Last year Holly Nielsen reviewed Diluvion, a game about being captain of a submarine straight out of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and said, "While the watery depths you explore are a 3D space, when switching to an interior view of the submarines or cities you come across, the 3D transforms into hand-painted 2D graphics. These areas are where the style of Diluvion comes into its own, and the inspiration of Jules Verne is fully felt."

She had some criticisms, particularly for its checkpoints, but also for the UI. Players had plenty of feedback for indie studio Arachnid Games too, and so they spent another year working on an update which they're now ready to launch. Resubmerged is a free update that makes salvaging more dynamic, adds depth to the looting, crew management, and sub upgrading systems, has more ship customization, and "enhanced visuals, new graphics settings, a complete UI overhaul with improved quest tracking and waypoints, the ability to save anywhere, and revamped landmark, navigation and pathfinding systems."

It's a significant upgrade, one that also includes "new side quests, artwork and music alongside a number of quality-of-life improvements." Check it out on Steam.

When Tom and James got to grips with Arachnid Games and Gambitious Digital Entertainment's Diluvion at PAX, they described its crew management system as "equal parts FTL and Dragon Age". That's quite the combination and while the deep sea submarine exploration game was initially expected to launch late last year, it now has a concrete release date: February 2, 2017. 

With nine unique upgradable vessels, filled with bespoke weapons and "specialised" crew members, Diluvion drops players into a vast undersea world after the land above is flooded and subsequently frozen over. A "ceiling of impenetrable ice" blocks access to the surface, therefore you're tasked with battling hostile ships and whichever other terrors stalk the deep as you strive to defend your submersible and its crew. 

"But fighting isn’t the only key to staying alive; players will also have to manage food and oxygen, salvage and trade loot, collect bounties and discover the depths of a dangerous world brimming with uncharted harbors, factions, stories and secrets," says Gambitious in a statement. "Captains can even build their own home bases of operation to shelter their fleets while growing in notoriety and wealth."

Diluvion will launch on Steam February 2 and will cost £14.99/$19.99. If pre-ordering is your thing, doing so will net you a 15 percent discount ahead of time and a 'Captain's Journal'—said to "document the game’s rich lore"—as well as a Deringer sub to use in-game.

And if you want a sneak peek at Diluvion, Arachnid will be joining us live on today's PC Gamer Show to demo the game. Stop by our Twitch channel at 1pm PST to watch us play or ask them questions!

Four days is one too many for any convention, but given the sheer amount of games on display at PAX West this year, it s easy to see why the extra time was necessary. We produced more videos than any PAX so far (with a few more to come), and feel like we barely scratched the surface of what we wish we could share. So to cut through the lovely, diverse din, we ve assembled a list of our favorite games at PAX West, including a longer list of the coverage we ve produced so far. Be sure to shout out your personal picks in the comments.

The best game of PAX West 2016

Oxygen Not Included - Klei Entertainment

After its short reveal trailer at E3 this year, no one was really sure what to expect from Klei s next game, but I can safely say Oxygen Not Included has blown away even my highest expectations. It's a space colony builder game a la Dwarf Fortress or Prison Architect, but an alternate title could have been Systems: The Video Game. The sheer number of interconnected systems in the game along with the massive amount of data Klei makes available if you want to min-max it all is staggering in the best possible way. Yet through all of its complexity, I was able to jump right into and understand Oxygen Not Included in less than half an hour.For example, I designated an area of ground to be mined out by my Duplicants (the clone workers that make up your colony) and noticed they looked like they were mining while holding their breath. In fact, they were, as their work made them exhale CO2, which displaced the oxygen in the air and made it impossible to breathe. So they would mine a bit, run to a fresher area, take deep breaths, then get back to work. I made an oxygenator to filter out the CO2 near their work area, but that needed power. So I built a generator and batteries, but all of that equipment started generating too much heat in the air, so I had to build a cooler. And so on and so forth, with granular, numbers driven systems being expressed to me in ways that are easy to understand at a glance.Oxygen Not Included s concept isn t new. Many of these systems are recognizable from the games that inspired it, like Rimworld or Dwarf Fortress, but there s something distinctly charming about Klei s presentation of it all. Its hand-drawn art style and simple side perspective made me want to keep playing and keep building. I didn t even get very far, but already saw new systems that will help push the game further like a Duplicant s entitlement stat slowly rising to force you to build them nicer amenities. Oxygen Not Included should be hitting Early Access this Winter, and I ll be holding my breath like one of my Duplicant workers until then.

Tom Marks

Tom's personal picks

BattleTech - Harebrained Schemes

BattleTech s rough terrain is what excited me most. I m so jaded by clean, flat surfaces covered in hexes or squares in turn-based strategy games. But BattleTech is rough and rugged, a mech game that feels gritty and hits hard. I nearly lost during my half hour demo, and if I had had a larger campaign to think about with characters to upgrade and mechs to repair, I probably would have restarted the mission. Positioning is key in BattleTech, and it s a skill I m impatient to practice.Dropzone - Sparkypants Studios

Made by the creators of Rise of Nations, Dropzone is a competitive RTS that removes base building in favor of micro. You control three mech units at once that respawn, level up, and have abilities like a MOBA, but matches are limited to 15 minutes and are point-based. You score points by killing neutral monsters around the map and cashing in the glowing purple orbs they leave behind at a turn-in spot at the center of the arena. The macro is shifted from split-second build order timing to how you choose to outfit your mechs before a match and which you pick in the draft phase.The biggest problem Dropzone will have to overcome is public perception. It s a F2P game that looks a lot like StarCraft in gameplay videos, and sounds a lot like a MOBA in its description. Aesthetic similarities aside, Dropzone is going to be incorrectly put behind the mental barricade of another F2P MOBA by a lot of players before they even understand what it actually is which is a shame, because it s one of the freshest takes on the 1v1 competitive RTS I ve seen in a long time.

James' personal picks

Thimbleweed Park - Terrible Toybox

I didn t expect to be as smitten with Thimbleweed Park as I am, but after Ron Gilbert walked me through a short demo, I m dying to point and click and solve a murder. The pitch is simple: it s a classically styled comedy adventure game set in an Twin Peaksy town. I say styled, because Thimbleweed Park doesn t ignore 20 years of evolved design outright. The backdrops are alive with detail and subtle effects not possible using old tech, traversal is quick and snappy, and the puzzles are designed with every potential player in mind.I grew up on adventure games like The Secret of Monkey Island and Pajama Sam, but I can understand that their puzzle design isn t exactly intuitive in the rearview. When I think about my favorite modern adventure games, Botinacula and Samorost 3, they can be obtuse at times, but mitigate frustration through the use of simpler interactions or clever hint systems. Thimbleweed Park is still designed with strange, convoluted adventure game logic in mind, but this time, they re including an easy mode. It doesn t outright get rid of the harder puzzles, but solves the more rubber-chicken-pulley-ish steps of the bunch beforehand. I ll be playing on the harder difficulty, but I like the idea of making an adventure game more accessible without compromising the original vision for old-fashioned players.Diluvion - Arachnid Games

The ocean is creepy. I don t know what s going on down there. Is it just more fish? Are they bigger? What s the teeth situation? Diluvion probably has a good theory. It s a deep sea submarine exploration game where you putter around huge underwater environments, salvage wrecked ships and buried treasure, and engage in desperate battles against aggressive subs. While Abzu looked at the prettier side of ocean life, Diluvion dives into its eerie bits. Humanity is trapped beneath a thick layer of ice after a great flood washes away all of civilization. So you set out for the bottom in search of a revelation.But intrigue and good looks aren t all Diluvion has going for it the crew management evokes equal parts FTL and Dragon Age. Press a button and the perspective shifts to a cross section of the submarine wherein you can converse with your crew members or move them between different stations off of weapons to hull repairs, for example. It s a smart way to make a 3D exploration game feel more strategic and alive without bogging it down with heavy simulation systems and UI elements. And that art! Phew. It adds so much personality to such a dark, dreary setting.

Check out the rest of our PAX West 2016 coverage:

There's a lot more from PAX West to see. Browse our PAX West 2016 tagged page, check out our PAX West YouTube playlist, or pick and choose from the list below.

• Oxygen Not Included gameplay
• Hand of Fate 2 gameplay and interview
• Gigantic interview
• Shadow Warrior 2 gameplay
• Strafe gameplay
• Dawn of War 3 gameplay and interview
• Book of Demons interview
• The Fall Part 2: Unbound gameplay and interview
• Civilization 6 interview
• Lichtspeer interview
• The Silver Case, an interview with Suda51
• Hob gameplay and interview
• West of Loathing interview
• Obsidian Entertainment interview
• Gears of War 4 PC gameplay
• Warframe interview
• Sonic Mania gameplay and interview
• Stardew Valley interview - a look at the 1.1 update
• Dishonored 2 interview
• 20XX interview
• BattleTech gameplay
• Osiris: New Dawn gameplay
• Duelyst interview
• Duke Nukem 3D 20th Anniversary World Tour interview

In Diluvion, your goal is simple: get to the bottom of the ocean. To do that, you'll need the right crew, a hardy submarine, and a few technological upgrades. Otherwise, if the pressure doesn't crush you like an empty soda can, the giant mechanical sea spiders will.

It's not your average third-person exploration game: Diluvion folds in some FTL-lite crew management via some gorgeous cross section art, and gives every member a voice they're fully realized characters. I played a short demo at PAX West and chatted with Jacob Stove Lorentzen, Technical Director at Arachnid Games about how deep the game goes see that in the video above.

In the demo I played, most of my time was spent from a third-person perspective behind the sub. It's a fairly simple vessel to maneuver and the deep ocean squirrels away a ton of landmarks, secrets, and supply crates to loot, all of which I found by using my sonar ping. But this isn't an entirely relaxed trip. Using sonar also alerts any nearby enemies to your presence, at which point you'll have to duke it our or dive to safety I should have done the latter. During combat, you can move around crew members using Captain Time, a sort of bullet time for crew management. Switch them out to focus on repairs or shunt more of the workforce into different parts of the sub. Or do as I did, and die.

I'll have a second chance when Diluvion releases sometime this fall.

After a successful Kickstarter campaign back in July of 2015, Diluvion, a deep sea exploration and submarine combat game, is now due to be released this fall. Above, you can watch the announcement trailer, where after about a minute of introduction and story setup, you can see some gameplay: sub-to-sub combat, crew management, and a fight with what appears to be some sort of monstrous Dire Crab with a sunken battleship on its back.

As the story goes, the last remnants of humanity are struggling to survive underwater thanks to a massive flood and an impenetrable layer of ice keeping them from the surface. In addition to exploration and combat, you'll also be able to be able to hunt for salvage, trade goods, and collect bounties. You can establish as a base as well, upgrade it, and use it to store additional crew members.

"As submersible captains, players must explore the uncharted reaches of the open sea, brimming with distinct harbors, factions, mercenaries and secrets," reads the press release from Gambitious Digital Entertainment and developer Arachnid games. "Players can recruit officers of varying skill sets and personalities from ports around the sea to helm the different battle stations of their vessels. Ships can be enhanced with new weapons to change the tide of a firefight, as well as new components to increase their range and survivability. "

You can visit Diluvion's official site and Steam page, and cast your net below for some more screenshots.