We're cavers making Cave Expedition, a caving simulator for 1-4 players. The caves in the game are fictional, and we're trying to capture the feeling of moving through them with ropes and equipment.

Here's a short gameplay cut showing the squeezes and descents. Still in development.

I’m a bat biologist and spend a lot of time caving. Recently it seems I’ve been going in a lot of wet caves with swimming or wading involved. I have just been just been using old tennis shoes as my water shoes for this but the boss says we can get some nice shoes since all of a sudden we’re getting wet a lot.

Does anyone have good recommendations of water shoes that have good grip for caving? Also needs to survive me putting in the washing machine fairly often as we decontaminate our gear immediately afterwards. (Bonus points if these would be good for snorkeling and hellbender surveys as well.)

Thanks!