Recap / UFO 50 Game 27 Divers

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Divers is a roleplaying game in which players control a trio of lizardmen as they explore the dark undersea depths. Combat is conducted in a turn-based fashion, and progress is made by winning fights to earn experience points, leveling up, using money to buy new equipment, and making their way further into the depths.

Tropes found in Divers:

• Aerith and Bob: Or, in this case, Aerith, Bob and Cilantro - your trio of lizards is named Dylan, Orlok and Thyme.
• Ambiguous Ending: What's with the creature that rises from the final boss's corpse? In the normal ending, where's the beach? What's with the nest of hatching eggs? The Cherry Ending seems to be more straightforward, but it's not clear whether the trio simply made it home safely after their dive or got themselves lost. Ultimately, it's up to the player's interpretation.
• Background Music Override: The final area's music overrides the default battle theme, making the fact it has music at all in a game where most areas are silent stand out even more.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Touching anemones will often land you in an encounter with rather weak Anemones, but a Snail can also be thrown into the mix. Snails not only hit ludicrously hard in the early game (up to 400-500 damage), but also have a lot of health and can even use a Defend Command to negate damage dealt to them.
• Breakable Weapons: Every usable item has only a set amount of uses during every dive, be it weapons or potions. However, they get fully replenished when you return to the surface.
• Catching Some Z's: The lizards produce Z letters during the resting animation.
• Company Cross-References: Two of the emblems needed for the Cherry Disk are the player character's helmet from Barbuta and the player character from Mooncat. The creature that rises from the final boss's corpse also bears a resemblance to Barbuta's final boss, and the eggs that are shown hatching in the normal ending resemble the eggs used to represent extra lives in Barbuta.
• Death Is Cheap: If any of your lizards lose all their HP during a dive, they'll be just fine after you make it back to the surface, able to eat and get a good night's rest without any issues. They also don't lose out on any EXP, as your levels are determined by a communal EXP bar.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: The Final Boss Skeor is an Eldritch Abomination that Dylan, Orlok and Thyme can defeat using their weapons.
• Eldritch Ocean Abyss: The depths are dark with limited lighting, filled with creepy-looking enemies and ruins the game doesn't bother to even try to explain. Furthermore, most areas have no background music and are dead silent, adding onto the eerie atmosphere. It gets worse when you descend into the deepest parts, where the walls are covered in red flesh with the occasional eye and organs hanging in the background. The Final Boss, Skeor, is a mass of flesh covered in random eyes and tentacles that's very reminiscent of a Shoggoth.
• Elemental Rock–Paper–Scissors: Done with Bizarro Elements, but still: Shell beats Shock, Shock beats Slime and Slime beats Shell.
• Encounter Repellant: The Mist Orb is a key item that temporarily makes most enemies ignore you, although you can still trigger an encounter with them if you run into them even with it active.
• Escape Battle Technique: If you use the Mist Orb in battle, it works as a Smoke Out, giving you a guaranteed escape from any non-boss battle.
• The Goomba: Electric Eels are likely the first enemy you'll encounter and they don't have much health or attack.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests: The sea has treasure chests littered around. If they contain a relic or money, you get it right away, but all other items are contained in pearls which you need to bring back to the surface to find out what the item actually is.
• Inventory Management Puzzle: You can carry up to six of most items in the game, and potions tend to come in sets of eight to a single equipped slot... but each of your divers can only carry two items at a time, and you don't have access to anything you don't take with you down into the depths.
• Lizard Folk: Dylan, Orlok and Thyme are lizard people.
• Misplaced Wildlife: Two of the enemies are electric eels and piranhas, which are not found in oceans or saltwater.
• Missing Secret: The large green area on the bottom left of the map has stars on the walls, unique tiles, and background music when most of the game is silent. Based on all this, you would think there's something hidden there or it's otherwise significant...but it's seemingly completely empty.
• Multiple Endings: Depending on whether the player found the three emblems hidden around the map, which also awards the game's Cherry Disk.
  • Regardless of ending, a strange, one-eyed sphere with a toothy grin rises from the corpse of the final boss as the trio looks on.
  • In the normal ending, it then cuts to a beach as the tide recedes, followed by a nest of eggs beginning to hatch.
  • Should the three emblems be found before the final boss, the trio safely return from their dive... or maybe not, as it's unclear whether the cave they surface in leads to or is their home, or if they've gotten lost.
• No Such Thing as Drowning: You don't have to worry about running out of air while underwater, no matter how deep you delve.
• Nude-Colored Clothes: Due to the way the sprites are shaded in the menus and in what little cutscenes the game has, it's somewhat ambiguous whether the trio is wearing diving leotards or Going Commando. The UFO Companion book reveals it's the former.
• Sea Hurtchin: One of the earlier enemies you can face is the Urchin. Attacking it will also cause the lizard who attacked it to take damage, although this can be prevented by attacking it with a shield instead of a melee weapon.
• Taking the Bullet: Your party members can opt to defend each other, allowing them to take the hit instead. Certain enemies will do the same thing, like crabs and urchins.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: One of the earliest key items you can buy is a bomb, which you can use to open discolored-looking paths below you while exploring, or as a weapon during battle. It's by far the strongest attack in the game, but naturally you can only use it once per dive, with this one use being refreshed when you return to the surface.
• Turn-Based Combat: Of a very straightforward affair - first your units take their turn from left to right, then the enemies do.
• Womb Level: The entrance to the final area has fleshy red Meat Moss growing on the walls, with the final area itself being composed almost entirely of it along with the occasional organ hanging in the background and yellow eye on the wall. The implication seems to be that it's an extension of the Final Boss in some fashion.