Starting out in the Caribbean, World of Diving recreates and brings to life the world of wonder and discovery that is at the bottom of the ocean, where you will be hang out with friends - whether you have met them in or outside of the game - and can dive with the sea turtles, hunt for the great white shark, and party on your own luxury yachts.

World of Diving is an ambitious undertaking with world-scale potential; all made possible through a combination of procedurally generated environments based on actual biological and geographical data, and manually designed real-world diving spots.

If it’s underwater, it’s part of World of Diving - armed with hi-tech deep-sea diving gear and submarine vehicles, a photo camera, and your exploration kit, it's up to you and your friends to reveal, salvage and catalog the ocean's mysteries.

Stage 0, which is playable with both the Oculus Rift and a traditional monitor, lets players dive in with up to 4 friends, to give their customized character a spin in their own personal diving base, and to get a first taste of what the upcoming underwater experience will entail.

“Launching an early, scalable build in this fashion allows a small studio such as ours to stagger the release in manageable chunks, while at the same time giving our ever-growing community the chance to get involved in a transparent and open development process from very early on,” says Richard Stitselaar, Creative Director at Vertigo Games.

Vertigo Games emphasizes that Stage 0 is not meant to be representative of what World of Diving will offer players in its final stages – neither in scope nor feature completeness. “Stage 0 serves to give players an impression of they can expect from World of Diving in the future – and a way for us to start an open, informed dialogue with our enthusiastic, resourceful community,” Stitselaar adds.

Stage 0 is now available for PC to anyone who has pre-purchased World of Diving via its official website.

Key features:

• Design, create and share your own underwater missions and content
• Explore the mysteries of the ocean with up to 16 friends, or go solo
• Compete with friend and foe in exciting arcade challenges
• Discover and salvage the sunken remains of history, including rusty shipwrecks and WW2 submarines
• Interact with the amazing sea life and complete your Ocean-o-pedia with over a hundred species
• Collect a variety of special ‘diving buddies’, each adding its unique benefit to your diving skill
• Customize your character, upgrade your diving gear and ships, and more
• Take part in the community and help direct feature development
• Play using the Oculus Rift for the full immersive experience, or use a traditional monitor