Hello friends. This is a Let’s Play video of “DIVE or DIE – Children of Rain”. Every descent is a deadly gamble. DIVE or DIE in the cursed abyss, face Eldritch horrors to uncover the mystery of the black rain. Scavenge and upgrade, recruit and sacrifice. Save your camp… The Flood is coming.
There’s a very particular flavour of dread reserved for games that pair a top-side camp-management sim with a bottom-side scrolling descent into Lovecraftian horror, and Drop Rate Studio’s DIVE or DIE: Children of Rain (published by Dear Villagers, out July 21, 2026) is engineering that flavour by the barrel. In its post-apocalyptic setting, a Black Rain has drowned the world, and the last survivors have gathered around Jack, a haunted man convinced the only way out is down, into the Abyssal Pool, a 2D side-scrolling labyrinth of drowned ruins, lost idols, and mutated things that only get worse the deeper you push. Each dive is a knife-edge oxygen gamble against sanity, darkness, and monstrous eldritch neighbours; back at the camp, you recruit new survivors, assign them roles, craft equipment, upgrade structures, and quietly decide, because permadeath is on the table, who dives next and who is basically bait for the black. It plays like Darkest Dungeon renovated for underwater side-scrollers, dressed in Dredge’s Lovecraftian palette, with a Cult of the Lamb dash of who-gets-fed-to-the-abyss moral bookkeeping. Demo is on the Steam page, heavy themes handled with visible care, and this is precisely the type of high-concept indie that Dear Villagers has built a decade-long reputation for surfacing. One of the more atmospheric wishlist entries you can make right now.
Developer: Drop Rate Studio
Publisher: Dear Villagers
Genre: Action, Adventure, Exploration, Survival Horror, Underwater, Indie
Release Date: 21 Jul, 2026
Reviewed on: PC/Windows
Available on: PC/Windows
Link: Steam
Review copy was provided.
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