Subnautica is an open-world, survival, base-builder, horror game. Based on the Wikipedia entry about it, the game was released in 2014 for early access then fully released in 2018. I started playing it on the Steam Deck, but then moved over to playing on my PS5 instead.
Gameplay
If you have played any game of this type (Valheim, Raft, Grounded, etc) then you are probably pretty familiar with the style of gameplay Subnautica uses. Explore, find ingredients, find recipes, build things, and then explore more. Eventually you develop enough items to get you through to end game. Although it sounds super similar to other games – I kept having to remember that this game before those!
Subnautica will force you to manage oxygen, hunger, and thirst in addition to your exploring – but there are different play modes you can use if that just isn’t for you.
- Survival (default) – manages health, hunger, thirst, oxygen. If you die, you’ll respawn in your last base but lose some items.
- Freedom (how I played) – removes hunger and thirst. I get annoyed managing these in other games, so opted to just turn it off in this. I do not regret this.
- Hardcore – permadeath.
- Creative – turn off health, hunger, thirst, oxygen, etc. All blueprints unlocked and you can explore pretty freely.
Nearly the entire game takes place underwater – and it does a great job of simulating an ocean environment that feels alive. There are different animals across different biomes, different plants, and the depth has an impact on your ability to use oxygen efficiently, and how far you can take different submersibles.
The primary method for interacting with the world is a scanner and your PDA – which helps you understand the world around you by letting you scan for ingredients, information on the animals in the world, and by providing a journal of what you have uncovered.
As for the horror element, well, to avoid spoiling too much – let’s just say the ocean is very dark, and full of big, scary things. Not all of the ocean-life is friendly.
There were minimal issues with actually playing the game – I occasionally would have creatures clip into my bases or submersibles, but that was more funny than anything when it happened. Nothing occurred during my game that prevented me from continuing or forcing a reload (except, well, death…).
Story
Subnautica’s story is interesting, and you only find out what actually happened by piecing together various breadcrumbs. Initially, you crash land on an alien planet and wake up in your life pod. From there, you will rely on your PDA and your scanner to uncover things about the environment, and radio signals from the initial ship and the other life pods. The primary goal of the game is to now escape the planet you have crashed onto.
Without giving away too many spoilers, it is an interesting way to uncover the events. I did sometimes find that I would get lost – even going back over past records or radio messages I would sometimes find I was unsure what the next objective would really be. Although it logs most things, I did constantly wish the PDA kept a log of more things – such as what biomes were titled, and what items I could find there once I had already found them. If I were to put the game down for any length of time, I’d be really, really lost if I tried to pick it back up.
It’s a simple story; but simple doesn’t mean bad!
Overall Review
Overall, I mostly enjoyed Subnautica, and I spent about 52 hours on it. I found myself getting frustrated in some places – especially in areas where I would get turned around and lost easily (cave systems, depths where it is extremely dark, etc). Although there are beacons you can construct to somewhat help navigate, the game has no map system and that repeatedly drove me crazy.
Some of the other things that bothered me a lot are simply issues of the games age – many of the things I would say are ‘bad’ are things that later games of this type would evolve upon. For example, you can only craft things if you have all items physically in your pocket; or when you are collecting items for a recipe – you can pin the recipe, but if you open the inventory the pin is hidden.
Items not stacking in inventory did start to drive me crazy – I had so many lockers to store ingredients simply because nothing stacks. I am also not a huge fan of first person games – I wish you could switch it, but I understand it was done this way for immersion.
One of the strangest things in the game to me was the music. The music itself was great – it certainly added to the ambience in the various areas. Rather, the way it was used. It would often be silent except for sounds of the animals in the area – then BAM loud music would just happen. I would often panic thinking something terrible was about to happen (all videos have trained me for this!), but it would usually just be that I wandered into a new biome so it started a new track.
Was it fun, though?
It was! There is a lot to enjoy in Subautica – if you like exploring, base-building, and the ocean, then it’s probably a good game for you! It may at times be stressful (whether music, a dark environment with creepy sounds, trying to drive a tank down a tiny cave, etc) – it is a lot of fun overall and seems to be pretty well loved. I will be continuing on into the sequel pretty soon!
The Bardic Unicorn 