Naiad review: still waters run deep they say, but then these waters aren’t still

I’m going to pour cold water on it

Image credit:RPS / HiWarp

• Developer: HiWarp
• Publisher: HiWarp
• Release: December 10th 2024
• On: Windows, MacOS
• From: Steam
• Price: TBC
• Reviewed on: Intel i5-9400F, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 1660

Pity the “relaxing” games which set out to blanket their players in a wholesome fog. These minimalist or slight experiences set their stall against the mainstream philosophy of video game design focused on action, rules, clear progression, and often violence. So it is with Naiad , a sometimes pleasant swim down a river in which you sing to make flowers grow and discover poems by interacting with birds, bees, butterflies and other fauna.

Yet here’s the cause of my pity. All those other games, with their decisive action, systemic consequence, and neck-snapping: I was playing those to relax, too. Why else would I have snapped all those necks? Being shorn of base pleasures does not make Naiad a restorative oasis amid a desert of stressful video games, and it doesn’t make it more relaxing than its peers. In fact, it makes for an experience that left me restless, even a little anxious, when it made me feel anything at all.

Naiad is a water spirit of sorts, newborn and introduced to the world by a small talking cloud, who explains the few available verbs, most of which relate to swimming. You can push X to propel yourself with your legs like a frog (the better to lure frogs to follow you), and press A to swim underwater like a fish and bypass floating obstacles such as logs. The odd one out is singing, in which you hold B to belt out a note with a pitch you can alter with the analogue stick, Wandersong-style.

You use these abilities to experiment with the environment. Lead frogs one after another to a congregation of lilypads and your reward is a path of bubbles pointing to a secret tunnel. The tunnel will lead to an area which will further reward you with a sunbeam in which Naiad can grow slightly, an animal power of slight utility, or a short, dull poem. Reunite a scattering of lost ducklings with their seemingly negligent duck parent and you’ll be rewarded with a message at the top of the screen saying thanks.

These discoveries are de facto collectibles, and fill out Naiad’s pause menus in a manner that whiffs faintly of an accomplishment, but this is “experiment with the environment” in the gentlest possible terms. You will learn quickly that nearly every area you enter as you flow downstream has the same frogs to lure and the same scattered ducklings. When new flora and fauna are introduced, the process does not change. Sing - the notes don’t matter - to lure some butterflies towards some gleaming branches, and be rewarded with another poem or an essence or a thank you. Those birds in the branches? Sing to deposit enough of them on a different, glowing branch, and an egg will hatch. (The baby bird will attract a new bird of some kind, such as a hawk, which you can follow for a while to attain… a Steam achievement.)

Image credit:RPS / HiWarp

The interactions between Naiad’s various elements are so shallow and repeated so often that any feeling of play is obliterated. Part of the problem is that your actions are divorced from their consequences. Sometimes hitting a series of flowers within a time limit will cause a rock to break, clearing a path; other times it will cause a human to emerge from a house and flip a switch, opening a gate. Neither makes any literal sense, but it’s also inconsistent in a way that means you can’t reverse engineer solutions. The next time you encounter a closed gate, for example, you’ll need to break a motorboat’s engine to open it.

It’s arbitrary in a way that’s entirely resistant to puzzle solving, and it turns progressing past every obstacle into busywork. Instead of thinking through a problem and coming to a solution, you simply do the only thing available to you in any given situation. If it’s possible to do many things, you do them all, and if you can’t see anything you can do, you do what I did: play the game like a robot vacuum cleaner, going over every patch twice and bumping into every corner.

Do I need to hit those flowers in order to progress? No idea. Do I need to hit them at all? Also no idea, because unlike a playground like Untitled Goose Game, Naiad gives you no checklist to steer your focus. Instead its menus only indicate that there are unknown things still to discover, thus producing an anxious fear in me that I might be missing something. This is not very relaxing at all.

Birds such as these flamingoes arrive in response to an egg hatching. It’s pretty magical, until the Steam achievement message pops up. |Image credit:RPS / HiWarp

Even steered by this anxiety, I still missed a few things, as indicated by their unrevealed spaces in the menus. I already know I’m not going to go back to find whatever those things are, because they probably just require me to herd more frogs. Those fucking frogs, who insist on hopping onto every surface other than the lilypad I’m trying to steer them towards. Naiad seems like it wants you to flow through it at as gentle or rapid a pace as you choose, but no flow state is possible when I’m clumsily nudging physics objects around or herding metaphorical cats. Naiad made me long for the concrete over the ambiguous: give me the hard logic of a nonogram puzzle and I’ll slip into a flow state in seconds, like I’d slip into a warm bath.

By now you’ve seen enough screenshots on this page to know that Naiad is gorgeous, at least. It might be at its best when you let go of the controller entirely and, after a minute or so, the camera leaves your protagonist to show glimpses of the environment. Each frame is a painting in motion, of light-dappled water and bushes that seem to breathe with the wind.

We’re in Gris territory here though, of a beauty that is “terribly, painfully obvious,” as Alice wrote about that game. Naiad might be beautiful, but it’s the stale, banal beauty of a landscape painting hung in the bathroom of a business hotel. It’s the kind of beauty that’s anathema to feeling, and not helped by a story and emotional beats that are ploddingly predictable.

As I played, I thought a lot about Anne Dillard’s Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, a nonfiction narrative book that has no plot at all, but fills its pages with reams and reams of description of nature.

You could just ignore the ducklings, but you’d be emptying many early levels of one of their only activities by doing so. |Image credit:RPS / HiWarp

“At last I knelt on the island’s winter killed grass, lost, dumbstruck, staring at the frog in the creek just four feet away. He was a very small frog with wide, dull eyes,” Dillard writes. “And just as I looked at him, he slowly crumpled and began to sag. The spirit vanished from his eyes as if snuffed. His skin emptied and drooped; his very skull seemed to collapse and settle like a kicked tent. He was shrinking before my eyes like a deflating football. I watched the taut, glistening skin on his shoulders ruck, and rumple, and fall. Soon, part of his skin, formless as a pricked balloon, lay in floating folds like bright scum on top of the water: it was a monstrous and terrifying thing. I gaped bewildered, appalled. An oval shadow hung in the water behind the drained frog; then the shadow glided away. The frog skin bag started to sink.”

I’m not so annoyed at Naiad’s frogs that I want to see them consumed as if a milkshake by a passing giant water bug , but Dillard’s poetic depiction of nature leaves space within it for nature’s cruelty, and finds a way to talk about feelings and themes hard to access otherwise. It’s more revitalising for it. (The rhythm of “ruck, and rumple, and fall” can revive me for days all on its own.) Naiad’s poetry, literal and otherwise, leaves space for nothing. These waters do not run deep.

Where Naiad strays closest to saying much of anything about anything is when humans appear. Those big meanies! They’re making trees sad by cutting them down and stopping a bear from sleeping by noisily mining for gems in a cave, and you, as Naiad, can stop them from doing so by singing to lure distracting animals towards them, as per usual. They’re also polluting the world via their cars and their towns, and there’s nothing you can do about that at all. This smug, storybook moralising briefly had me wonder whether I had Naiad all wrong; maybe this is, after all, a game for children. Yet I know of no child who wouldn’t still find such cloying sentimentalism dull. Again I thought of all the existing works which explore themes of nature and use it to tell parables. Tove Jansson’s Moomin books and the children who love them understand perfectly that winter will come, the squirrel with the marvelous tail will die, and Little My will want to turn its tail into clothing.

Me, looking at a car accident in which someone was evidently hurt: “Ignoring, not learning” |Image credit:RPS / HiWarp

I fear that Naiad is going to be received at least broadly positively by most reviewers (“Sumptuous.” - 3 stars) and many players, and I want to stress that I am not trying to be contrarian, as much as I might like to pretend I am simply too bold, too brave to fall for its wholesome charms. (The Lester Bangs of cosy games, the Pauline Kael of vibes, I am here to chew gum and kick non-violent games’ ass and I’m all out of gum.)

No, I’m here because I loved Abzu , a similarly gorgeous game about exploring a lush underwater world. I completed each of Abzu’s Journey-like puzzle environments and then lingered just to tinker with the flora and toy with the fauna, or just to enjoy the pure beauty of it. I also, for that matter, loved Journey and A Short Hike and a dozen other lightly playful relax ’em ups. I am broadly onboard with games which strip back the verbs available to the player in service of a more contemplative experience. If Naiad were a simple, joyful game about wild swimming, I’d be thrilled.

To come back to what I said at the beginning, part of Naiad’s problem is that, if you’re going to make “relaxing” the most explicit part of your game, then it has to be more relaxing than other kinds of games. Otherwise what’s left? In Naiad’s case, the answer is both too much and not enough.

Enthusiastic is its enthusiasm. |Image credit:RPS / HiWarp

It feels mean to kick out so hard at Naiad in a world already lousy with games that are more explicit, in all meanings of the word, and comparatively barren of games about swimming and duckling rescue. Yet its contrast against other games isn’t enough.

Naiad is, yes, sometimes pleasant. It’s an easy listening, acoustic cover of a song, and some will praise it for having the notes in the right order. Maybe they find that kind of muzak relaxing; for me, it just makes me feel like I’m on hold.

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Naiad

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All 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints and where to get them

These areas have the highest chance of giving you Blueprints

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Looking for more Arc Raiders Blueprints? It’s a special day when you find a Blueprint, as they’re among the most valuable items in Arc Raiders. If you find a Blueprint that you haven’t already found, then you must make sure you hold onto it at all costs, because Blueprints are the key to one of the most important and powerful systems of meta-progression in the game.

This guide aims to be the very best guide on Blueprints you can find, starting with a primer on what exactly they are and how they work in Arc Raiders, before delving into exactly where to get Blueprints and the very best farming spots for you to take in your search.

We’ll also go over how to get Blueprints from other unlikely activities, such as destroying Surveyors and completing specific quests. And you’ll also find the full list of all 75 Blueprints in Arc Raiders on this page (including the newest Blueprints added with the Cold Snap update , such as the Deadline Blueprint and Firework Box Blueprint), giving you all the information you need to expand your own crafting repertoire.

In this guide:

• What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?
• Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes
• Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders Blueprints obtained from quests Blueprints obtained from Trials Best Blueprint farming locations

What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?

Blueprints in Arc Raiders are special items which, if you manage to extract with them, you can expend to permanently unlock a new crafting recipe in your Workshop. If you manage to extract from a raid with an Anvil Blueprint, for example, you can unlock the ability to craft your very own Anvil Pistol, as many times as you like (as long as you have the crafting materials).

To use a Blueprint, simply open your Inventory while in the lobby, then right-click on the Blueprint and click “Learn And Consume” . This will permanently unlock the recipe for that item in your Workshop. As of the Stella Montis update, there are allegedly 75 different Blueprints to unlock - although only 68 are confirmed to be in the game so far. You can see all the Blueprints you’ve found and unlocked by going to the Workshop menu, and hitting “R” to bring up the Blueprint screen.

It’s possible to find duplicates of past Blueprints you’ve already unlocked. If you find these, then you can either sell them, or - if you like to play with friends - you can take it into a match and gift it to your friend so they can unlock that recipe for themselves. Another option is to keep hold of them until the time comes to donate them to the Expedition.

Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes

Below is the full list of all the Blueprints that are currently available to find in Arc Raiders, and the crafting recipe required for each item:

Note: The missing Blueprints in this list likely have not actually been added to the game at the time of writing, because none of the playerbase has managed to find any of them. As they are added to the game, I will update this page with the most relevant information so you know exactly how to get all 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints.

Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders

Below is a list of all containers, modifiers, and events which maximise your chances of finding Blueprints:

• Certain quests reward you with specific Blueprints .
• Completing Trials has a high chance of offering Blueprints as rewards.
• Surveyors have a decent chance of dropping Blueprints on death.
• High loot value areas tend to have a greater chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Night Raids and Storms may increase rare Blueprint spawn chances in containers.
• Containers with higher numbers of items may have a higher tendency to spawn Blueprints. As a result, Blue Gate (which has many “large” containers containing multiple items) may give you a higher chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Raider containers (Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, Medical Bags, Grenade Tubes) have increased Blueprint drop rates. As a result, the Uncovered Caches event gives you a high chance of finding Blueprints.
• Security Lockers have a higher than average chance of containing Blueprints.
• Certain Blueprints only seem to spawn under specific circumstances: Tempest Blueprint only spawns during Night Raid events. Vulcano Blueprint only spawns during Hidden Bunker events. Jupiter and Equaliser Blueprints only spawn during Harvester events.

Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, and other raider-oriented container types have a good chance of offering Blueprints. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints have a very low chance of spawning in any container in Arc Raiders, around 1-2% on average. However, there is a higher chance of finding Blueprints in particular container types. Specifically, you can find more Blueprints in Raider containers and security lockers.

Beyond this, if you’re looking for Blueprints you should focus on regions of the map which are marked as having particularly high-value loot. Areas such as the Control Tower in Dam Battlegrounds, the Arrival and Departure Buildings in Spaceport, and Pilgrim’s Peak in Blue Gate all have a better-than-average chance of spawning Blueprints somewhere amongst all their containers. Night Raids and Electromagnetic Storm events also increase the drop chances of certain Blueprints .

In addition to these containers, you can often loot Blueprints from destroyed Surveyors - the largest of the rolling ball ARC. Surveyors are more commonly found on the later maps - Spaceport and Blue Gate - and if one spawns in your match, you’ll likely see it by the blue laser beam that it casts into the sky while “surveying”.

Surveyors are quite well-armoured and will very speedily run away from you once it notices you, but if you can take one down then make sure you loot all its parts for a chance of obtaining certain unusual Blueprints.

Blueprints obtained from quests

One way in which you can get Blueprints is by completing certain quests for the vendors in Speranza. Some quests will reward you with a specific item Blueprint upon completion, so as long as you work through all the quests in Arc Raiders, you are guaranteed those Blueprints.

Here is the full list of all Blueprints you can get from quest rewards:

• Trigger Nade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Sparks Fly”.
• Lure Grenade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Greasing Her Palms”.
• Burletta Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Industrial Espionage”.
• Hullcracker Blueprint (and Launcher Ammo Blueprint): Rewarded after completing “The Major’s Footlocker”.

Alas, that’s only 4 Blueprints out of a total of 75 to unlock, so for the vast majority you will need to find them yourself during a raid. If you’re intent on farming Blueprints, then it’s best to equip yourself with cheap gear in case you lose it, but don’t use a free loadout because then you won’t get a safe pocket to stash any new Blueprint you find. No pain in Arc Raiders is sharper than failing to extract with a new Blueprint you’ve been after for a dozen hours already.

One of the best ways to get Blueprints is by hitting three stars on all five Trials every week. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints obtained from Trials

One of the very best ways to get Blueprints is as rewards for completing Trials in Arc Raiders. Trials are unlocked from Level 15 onwards, and allow you to earn rewards by focusing on certain tasks over the course of several raids. For example, one Trial might task you with dealing damage to Hornets, while another might challenge you to loot Supply Drops.

Trials refresh on a weekly basis, with a new week bringing five new Trials. Each Trial can offer up to three rewards after passing certain score milestones, and it’s possible to receive very high level loot from these reward crates - including Blueprints. So if you want to unlock as many Blueprints as possible, you should make a point of completing as many Trials as possible each week.

Best Blueprint farming locations

The very best way to get Blueprints is to frequent specific areas of the maps which combine high-tier loot pools with the right types of containers to search. Here are my recommendations for where to find Blueprints on every map, so you can always keep the search going for new crafting recipes to unlock.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Dam Battlegrounds

The best places to farm Blueprints on Dam Battlegrounds are the Control Tower, Power Generation Complex, Ruby Residence, and Pale Apartments . The first two regions, despite only being marked on the map as mid-tier loot, contain a phenomenal number of containers to loot. The Control Tower can also contain a couple of high-tier Security Lockers - though of course, you’ll need to have unlocked the Security Breach skill at the end of the Survival tree.

There’s also a lot of reporting amongst the playerbase that the Residential areas in the top-left of the map - Pale Apartments and Ruby Residence - give you a comparatively strong chance of finding Blueprints. Considering their size, there’s a high density of containers to loot in both locations, and they also have the benefit of being fairly out of the way. So you’re more likely to have all the containers to yourself.

Buried City

The best Blueprint farming locations on Buried City are the Santa Maria Houses, Grandioso Apartments, Town Hall, and the various buildings of the New District . Grandioso Apartments has a lower number of containers than the rest, but a high chance of spawning weapon cases - which have good Blueprint drop rates. The others are high-tier loot areas, with plenty of lootable containers - including Security Lockers.

Spaceport

The best places to find Blueprints on Spaceport are the Arrival and Departure Buildings, as well as Control Tower A6 and the Launch Towers . All these areas are labelled as high-value loot regions, and many of them are also very handily connected to one another by the Spaceport wall, which you can use to quickly run from one area to the next. At the tops of most of these buildings you’ll find at least one Security Locker, so this is an excellent farming route for players looking to find Blueprints.

The downside to looting Blueprints on Spaceport is that all these areas are hotly contested, particularly in Duos and Squads. You’ll need to be very focused and fast in order to complete the full farming route.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blue Gate

Blue Gate tends to have a good chance of dropping Blueprints, potentially because it generally has a high number of containers which can hold lots of items; so there’s a higher chance of a Blueprint spawning in each container. In my experience, the best Blueprint farming spots on Blue Gate are Pilgrim’s Peak, Raider’s Refuge, the Ancient Fort, and the Underground Complex beneath the Warehouse .

All of these areas contain a wealth of containers to loot. Raider’s Refuge has less to loot, but the majority of the containers in and around the Refuge are raider containers, which have a high chance of containing Blueprints - particularly during major events.

Stella Montis

On the whole, Stella Montis seems to have a very low drop rate for Blueprints (though a high chance of dropping other high-tier loot). If you do want to try farming Blueprints on this map, the best places to find Blueprints in Stella Montis are Medical Research, Assembly Workshop, and the Business Center . These areas have the highest density of containers to loot on the map.

In addition to this, the Western Tunnel has a few different Security Lockers to loot, so while there’s very little to loot elsewhere in this area of the map, it’s worth hitting those Security Lockers if you spawn there at the start of a match.

That wraps up this primer on how to get all the Blueprints in Arc Raiders as quickly as possible. With the Expedition system constantly resetting a large number of players’ Blueprints, it’s more important than ever to have the most up-to-date information on where to find all these Blueprints.

While you’re here, be sure to check out our Arc Raiders best guns tier list , as well as our primers on the best skills to unlock and all the different Field Depot locations on every map.

ARC Raiders

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

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Drift downstream in Naiad’s Steam Next Fest demo

Wholly wholesome

As I might have mentioned once or twice, one of my joys in life is dipping and drifting around rivers and ponds, lochs and seas. I am delighted to see some of the gentle pleasure and wonder of that captured in Naiad , an upcoming game about a water spirit adventuring downstream. It has a free demo in the Steam Next Fest, and it is quite lovely. I believe it to be what the youth call ‘wholesome’.

Just me drifting around one level from the Next Fest demo.Watch on YouTube

It’s a game to play with and explore at your own pace. You can go fast, if you want. You can swim at full speed through the whole thing, gun it to the waterfall connecting you to the next level. I don’t know why you would, but you can. I’m here to take it slow, drift around, swim circles and watch my gathered shoal of fish follow me, take in the scenery, find secret spots, and maybe complete a few tasks.

Each level in demo has optional objectives. You can leading lost ducklings to their dad, sing to help plants grow, bring butterflies to flowers, and help or antagonise a few humans. Completing these tasks rewards you with a stanza of a poem, the full poem being revealed across each chapter. It’s nice to have these here if I want to do them, or not if I don’t. I am, admittedly, 90% here for swimming about with colourful fish following me—especially with the comforting knowledge that there isn’t a dead sheep upstream.

Download the Naiad demo from Steam . The solo developer, HiWarp plans to release the full game by the end of September.

Naiad

PC

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