You may not know this, but I like horror games. Five Nights at Freddy's, Little Nightmares and Bendy & The Ink Machine were my first real exposure to the horror genre, and I've enjoyed the thrill of these kinds of games ever since. But you want to know the scariest game I have ever played? The one that gives me overwhelming dread and terror every time I play through it? That game is called Subnautica. Which is funny, because that isn't even a real horror game. At least, not in the conventional sense. So let's talk about it!
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| image from Wikipedia.org and Giant Bomb |
Developed and published by Unknown Worlds Entertainment, Subnautica is a charming survival adventure game released back in 2018. The game sold 5.3 million copies and is often considered a must play for survival game fans. Basically, think Minecraft or Terraria but underwater and with a smoother art style. Anyway, you play as a space traveler named Ryley Robinson. Ryley was a crewman of The Aurora, an enormous Star Trek style space cruiser that has sadly crash landed on an alien planet. This planet, given the rather clerical name of 4546-B, has a surface comprised of 90% water. In other words, almost the entire planet is one big ocean. You are then dumped into Riley's shoes and told to find a way to escape, while also looking for any survivors of the crash. Your only companion for most of the game is the PDA. The PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) is an AI Program designed to keep you alive in this foreign, presumably hostile environment for as long as possible. It also doubles as the in-game tutorial, teaching you basics of exploration, crafting, and building management. The story is admittedly a simple tale of one man trying his best to survive an alien environment, but the fact that this game even has a story at all is a big deal. Most survival games don't even have a story, or named characters, or an explicitly stated goal to work towards. Normally they just dump you in a metaphorical sandbox and tell you that you need to "make your own fun!" For having a story, and a competently written one at that, Subnautica already gets points for originality.
The bulk of your time is spent swimming around in an alien ocean, collecting resources and finding new technology blue prints to build with. Most creatures in the game are not truly hostile to you, though some like the Stalker and Crash Fish will attack if you provoke them first. They are, after all, just regular animals, at least by this planet's standards. The only exception to this rule are the Leviathans, but they deserve their own section of the review. When you first start the game, you have nothing to your name except for some protein bars and a bottle of drinking water. Everything you want, you have to make yourself. Want to swim faster? You got to make yourself a pair of fins to boost your swim speed. Want to stay underwater for longer? You got to build an oxygen tank so you don't drown. Want a place to store your belongings and admire the oceanic views in piece? You need to build a habitat. While some items can be crafted as soon as the game starts (assuming you have enough resources) most items require you to find the associated blue print for that item beforehand. Blue prints can be found either in abandoned bases left by the other survivors or by scanning debris from the Aurora with the scanner tool.
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| Image from trueachievements.com |
All of these things cost resources, which you collect simply while exploring the ocean. And some resources can be turned into other resources. For example, kelp can be made into fibers, and copper ore can be made into either batteries or wires. And unlike every other survival game in existence, Subnautica does NOT have procedural world generation. What this means is that instead of letting an automatic generator create the world from a randomly chosen number, the world has been handcrafted by the developers themselves. And honestly, the ocean is wonderfully designed. Every biome, every bit of coral and every branch of kelp was placed deliberately for the best possible experience. You always start in the Safe Shallows biome, which true to its name, is the safest and shallowest area in the game. It's the only place in the game where you can reliably build above sea level, and the wildlife here is mostly docile.
But I know what you are thinking. "Spencer, this doesn't sound that scary! This game sounds pretty chill, actually!" That's because of how Subnautica is balanced. You need to leave the Safe Shallows eventually, either because you ran out of resources to work with or because you want to progress the story. And the further away from the Safe Shallows you go, the more danger you will find. The animals get more territorial and aggressive. The water pressure makes swimming without specialized submarines impractical. Even the sunlight itself darkens to pitch black if you dive deep enough. While the Safe Shallows are a good safety net, it is impossible to beat the game without taking that plunge into the dark, unknown abyss. And the biomes get progressively creepier as you descend.
And sooner or later, you will face a Leviathan. Leviathans are the game's main mascot monster. There are a few variations of these enormous life forms, some being more peaceful than others. The Reef Back Leviathan is a giant whale-like creature that is completely docile, even letting you mine ores off its back. The Ghost Leviathan is a blue serpent that only appears if you somehow go outside the ocean's borders, and it attempts to scare you back in. And then there's the Reaper Leviathan. The Reaper is an apex predator that will hunt you down to the ends of the ocean if it catches your scent. It can destroy entire submarines with just one or two attacks, patrols several areas that are critical for story progression, and announces its presence with an unsettling roar. The threat of Reaper Leviathans is so great that whenever I head to any area they frequent, I try to speed-run my way past them, because the less time you deal with Reapers, the better.
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| Image from ausgamers.com |
But the Reapers by themselves aren't the main reason I consider this game to be scary. They are the most dangerous fish in the entire game, that much is true. But the reason Subnautica is scary is because of the ocean itself. It grows darker and darker as you descend, it hides its treasures in caves and tunnels hundreds of miles below the surface. You have no clue what is down there, and you have no idea what might be looking back at you. So imagine, going so deep underwater that you can't see the sunlight anymore. You have no idea what time of day it is. You go into a cramped underwater cave. You get mixed up in the cave system, and can't find your way out. Your equipment is low on battery charge. You start to panic as your oxygen depletes. You know if you don't get out now, you will drown. You frantically kick around, trying to find an exit point. You find a hole in the ceiling. Hope fills your heart as breathable air leaves your lungs. "I can make it!" you think. You swim as fast as you can, and as you make it out of the cave, you hear it. A blood curdling roar in the distance. Where is it coming from? You can't tell. Your only concern is getting some air in your lungs. As you kick and struggle against the watery abyss, you realize as your oxygen runs out completely and the Reaper approaches from the pitch-black abyss... You never stood a chance. Even if you made it back to the surface, you couldn't outrun the Reaper. Or vice versa.
That is why Subnautica is scary. It is a game that perfectly captures that feeling of terror and desperation that comes with the danger of underseas exploration. It is a known fact that humanity has explored more of outer space than our own oceans. You know why? Because the deep blue sea is an environment completely alien to the human experience. We as a species do not belong that deep underwater, either because the water pressure would destroy us, or we would encounter a sea creature that exists far beyond human comprehension. Something within us knows that fact deep down, even if we would never admit it. And Subnautica manages to recreate these feelings using a fictional, alien ocean and fictional alien fish. In that regard, Unknown Worlds has my respect.
This isn't to say that Subnautica is always scary all the time. This is just a specific scenario after all, and the majority of a playthrough is spent just taking in the wonder and majesty of this strange, but beautiful underwater world. In fact, the game has a surprising amount of humor, mostly delivered through the PDA and collectible logs you can read for lore. I think my favorite joke is that the PDA reminds you that any resources you collect are legally the property of the Alterra Corporation (the company Ryley works for), and that anything he crafts he owes back to the company. There's also another joke about how one of the survivors managed to kill themselves accidentally by waving a distress flare around an exposed gasoline leak, thus triggering a deadly explosion. That sounds horrible, but the context makes it clear this was more of a moment of avoidable stupidity than anything truly tragic.
On the subject of difficulty, Subnautica offers three main difficulty options. Freedom Mode is the easiest, Survival Mode is moderate, and Hardcore Mode is as hard as it sounds. In Freedom Mode, the hunger and water gauges are disabled, meaning you no longer have to worry about collecting food or drinking water to survive. In Survival Mode, you do have to worry about hunger and thirst, and you will drop a random assortment of items upon death. Hardcore Mode is exactly the same as Survival Mode, but with a caveat. If you die in Hardcore Mode, your save file is automatically deleted, forcing you to restart the entire game from Day One. There's also a variant of Freedom Mode called Creative Mode. Creative Mode turns you completely invincible, and free to build whatever you want with a infinite supply of resources. In other words, it's exactly like Minecraft's Creative Mode. The difficulty is sadly locked into the save file, which means if you want to adjust the difficulty you do need to play the game again from scratch. I personally played through the game on Survival Mode, since the sales pitch is "survive in an alien ocean" and I wanted the full survival experience. But I'm also not good enough at the game to beat it in one go, so Hardcore Mode is a pass for me.
There's also base building. That's what the habitats are for. They allow you to store all of your belongings, and can be outfitted with specialized rooms for additional utility. Say you need to find a specific resource for your next project. Scanner rooms (which are like giant versions of the scanner tool) can highlight that specific resource within a 50 meter radius so you can find it more easily. If you need a reliable source of food, indoor planter boxes let you grow edible plants as long as you have enough room for them. If you have a submarine with a low battery charge, The Moonpool can automatically recharge your sub as long as as the habitat has power. Speaking of power, there are two main things to keep in mind when building your habitat. The first is power, and the second is structural integrity. Let's talk power first. You need electricity to keep things running. But where does one get electricity? There are a lot of ways, though their effiency is dependent on the location you built the habitat in. Solar panels generate power from sunlight, obviously. But if your habitat is so deep underwater that you can't even see the sun, solar panels stop working entirely. Thermal Plants generate power as long as you build near a large source of heat, such as a geyser or undersea volcano. In colder regions they are pretty much useless, but in warmer waters they surpass all other options. Bio Reactors convert dead fish and kelp into power and can function just fine in any location, but Bio Reactors can burn through your surplus supplies if you're not careful. Nuclear Reactors are far stronger than the other three options combined and works just about anywhere. The problem is that Nuclear Reactors produce nuclear waste, which is both useless and potentially dangerous. Use whichever form of power is best for the kind of habitat you want to build.
Now let's talk structural integrity, the second main thing you need to worry about for base building. Basically, every time you add an additional room to a habitat, the structural integrity will lower. If it reaches below a certain threshold, your habitat will break apart and start flooding. This is bad, for obvious reasons. While you can repair any damage done to your habitat with the appropriate tool, it is better to prevent this from happening altogether. You can do this by raising a habitat's structural integrity with foundations, reinforced walls, and bulkhead doors. All of these solutions are fairly expensive in terms of resources. So it is generally better to build small to medium sized habitats with reinforcements here and there than to try and make a massive mega base. That said, if you are dead set on making one big mega-base with multiple floors and dozens of rooms, you can do that as long as you use enough reinforcements to keep it from collapsing. Habitat building requires you to have enough planning and foresight to both keep the base powered as well as making it structurally sound, while being flexible enough to make something that looks aesthetically pleasing. It's a simple, but engaging base building system.
You know how I said that Subnautica is one of the few survival games to have a story? Throughout the game, you find audio logs from the other survivors of the crash. And even some logs from the crew of an entirely different spaceship that crashed on this same planet several years before you did. Through these logs you learn that the planet is under quarantine. There is a water-bound bacteria that infects all living matter with a deadly virus. This virus wiped out the intelligent life forms on 4546-B, leaving only the fish who developed a natural resistance to it. And this was why the Aurora crashed; it was shot down by an automated anti-air cannon to prevent the virus from spreading to the rest of the galaxy. Your new goal from now on is to find a way to cure the virus and disable the quarantine system, because even if you manage to build a one-man spaceship to get back to human civilization, you will just be shot down again if you don't cure the virus before launching. One thing I really like about this storyline is how you learn you were infected by the virus. At the beginning of the game you are given the option to scan yourself with the scanner tool. The first time you do this, Ryley's vitals come back normal. But after a few days, if you choose to scan yourself again, you'll hear an alert about a bacterial infection in Ryley's body. Let a few more days pass, and the next time you look at your bare hands, and you might see grotesque tumors forming on your skin. There's no fancy cutscene for this reveal. You could easily miss these details if you aren't looking for them. But I appreciate when devs try to tell story through game mechanics instead of traditional cinematics. Of course, this game pulls a Batman: Arkham City when it comes to the idea of the protagonist being infected with a virus. No matter how long you take to beat the game, the virus will never kill you because the rate at which it spreads in Ryley's body is tied directly to story advancement. Ryley will always survive "just" long enough to cure himself, even if the virus has been eating at him for in-game months or years. This might be immersion breaking, but I view as a quality of life thing. After all, it would really suck if your Hardcore run was stopped because you took too long to find the cure.
In terms of presentation, Subnautica is definitely a good looking game. It has a clean, almost cartoony aesthetic. Most of the technology in this setting is smooth and pristine, when it's not being ravaged by wildlife. The creature designs are also excellent. Even though they are fictional alien fish, most of the animals here have enough biological consistency that they could believably exist in real life. They move like believable animals and they act like believable animals. Like, I could totally see National Geographic doing a nature documentary on these creatures. And the biomes are all distinct from each other, using wildly varied colors and lightings to make each one stand out. And because of that, you can reliably guess where in the world you are just by the colors. Just to give a few examples, the Safe Shallows is a coral reef so close to the surface that parts of it jut out above the water, and it uses a lot of blues and greens to look safe and inviting. The Jelly Shroom Cave is an unground cave system filled with bioluminescent mushrooms, and it uses pinks and purples to convey a sense of wonder and mystery. And The Crash Zone is a dead, barren wasteland consisting entirely of sickly yellows and browns. Every other biome follows this pattern of being tied to one or two distinct colors that immediately showcases the "vibe" of the biome in question.
There are only two bad things I have to say is that this game, one of which is a problem that almost every survival game experiences; if you move too quickly through the world, the game starts having a hard time loading in terrain and associated textures in time with your movement. Basically, if you move too fast, the sea floor might disappear for a brief moment until the game can load it back in. And with the sole exception of Terraria, every survival game I have ever played has a problem similar to this. Heck, even Minecraft, a game that was hailed as one of the best survival games ever made, has this problem. I played the game on PS4, and I do not know if this a console problem or a problem with the game itself. But this is not really a deal-breaker, because again, every survival game has this issue. It just breaks immersion a little if it happens to you. The second main issue with Subnautica is that the controls for walking on dry land are a little bit clunky and awkward. Which also isn't a deal breaker because you spend so much of your time underwater, and it is clear that the devs prioritized getting the aquatic movement right over the land movement.
The game's sound design is impeccable. Its music, composed by Simon Chylinski, is ethereal and mysterious. The music invites you deeper into the ocean while simultaneously making you feel trapped by it. The simplest way to describe Subnautica music is that it is the soundtrack equivalent of a siren's song. Fitting for a game about undersea exploration. The only exception to this rule is Abandon Ship!, a song in the OST that only plays when your submarine is critically damaged. This song can best be described as an intensely urgent techno rave. It's not bad, in fact it's one of the best songs in the whole OST. But again, it only plays when your sub is critically damaged. And it blows my mind that the best song is played during a situation the player would rather avoid. On an unrelated note, the sound effects are also great. The Reaper's roar is intimidating, the soft hum of the submarine's engines give a sense of power, and the voice acting is actually really good. Which, again, is surprising for a survival game, since these games typically don't have voice acting at all. The PDA speaks in a comically monotone voice that feels accidentally sarcastic. The Sea Emperor (who holds the cure for the virus) sounds equal parts majestic and regal, but also ancient and tired. Which fits for a creature that predates the virus that killed all the land-dwellers in the first place. And the audio logs you can collect do a good job showcasing the stress and despair the other survivors felt in their final moments.
Overall, Subnautica is a beloved icon of survival games for a reason. It manages to be just as, possibly even more scary than actual horror games while being a fun underwater exploration experience. I consider this game, Minecraft and Terraria to be the "Holy Trinity" of survival games, for these three games set the standard for which all other survival games should be judged against. So if you like Minecraft or Terraria, you will probably like Subnautica. Even if you haven't played a survival game before, Subnautica is a great place to start. For these reasons, I give Subnautica a perfect rank of Five Stars out of Five.
Subnautica is available on PS4, PS5, PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X. Subnautica is the property of Unknown Worlds Entertainment and their parent company, Krafton. Please support the official release.
