Subnautica has finally been released!

After three years in early access, Subnautica is finally finished(-ish; they're still considering updates and expansions). It hasn't gotten too much Giant Bomb attention, but it's head-and-shoulders above almost the entire survival genre, with an interesting plot, solid writing, incredible world, and a distinctly satisfying set of systems and gameplay loops. It also stands as an exemplar of the early access model, having been transparently and consistently improved over the course of its development. Even if you're not a fan of the classic stick-and-rock survival games out there, Subnautica is definitely worth looking into. It's a single-player only title, so it doesn't demand coordination and cooperation to advance at more than a snail's pace like ARK or Rust. It also has Freedom and Creative modes that allow you to bypass the more "survival" elements of the game if you'd rather just see the story or the world, respectively. It's a gorgeous game, and I highly recommend it.

I just may check this out!

I've looked at it on Steam before, I just never pulled the trigger. Hearing glowing recommendations like this are always nice on games. I've just added it to my wishlist. Perhaps I'll pick it up at the next Steam sale (I'm guessing it'll be on sale then, at least a little bit.)

I own it on Steam and XB1, it's really cool.

Dan tweeted that he was playing it. I may pick it up on Xbox... they said they are still working on that version.

I got this a few years ago on steam because the idea was awesome but never played it much. Now that it's out I finally got around to it and it's amazing so far 5 hours in.

The first hour or so it was overwhelming just trying to figure out what everything does and how to eat and get water but once I got a hang of it the game really picked up. There has been a nonstop stream of new upgrades and tools and I'm into the bit of story I've seen so far. The atmosphere in this game is fantastic and it's a very colorful and awesome looking game. There is some pop in and a stutter here and there in huge areas but it hasn't gotten in the way. Haven't experienced much combat yet. So far I've just been running from everything which adds to the tension. I had a moment swimming somewhere I probably should not have been that made me nearly shit my pants.

I've tried my fair share of survival games but so far this is by far my favorite.

Is this the one Vinny played way back when? The one with the underwater submersible and the floating aqua crafting...platform thingy?

@bill_mcneal: That sounds about right.

Yup. The whole finally released business really highlights how stupid the definition of Early Access can be.

What a great way to have your game get free exposure then by having multiple release dates. This should be considered a content update and not a release. I have owned this game for literal years.

Its cool that its out, its really weird that people consider 3+ years a long time however for such a game. Subnautica certainly is one, if not the greatest, semi non-violent survival games ever made. Its a game for everyone for sure.

The game has been good then, it certainly is way better now at least judging from what I've seen when the mech update came around. I really need to restart the game at some point.

Is this game basically an underwater No Man's Sky?

I picked it up as soon as it entered early access (the Natural Selection developers, i had to), it was fairly basic then so i'm happy to see there seems to be a lot of content to go back and investigate.

You could reduce it to a description like that. I think it has a much stronger gameplay loop and narrative path then NMS.

On Topic: I played it for 6 or so hours a year ago and enjoyed my time with it. I found the base building to be a little weak, and the scaling of resource collection to be unbalanced (easy to get into, then it stagnates). Visually its a really beautiful game; my only complaint on the visual end is it had terrible pop-in when transitioning between biomes, hopefully that is fixed.

I was determined not to play Subnautica because I absolutely hate No Man's Sky. I started watching someone play it on youtube to see what it was about and after 10 hours I was compelled to stop watching and play it myself. Played for about 20 hours now and I love it.

The good: Setting, Graphics, Creature Behavior, Interface, Tech Progression, Story.

The bad: Bugs, Finding Resources Sometimes Difficult, Needing to Drink so much Water.

The anger (but fun): A Giant Sea Monster ate your Submarine that you spent so many resources upgrading.

$25 on Steam and I would still have been happy if I had paid $40. Buy it. Play it. Fuck Monster Hunter. Fuck DBZ.

@memu:What's the issue with drinking? I've played about 6hrs and it's really not a problem.

I am enjoying it but would feel more drawn in if it was a waterworld set on some future / other timeline of earth. I find it hard to get engaged with the fictitious animals; I don't find the carnivores scary but you bet i'd run if there was a Great White.

Well you can see your thirst counter ticking down while you are reading a PDA or just looking through what stuff you can build. I think it is a bit too aggressive. I must have killed every bladder fish within a 100 meters of the crash site before I discovered and implemented a more sustainable source from plants. Not using any kind of guide or wiki, so I may not have happened upon the best way (yet). The bottles I get from fish only give back 20/100, so you need to catch a lot of fish and you need to carry a lot of bottles in your limited pack space when you go exploring.

The animals are scary in this game because they can mess up your stuff that you worked hard to build. Plus they make scary noises and like to bite. The animal aggression seems to ramp up the longer you play. After having my sub eaten with me in it I am very nervous whenever I venture into deep water now.

Game is tons of fun so far. I recommend playing in Survival mode, because a lot of the cool blueprints and things you can discover are related to establishing renewable sources of food and water. Even as someone who isn't normally a fan of survival games, food and water seem pretty critical to the experience here and once you learn a few early tricks you shouldn't be going thirsty or hungry at all. I guess the free play mode would be fine if all you wanted to do was swim around and build a base or something, but I think I would get bored pretty quickly with that mode. At least it's there for people who can't stand worrying about food or water.

I am fairly deep into the game and never found water to be an issue. At the beginning it was slightly annoying with the constant need to collect bladder fish but after a few hours, I started to transition from filtered water to distilled water, a recipe you can craft from the start of the game, which fills more meter and is way less annoying to craft because no fish are needed . At that point it just became a matter of every time I went exploring I needed to be on the look out for the appropriate resources. Now I don't even think about water because I have all the drinking water anyone could possibly need.

@picky_bugger Are referring to the sand sharks and stalkers? There are scarier creatures than that. For example, there is the aforementioned monster that can eat you and your submarine.

@cupofdoom: I have seen pictures of that creature, still think I'd be more engaged with real world creatures. There are so many prehistoric creatures that could have been used, it's an odd criticism I know but the setting and the biology all seems a bit gamey. If it was more like abzu in setting it would be really fantastic, I do still really like it though.

I just munch on marblemelon fruit that I'm growing in my main base - rich in water content and food content. Three is plenty for a small trip. I'm going to build similar bases equidistant from each other if possible, in each biome, so I always have a close source. It'll trivialize the hunger/thirst mechanic entirely, but keep my mind in survival mode.

This is the best game in its genre in my opinion. Doesn't lean too far into randomization; has a narrative pull that nudges you towards fun stuff and intrigue; no mandatory permadeath; not-so-strict hunger/thirst meters; and so many doodads to build that are fun to use and do nothing but aid in your experience. The materials required for each thing are mercifully simple, also. Lithium has been tricky to find for me, but other than that, I enjoy collecting them. That's not random either, you get a feel for where they can be found. It's a truly as-intended designed open-world, with all the trappings of a survival game toned down to up the fun-factor. It's a survival game that cares about your mental health and wants you to explore every inch of it without being punished harshly for dropping the ball.

This and Minecraft both tapped into the perfect vein. That perfect mixture of pain, pleasure, and adventure. Love it!

I went to buy this last night an completely forgot I got it as part of a Humble Bundle. Nioce...

@picky_bugger: I guess i see it differently in that Subnautica has an almost horror game element to the exploration because, if you go in mostly spoiler free, you don't know what could be lurking in the depths. It adds a lot tension to the game that would be lost if the game was set on Earth. That said, if someone made Subnautica but set it on a water-world version of Earth with all of prehistory's most terrifying sea creatures, I would totally play that too.

@cupofdoom: I can definitely understand that. I guess I need to find Sci-fi / fictitious creatures to be well designed or interesting to find them scary. So far not much from Subnautica has done that. I'd much rather be swimming around whales than those weird mushroom tentacle things and I'd be much more nervous about coming across a Megalodon rather than the daft looking monsters.

After finding the Water Filtration blueprint all my water problems are over. Right after finding that I finally figured out where/how to get a Coral Tube Sample. Knowing that from the beginning would have made my life a lot easier! Next playthrough should be glorious. :)

So I feel I am pretty deep into the game, the last radio messages were about pod 7, I think. Which I found. I may have visited 25-30 wrecks by now and I still have only 2/3 of the Modification Station. Looks like some great tech gated behind that. I wonder how early other people got the MS, if I am just unlucky? I found the first piece of it very early on.

Steam says I have been playing for 21 hours. But consider I spent quite a bit of time flailing about and sucking on bladder fish. I am just exploring around randomly and building up a really cool base now. Not sure when the story will move forward or what I have to do for that.

@memu: I got the mod station around the 17 hour mark -- when you find the two Degasi habitats that the three survivors talk about, you should find the pieces of one between them. I'm not sure if that is randomized, but I would guess no. They'll pop up on your HUD at some point. Not sure if you have to listen to the relevant audio logs to trigger them.

I've been desperately looking for another piece of a laser cutter to unlock that blueprint, but nothing so far. So many wrecks to cut open!

I was just cruising around in my seamoth when I found an area with literally 15 rubies within two meters of each other. I squealed like a greedy treasure hunter, and it was such a dangerous place. I was rooting around in the pitch dark with lots of leviathans close to me ( I saw three) but those shiny jewels... I got them all.

I can't stop playing this game. I got it a while ago and dismissed it as just another survival/crafting game. Back then, I don't think the radio ever did anything and there was no story or motivation to progress, other than scanning fish and building a cool sub. The bits of narrative they added since then are great. I am fully into this mysterious alien world now and want to know its secrets. I would probably never go down past 500m if distress beacons didn't guide me down there. I just got to the degasi habitat at 500m last night and it was pretty terrifying. I REALLY wish this game let you make a gun but I understand and respect the dev's decision to not include much weaponry.

Someone help me out though. I still am missing the engine for the Cyclops and I feel like I should've been able to craft one by now. I'm even finding some parts for the diving suit which from what I understand, is some end game stuff. Did I miss something? I guess my seamoth can go down to 900m so I don't NEED the cyclops but I'm getting impatient for a new submarine. I definitely wish the game had more vehicles.

I'm convinced the laser cutter is the key to getting at/completing some rarer blueprints, and the Aurora needs one to be explored properly (my A.I. told me). The bigger wrecks also have doors that need cutting.

The 900m upgrade is all I will need for a while, but I did hear the Cyclops is kind of useless on a few forums. It's very weak against leviathan attacks, more than is worth the trouble. I wanna give it a shot too, though. If I find a place with the engine I will share the coordinates here.

I got the laser cutter pretty early on. There was a wreck pretty close to the crash site with many pieces. I finally got the last piece of the Modification Station. It was inside a very tricky to navigate wreck right by the deep hole with pink glowing mushrooms. I ran out of air inside the wreck but not before I got the blueprint.

I found all of the Cyclops parts along the back and bottom side of the Aurora that is farthest from the crash site (the right side facing forward). But I still haven't found the main body part. That was also the place I got eaten so I haven't been back to look for it. I am working up courage to go back and looks some more.

Is the Prawn Suit even useful without the Cyclops to move it around?

As for weapons, I haven't even tried a torpedo yet. And I have plans for some kind of "Stasis Gun". Not sure if that is a weapon or a tool.

I think the main use for the laser cutter is to get into locked rooms with modification station upgrades, which are worth getting, and new furniture! I thought the laser cutter would eventually also let me mine the mineral deposits but I think the Prawn suit might be needed for that instead.

I have the cyclops body but I can't remember where I got it. I'm 70% sure it was near one of the life pods. The torpedoes are neat but neither of them are lethal, they just buy you time to get away. Stasis gun also just freezes things for a bit. Torpedoes travel kinda slow so I imagine it would be hard to hit something far away. I just got them so I haven't tried them against anything actually dangerous.

I finally ran out of life pods to investigate so I guess I finally have to check out the aurora. A reaper catches me every time I wander around there. At least I have torpedoes now.

Also, if y'all haven't been using the scanner room, you NEED to. Its incredibly useful for finding anything including databoxes and upgrades. Mine constantly reminds me there's a giant scary reaper a mere 100m away from my base at all times! Cool? Another useful tip: scanner room upgrades stack.

I ended up playing a lot of this game and finishing it after hearing it was finally out of Early Access. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it...

I spent about 3 and a half hours playing on the survival mode, before I restarted on "Freedom" which is just health and oxygen and had a much better time with the whole thing. I enjoy survival games in general, but I don't feel like the food and water elements in this game add much to it. Oxygen provides most of the real tension, and catching fish and getting water mostly amounts to boring busywork.

The game has some major pacing and direction issues, and I didn't know the deepest caves under the ocean even existed until I looked up what I was supposed to be doing on the wiki. The random distribution of parts/blueprints meant that I was frequently unlocking things in nonsensical orders once they were completely useless and some of the biggest constructions don't have much use. With the bulk of my time playing the game spent scouring the ocean floor for wrecks just so I could hopefully find the important blueprints I needed.

The predators also very quickly stopped being scary once I realised that they usually flee after a single hit from any weapon. Even the reaper leviathans never gave me much trouble, and I never built a torpedo, or any of the rifles. Overall I died three times, once running out of air because I didn't realise you don't refill your tank instantly when you hit the surface, once getting out of my PRAWN and swimming into acid-brine out of curiosity, and once getting pulled out of my PRAWN by a warper and then dying from being too close to a lava vent.

Overall it looks really nice, and the story is mostly pretty well told, aside from the awful anti-climactic final fetch quest.

My scanner excites me, but I haven't utilized it fully yet. I found a bunch of lithium with it and four wrecks I'd already discovered, so I think my next mission is to create a tonne of beacons, and use them to mark more areas of note/as visual references that I've explored certain wrecks and habitats fully. I guess I need to upgrade the scanner's range ASAP to really get some valuable expeditions underway... I also need to find a good place for my second habitat. The mushroom forest was a candidate, but the warpers and electric snake things were a bit close. Maybe I'll build among the mushrooms, find a clearing. Hmm.

Yes. I'll do that, complete the laser cutter, then get back on the Aurora and into that damn door finally.

Three things I wish the game had: the ability to sleep, a map, and a way of turning your habitat into a blueprint that lets you re-build it in one go, or at least places the modules before construction.

@brunothethird: If you build a bed you can sleep through the night, so one of your wishes came true

@blommer4: WHAT? -_-

I should've tried. I thought all that shiz was aesthetic only. This changes everything, thank you.

I found four Cyclops engine parts at these coordinates: -107, -184, 835. If it's not randomized for each world, they should be there. I'd be curious if someone checked it out and shared their findings!

Built my second base, I got the laser cutter, the battery charger, and the PRAWN suit (currently looking for an aerogel source to craft it)! Explored the Aurora fully, all that's left is to repair it. I unlocked a blueprint that appears crucial to actually finish the game, also. Exciting times.

Edit: Caught a glimpse of something gargantuan in the depths, about 750 meters down... Chilled my blood. Booked it home immediately.

Still haven't been in the Aurora but I checked behind and I did find my cyclops engine! Woo! I also got ambushed by every reaper in the game on the way there and lost my seamoth with my 900m upgrade. Great. :(

I also noticed there's a lot of time capsules behind the Aurora. Those are fun.

I have come to two conclusions:

1) Torpedoes suck. I only needed them to keep the big predators away and they're not good for that. Now I have to rebuild my seamoth.

2) The Cyclops may be a big slow target but goddamn I love big submarines I can walk around in. I'll make it work. The complexity of the cyclops' interior makes me wonder if they had plans for multiplayer at some point.

This game has a real fucked up way of telling you what the edge of the map is.

@mems1224 I decided to go there in VR and boy was that not fun

It's a gorgeous, survival-themed Metroid Prime-like, and I'm so damn happy for that team for really pulling it off. It's such a good survival/exploration game it honestly makes nearly every other game like it look utterly amateur hour.

Just poppin' in to also praise this game. Haven't played the final release yet but what I played of the early access was superb! Unknown Worlds, the developers, always deliver! I have been following them since the original Natural Selection mod for Half-Life 1. SO GOOOD!

Oh shiiiiiiit, I beat the game. I survived! What a ride. Some of the later areas in the game just left me in sheer awe at multiple intervals, especially when I met the sea emperor. The way you're introduced completely caught me off guard in the most memorable way.

The deeper you go, the more ancient and alien and hostile it gets. I felt so much like an explorer, identifying new species and prodding every corner for secrets, with a real incentive to find the cure and get the hell out of this death planet. I sighed with relief when the credits rolled. Such a Cast Away moment, it was dope.

This game simplified all the survival trappings perfectly to let you get your foot in the door, then ramps up the difficulty very gradually, so you become an efficient survivor without realizing it's happening. Kind of like how Rogue Legacy eased you into it, before you realize it's slowly making you understand and click into the mechanics without smacking you on the knuckles.

I loved it. Great music, thick atmosphere, light but intriguing narrative, compelling crafting that dangles carrots intelligently to make the next important doodad feel attainable but not overly time consuming. 9/10 for me. Some definite jank in there stops me throwing a 10 at it.

I made it yesterday, almost 50 hours in game time. Left some good stuff in a time capsule. Overall it was a great experience. It is my top game for 2018 so far by far. I got stuck, though, twice. Stuck in the sense that I wasn't sure where to go. You really need to read the logs and think about it. And even then it took too long searching for the base under the floating island and the entrance for the alien thermal plant. Plus there was a bug where my SeaMoth got stuck inside a rock and I had to learn to use the console to get it out. The interface glitched up a couple of times and 2 achievements didn't trigger. There is room for improvement. But I am hoping it sold well enough that we get a sequel and even some dlc.

Finally finished after 3 hours looking for the God damn Sea Crown.
Really loved this game, I know it's still early in the year, but this is my current game to beat for GOTY.

PS Left my boy Jerome in a time capsule. He is a peeper fish who kept me company for 70 days, if anyone happens to find him, please take care of him...or eat him, whatever I'm sure he'd understand, he is cool like that.

So I tried to play this with an XBOX 360 controller last night and for some reason only 3 of the 4 axis for the analog sticks work. I can look up/down left and right on one stick but the other stick is only up and down. I thought maybe this was a Steam bug but I rebooted steam several times and got the same issue. I then started up different games on steam and the controller works fine.

So far not enjoying the game. Love the concept but the execution so far hasn't hooked me. Movement is sooooooooooooooo slow and resources so scarce I feel like i'm making no progress at all. Might give it another chance if they update it some more.

This looks amazing in VR. Sometimes you get a bit of pop in but it's not too bad. I've only played for 2 hours so I can't make too much of an assessment just yet. I've never really played survival games and maybe the genre just isn't for me. I could manage through if the story wasn't told so sparsely. I don't know, I'll keep at it for now, if only for the beautiful atmosphere.