Nature, one of life’s most incredible aspects. You look towards society today and you realize overtime that we as people have changed, we tend to worry more about the advancement of technology instead of living life to the fullest and appreciating the world around us. The world we worked so hard to build ends up falling apart from our very own hands. Just take the time for once to go outside and breathe in the fresh air that is nature. Notice the luscious trees blowing in the air, the birds chirping their heavenly songs, and the grass that gently brushes underneath your feet. That is the beauty of nature and just remember it is also deadly at the same time. Yeah, you knew this review was going to go somewhere. There are very few games out there that really make you feel like you're surviving in the wild. You could say a majority of these majestic games are open world games, but at the same time you're wrong.
There are games like Grand Theft Auto V and Spider-Man that take place in bustling cities instead of the open wilderness. Only two open world sandboxes have came close to capturing the amazement of the wilderness, those two being Horizon Zero Dawn & Breath of The Wild. The genre I’m currently thinking about is the survival genre. These games always follow the same trends: build a base, craft food and water, and maybe fight monsters. I have never been a fan of survival games and for the longest time I thought there wasn’t a single good one. That is until I played Subnautica.
Originally founded in 2001, Unknown Worlds Entertainment started off as a small team of developers that slowly grew overtime. They started off by making a first person shooter known as Natural Selection and eventually made a sequel in 2012. Both games were pretty well received and had an audience, but during the time both games were released gun violence started to rise and events like the terrifying Sandy Hook shooting took place. These terrifying events inspired Unknown Worlds to make something different. They wanted a game that focused less on violence and more on discovery. A game that made the player rely less on tools, but more on their natural instincts. They wanted to make a survival game, but where would the game take place? Vast forests and open plains have been done a dozen times by now, but then they thought about the ocean. The ocean contains numerous mysteries mankind has yet to discover, and may even contain the fiercest of beats. That’s when Unknown Worlds came up with the idea for Subnautica, a survival game that took place on an ocean world.
The development for Subnautica was a pretty complicated process, especially since Unknown Worlds had so many unique ideas for Subnautica that it took some time to develop the game. The game started off in early access in late 2014 and finally made it out of early access in 2018, four years worth of patches and updates. When the full version of Subnautica finally released, people were amazed with how far the team had gotten. It was one of the most well designed survival games to come out in years, and some even considered it to be one of the best games to cme out during 2018.
Recently I played through Subnautica from beginning to end and I do have to say, Subnautica really deserves all this praise. I don’t know if it’s because I wanted a break from frustrating games or if it’s because I sat down and took my time to slowly digest everything the game has to offer, but everything Subnautica sets out to do is done perfectly. This has to be one of the few greatest games I have played recently and I consider this game to be possibly one of the greatest indie games of all time. So for anyone who worked on Subnautica I would like to say thank you for bringing me this work of art. That being said, it’s time to talk about why I think Subnautica is so majestic and why it deserves your attention. So strap on your oxygen tank, load up into your Seamoth, and prepare to dive into the deep ocean blue.
Story
It is now the 22nd century and mankind has built starships capable of traveling to unexplored planets several light years away. They have manufactured equipment to harvest the resources foreign planets may contain and even sent a few researchers to see if some planets are habitable for human life. If a planet is habitable then the team of researchers can construct a Phase Gate, a structure capable of teleporting one person to another location within a few seconds. A ship known as the Degasi was once sent to an unexplored ocean world code named 4546B to study the underwater inhabitants, but something went wrong to the team aboard the ship. The ship somehow exploded and crash landed onto 4546B, none of the crew members aboard were ever heard or seen from again. Several months have passed and a new vessel has been sent to 4546B to continue researching the planet, the Aurora.
The team aboard the ship was told their main goal is to construct a Phasegate on 4546B, but what they weren’t told was that they were sent to rescue any survivors from the abandoned Degasi months ago. Suddenly the Aurora is shot down and set into flames. All the crew members evacuate to the escape pod bay and rocket towards the ocean planet below them. One of these crew members is the voiceless Riley Robinson who has no idea about what he is getting into. Riley is knocked out during his descent towards the surface of 4546B and wakes up to find himself miles away from Aurora. He’s not even standing on land. He’s floating a few inches above a safe biome known simply as the Safe Shallows. The Aurora is left in complete shambles and explodes a day or so after the crash, creating a zone of radiation that is too toxic to navigate through. Riley realizes he has no way off of 4546B, but luckily his escape pod came with the equipment he needs to survive. A machine capable of converting materials into equipment and a radio that point Riley to the escape pods of other surviving crew members. Riley gears up and begins to explore the ocean world.
This is where I have to spoil some of Subnautica’s plot, so if you haven’t played the game yet do so or skip to the next paragraph. You have been warned readers! Riley tries radioing for help and luckily a ship is being sent towards a designated location to pick him. Riley swims towards an ominous island and discovers a strange alien tower spiraling towards the sky. He has no clue what the glowing structure does until the rescue ship swings by and is then targeted by it. Turns out the tower is a cannon and when the rescue ship tries to fly away they are shot down moments afterwards. Riley now finally knows what destroyed the Aurora and Degasi, and when he tries to deactivate the cannon a robotic voice claims he is contaminated. With what? Riley now has to gather the blueprints to craft more advanced equipment, discover the abandoned bases that once belonged to Degasi members, and dive deeper into the ocean floor so he can figure out how to deactivate the alien cannon. He’ll encounter strange phenomenons along the way and the secrets of the ocean world may be more mysterious than they seem. The silence of the deep. What secrets do they keep?
Gameplay
Subnautica is a game that takes some time to get used to because of how it controls and how the world is set up. Unknown Worlds could have gotten away by making the game rely on procedural generation, but instead they decided to set each location up themselves. Making it so that the player can remember the world by traveling back and forth between areas. Once you do get settled into the game and it’s mechanics, it becomes one of the most engaging survival games to play focusing heavily around exploration. Surprisingly underwater traversal is an appealing concept and it’s made even more interesting with distinct underwater biomes.
The first area in the game is quite literally called the Safe Shallows, brightly colored sand filled with purple mushrooms and caverns containing minerals. Once you dive deeper into the world you’ll encounter a list of bizarre locations. A kelp forest, lucious fields of red grass, an underground cavern containing ginormous fossils, and much more that I won’t spoil. However, to reach these locations you need stronger equipment to dive deeper. You have a limited amount of oxygen that refills when you reach the surface, and if you run out of oxygen while underwater you die. To craft better diving equipment you need materials and luckily resources all over the place. Better resources are located within deeper environments which require better equipment to get to. This makes perfect sense design wise, because the game rewards you for exploring areas by providing the materials you need to discover new areas. You only have so much inventory space, so you may want to find a way to store the supplies you collect. You wouldn’t want to lose them and start collecting them all over.
The escape pod does have a chest to store supplies, but you’ll run out of room quickly. One of the first things you might want to do is build a base. Have a place to store your supplies and refuel before setting out. Building base components takes up quite a few materials, but it’s worth it because it provides a safe haven. Build lockers to store stuff, a fabricator to craft objects, a medical bay to heal, and maybe even a scan room to observe nearby environments. Your base does need electricity though and there are a lot of ways to get power for your base. You can place down solar panels, have a bioreactor which converts plant life into fuel, maybe build a thermal reactor which absorbs the heat of volcanic vents. As long as you think and plan out the structure of your base you can practically turn it into a manor of luxury. Be wary that your base has integrity and if it’s not strong enough water will begin to leak into the base.
One of the most important aspects of Subnautica is how you get around and gain access to areas you normally wouldn’t be able to reach. One of the first goals in the game is to explore the Aurora, and it’s pretty hard when all the doors are locked, there is fire everywhere, and the ship is fuming radiation everywhere. You can craft tools like the Laser Cutter which cuts through metal, the Propulsion Cannon which lifts heavy objects, the Repair Tool which fixes broken machinery or iron plating, and the Sea Glide which I recommend getting first because it increases your movement underwater and has a built-in flashlight. There are several vehicles in the game you can forge, each of them have different abilities and movement speed. All of them are actually required to beat the game. There is the Seamoth which is a speedy little buggy, the Prawn Suit which can hover and can be equipped with tools to harvest certain outcrops, and the Cyclops which is a slow yet durable submarine. Be careful when using your vehicles, because they can attract the attention of several dangerous creatures.
4546B is home to a lot of killer fishes, most of them you won’t even see coming. They will bite at you, ram into you, and won’t stop unless you're dead or out of sight. If your vehicles take too much damage they explode forcing you to forge new ones. You can defend yourself using weapons like the Stasis Rifle or equipping your vehicles with torpedo launchers, but the ammo for each are limited. You want to memorize where each killer beast will be and try to find the safest way to navigate around them.
There are a lot of beasts, plants, and structures in Subnautica and trying to memorize them all is difficult. One of the most vital tools in the game is the Scanner which allows you to analyze what you find. Through scanning objects you document what you find and learn more about the world around. I forgot to mention you need the Scanner to scan fragments and unlock the blueprints for tools and vehicles. Besides that there isn’t much else I say about Subnautica. It has a lot of collecting but it handles it so fluidly by making the player interested in what they will find along the way. They give the player no sense of direction, but by letting them figure stuff out of their own they can learn the rules of the game. Hopefully you can build a shuttle to escape 4546B.
Thoughts
Subnautica was a game I wasn’t expecting to enjoy so much. Spoiler alert. I ended up enjoying it alot. The simple idea of an ocean world never explored by a human being has been expanded upon in the most extraordinary way possible. All the underwater biomes are unique, colorful, and never feel similar to each other. From the luscious red fields of kelp, a forest made of mushrooms, a cavern filled with fossils, and an endgame area that is practically impossible to exist. The way the game handles both exploration and progression keeps the player diving deeper into the world to see what lies ahead of them. You want to craft that equipment to be able to explore more of the environment, and the only way to craft said equipment is to locate the resources. The controls are something I thought would be bad due to the multiple directions you can swim, but they are actually quite good. You never get confused of what direction you're swimming towards as there are two buttons to swim upwards and downwards.
The story was actually really good. It follows a simple plot of trying to get home, but by looking more into the history of the world and what came beforehand you become more invested. You learn of the members of the Degasi and an ancient alien race trying to preserve something on the planet. I won’t spoil it, but it's the reason why you are trapped there. The game has a decently set up beginning, middle, and end with major world changing events signaling when you transfer over to the next act. Something I wish more survival games would do to show that the player is actually making some progress and their work is leading up to a goal.
One of my most favorite aspects about Subnautica are the terrifying sea creatures. Subnautica is mainly a survival game with the crafting we all come to expect, but during certain occasions it can be considered a horror game at times. The Leviathans are some of the biggest and scariest creatures I have seen in a video game. They are usually in designated locations and regions meaning they don’t wander freely around the map or chase the player to the most mundane distances, but you can’t predict what direction they will be coming from. It also helps that the audio in this game is top notch. The sound of your tools, the screaming of the leviathans, and even the ominous music that plays frequently in the background of dark and extremely deep territories. It helps make Subnautica feel more mysterious which is what a game like this should do.
I do have complaints with Subnautica. The game is a little buggy especially on consoles. There was one time I glitched through the walls of the Aurora and had to kill myself just so I could spawn back at my base and continue exploring the wrecked ship. Subnautica also lags a bit due to how much stuff is going on screen, but that’s understandable when Unknown Worlds had to render the water, create huge biomes with no loading screens when transitioning between them, and place several creatures swimming about. My biggest complaint is how they handle the vehicle progression. Progression overall is great, but the way they unrolled vehicles made them worse then the first one you unlock. The Seamoth is the perfect start to the vehicle catalogue as it moves very fluidly and can be modded to do whatever you want. Carry resources you may want to bring, mod some torpedoes to defend yourself from the creatures that want to kill you, or equip an electric field just in case you get grabbed by a leviathan.
Then you get to the Prawn Suit and this is where your selection of vehicles get worse. It's slow, hovers around weirdly, and sticks towards the ground unlike the Seamoth. You can unlock grappling hooks for it, but other than that it’s mainly just a grounded vehicle that is clunky to maneuver. Finally you get the Cyclops which is when the game comes to a grinding halt. It’s slow, clunky, and hard to pilot when it’s sides are wide as a whale and keep hitting the walls. You need all three of these vehicles to beat the game and depending on what mistakes you make you may end up destroying a vehicle. Which is bad, because now you have to hunt down more resources to forge a new vehicle, meet the upgrades you had before, and continue your journey. However this does force the player to play more cautiously especially during the endgame areas where there are so many colossal beings like the Ghost Leviathans who want to kill you, so maybe it’s me.
Overall Subnautica is a fantastic game, it’s extremely well designed ,and may in fact be one of the few survival games I actually enjoyed playing through. I highly recommend Subnautica to any fans of the survival genre and for those who just love how vast the ocean is to explore. In the end I give this game a 9/10 for excellence at best.
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