![]() With an experienced developer at the helm and a limitless variety of the oceans to play with, it’s going to take a lot for Subnautica to go badly wrong. Players can scroll through and see that the missing inventory icon for the Hoopfish is already fixed, and will be updated in the new build scheduled for January 15. The team is taking the idea of open development seriously, managing its to-do list on a public task board. Unknown Worlds also has plans for more animals, more crafting recipes, deeper biomes (accessible only with deep-diving subs), and more raw materials. I’m hopeful that the devs’ plans for larger submarines will include one with an on-board fabricator to really set you free. You can take your sub miles and miles in any direction, but if you want to cook food ever again, you’re going to have to turn around and drive back to the fabricator. My hope is that an end-game goal-be rescued, find land, build an underwater city and proclaim myself king, etc.-will add direction to the parts of the game that follow immediately after “don’t starve to death.”Īnother limitation of the current build is that you’re effectively tethered to the life pod. Without a clock ticking down to a starvation death, I began having much less fun. The feeling of being an alien interloper, that I am swimming on a world that is not my own, is complete and unlike anything else in the genre.Įventually, though, my well-stocked inventory started sapping the tension from the situation. I’ll spot a giant, slow-moving whale and watch it, circling, trying to suss out if it’s the type to swallow me whole or ignore me completely. ![]() My favorite part is that I never know which animals are dangerous. ![]() There are fish shaped like boomerangs, trout with one giant eye, razor-toothed predators, and blowfish that explode. I found exploration to be a simple joy, but pulling a double-take when I spot a new animal is more rewarding than locating a new type of terrain. The designs and art of the alien sea creatures also deserve some praise. Discrete biomes like mushroom forests, coral reefs, and cave complexes feature local resources and creatures, and they’re all amazing to look at. Once a surplus was safe, that was my cue to start pushing myself, diving deeper, swimming farther from the safety of my lifepod. Surviving can be a struggle in the early days, but a little luck meant I had extra supplies after a half hour. It’s that kind of high-tech creativity that draws me away from Minecraft comparisons and makes me hopeful that Subnautica will bring new ideas to the survival sandbox genre. ![]() Deploy it, go hunting for scrap metal and minerals, then come back to a fresh fish dinner. My favorite gadget is the gravsphere, a plantable trap that captures fish. Flashlights and seascooters and location beacons are all available to help navigate the alien waters. In addition to subs, Subnautica has a few interesting toys to play with. This locked up the game and, because saving and loading isn’t implemented yet, I had to start a new game without that badass sub. On one occasion, I drove straight off the edge of the world because the next cluster failed to load. Terrain has a habit of popping in, especially when I got my souped-up submarine to full speed. Though it is fun already, Subnautica does suffer from some technical problems. Building a self-propelled, armored, deep-sea capable submarine feels so good because I put it together, piece by piece, while swimming in a sea of predators. It’s predictable, sure, but it’s still incredibly satisfying. A battery and some glass become a flashlight, and now I can see what’s going on at night. Carbon and zinc get printed into a basic battery. All of the crafting in Subnautica takes place on a 3D printer inside my floating lifepod base, and the progression of raw materials to finished gear is immediately familiar: Organic matter gets printed into raw carbon.
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