn from the next dive, you ensure that the sacrifice of the previous diver was never in vain. In fact, you can even collect a dead diver’s loot, which was a great feature to encounter. Even then, their body might be guarded by an enemy that will see you as its next snack, so in every direction in the dive, you must ask yourself: Is it worth the risk?

While we couldn’t explore the entirety of the Abyssal Pool due to a limit of 10 Days and restrictions on depths at 70 meters, we did manage to witness, and become victims of, plenty of unique areas and monsters. Terrifying underwater beasts and even flora will try to consume you, and even the terrain becomes an enemy when you become lost in the abundance of directions, depths, and essential treasure to try and hoard and manage with limited carry capacity.

The Burden of Being a Leader

Manage People, Resources, and Make Fate-Altering Decisions

Diving isn’t the only main feature of Dive or Die: Children of Rain. When you surface, you’ll be met with the management of the village you lead. The village has an abundance of different buildings, each with its own purpose for survival, but you’ll first need people to man each building, and resources to make use of them.

Learning what each building could offer the village was a treat and added deeper objectives to each dive. Finding blueprints for an oxygen tank upgrade, for example, had me planning my next dive around acquiring the necessary materials to build it. It means on the next dive, you know what to look for, which adds further stakes for completion, but gives a personal touch to objectives outside of hunting for food and morale.

The management system was fun, and since you get a new survivor at the Lighthouse every day, it was interesting to see what they could offer in terms of stats in exchange for the amount of supplies they consume in a day.

The biggest burden for the leader comes from determining who needs to risk their lives on a dive. Perhaps your favorite diver has been lost to the sea, or remains too injured to go again until they’re healed, so you might have to send someone less favorable. Condemning someone to the eternal embrace of the sea means that guilt can weigh heavily on you, especially if you have upgraded their stats, since death remains permanent.

The Inevitability of Doom

The Countdown to the Rainmaker’s Arrival Can Be Delayed, But Never Stopped

Players will have a limited number of days in each playthrough, as a countdown will mark when the Rainmaker floods the land and ends your run. The objective is to help the town survive for as many days as possible by diving deep to find essential items to upgrade the town’s chances and make sacrifices at the Altar to delay the arrival of the Rainmaker.

This countdown mechanic was a very interesting concept that I look forward to experiencing in the full release. From what we gathered, the weather worsens when the countdown reaches its final days, and the worse the weather, the greater risk of structures breaking and needing resources to repair, which can really add inevitable pressure on each run while you scrounge for enough materials to not only return your structures, but to make sacrifices to delay the countdown.

At the Altar, you’re presented with a choice of Offerings that gain 1 Worship Point. By adding Worship Points, you can add more days before the Rainmaker floods the world, and you can also change the outcome of certain random in-game events that may bless or curse your village. The Offerings made are a sacrifice for all, as it could see you lose Food, Morale, or even a survivor, just to risk an extra day or two to bounce back.

Juggling dives, resources, and the inevitability of a countdown cranks up the pressure, as it’s your job as the leader to ensure prosperity, no matter the cost. It was a rollercoaster 10 days, filled with the deaths of characters I wished to continue upgrading, but found myself losing to the inevitability of the ocean and its creatures.

Replayability is as Inevitable as the Rainmaker’s Flood

Prepare to Dive, Manage, and Make Decisions That Change Each Playthrough

While we were only given 10 in-game days, we were able to experience plenty of emotions throughout the run. Dives are terrifying, and there’s an enjoyment in the stress of managing survivors and the buildings that offer unique essentials. It will be interesting to see what secrets hide within the survivors that inhabit your small town throughout your run.

Venturing to unknown areas, only to be devoured by a giant sea creature who lays in a terrain of skeletal remains, or losing sanity to an overwhelming swarm of leeches while navigating through a shipwreck, made me want to go back and figure out the correct path amid the risk of death.

I tried multiple runs, and I enjoyed each of them, with a stronger desire to push through the death that I was facing to ensure that my town could prosper with their sacrifices. There’s a heap of replayability, and much to do differently, ensuring that your first run will never be the same as your second, or even your tenth.