Subnautica

This article is about Subnautica. You may be looking for its stand-alone expansion, Below Zero or its in-development sequel, Subnautica 2.

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Subnautica is an open world survival game developed by Unknown Worlds. It was first released in early access for PC on December 16, 2014 and released in full for PC on January 23rd, 2018. Early access for Xbox One was released on May 17th, 2016, with the full release for Xbox One and Playstation 4 releasing on December 6th, 2018. Subsequent console versions for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S were released on May 14, 2021 to coincide with the release of Subnautica: Below Zero.

Players take on the role of Ryley Robinson, the sole survivor of the Aurora's crash-landing on the uncharted, oceanic Planet 4546B. Players will explore the dangerous waters of 4546B by scuba diving and traveling in futuristic submersibles.

Story Description

"Subnautica is an underwater adventure game set on an alien ocean planet. A massive, open world full of wonder and peril awaits you!

Dive Into a Vast Underwater World

You have crash-landed on an alien ocean world, and the only way to go is down. Subnautica's oceans range from sun drenched shallow coral reefs to treacherous deep-sea trenches, lava fields, and bio-luminescent underwater rivers. Manage your oxygen supply as you explore kelp forests, plateaus, reefs, and winding cave systems. The water teems with life: Some of it helpful, much of it harmful.

Scavenge, Craft, and Survive

After crash landing in your Life Pod, the clock is ticking to find water, food, and to develop the equipment you need to explore. Collect resources from the ocean around you. Craft diving gear, lights, habitat modules, and submersibles. Venture deeper and further form to find rarer resources, allowing you to craft more advanced items.

Construct Underwater Habitats

Build bases on the sea floor. Choose layouts and components, and manage hull-integrity as depth and pressure increase. Use your base to store resources, park vehicles, and replenish oxygen supplies as you explore the vast ocean.

Unravel the Mystery

What happened to this planet? Signs abound that something is not right. What caused you to crash? What is infecting the sea life? Who built the mysterious structures scattered around the ocean? Can you find a way to make it off the planet alive?

Disrupt the Food Chain

The ocean teems with life: Use the ecosystem to help you. Lure and distract a threatening creature with a fresh fish, or simply swim as fast as you can to avoid gnashing jaws of roaming predators.

Handle the Pressure

Build a Pressure Re-Active Waterproof Nanosuit, or PRAWN Suit, and explore extreme depth and heat. Modify the suit with mining drills, torpedo launchers, propulsion cannons, grappling hooks and more.

Fear the Night

As the sun goes down, the predators come out. The ocean is unforgiving of those caught unprepared in the darkness. Areas that are safe to explore during the day become treacherous at night, but also reveal a beauty that those who hide from the darkness will never see.

Dive Below the Ocean Floor

Cave systems wind below the sea bed, from dark claustrophobic passages to caverns lit by bio-luminescent life and burning-hot lava flows. Explore the world below the ocean floor, but watch your oxygen levels, and take care to avoid the threats lurking in the darkness.

About the Development Team

Subnautica is being created by Unknown Worlds, a small studio founded by Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire that traces its roots back to the 2003 Half-Life mod Natural Selection. The team is scattered around the globe, from the United States to the United Kingdom, France, the Czech Republic, Russia, Thailand, Australia, and many more places. There is a central office in San Francisco, California that serves as home base for the whole team.

Warning

This game contains flashing lights that may make it unsuitable for people with photosensitive epilepsy or other photosensitive conditions. Player discretion is advised."

Gallery

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|-| Trailers=

• Subnautica Dangerous Creatures Update
• Subnautica Aurora Interior Expansion
• Subnautica PRAWN Update
• Subnautica Power Nap Update
• Subnautica Machinery Update
• Subnautica Gameplay - Early Access
• Subnautica Crash Sequence
• Subnautica Farming Update
• Subnautica Official Launch Trailer

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Soundtrack

• Main article: Subnautica OST

Merchandise

Official Subnautica merchandise can be purchased at Unknown World Entertainment's Redbubble store.

Subnautica 2.0

Subnautica was originally released on PC, Mac, PS4 and Xbox One in 2018. Versions for the Nintendo Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S were released in May 2021 alongside the release of Subnautica: Below Zero.

In October 2021, Unknown Worlds announced that it was working on technical improvements to the code base of the Subnautica series, such as retooling the save system, and merging the code base of the games across all available platforms to unified versions of Unity. Subnautica would be updated with architecture, performance improvements, and bug fixes from Below Zero. Save bugs on PS5 were to be addressed, as is excessive screen tearing on the PS5 version of Subnautica.

There were also plans to update Subnautica over time with a number of quality-of-life features/accessibility improvements that made sense for the game from the ones that were developed and implemented for Below Zero.

On June 15, 2022, Unknown Worlds posted a blog update on how work was progressing.

On Dec. 13, 2022, Unknown Worlds released the 2.0 version of the game, entitled the "Living Large Update".

Reception

On Metacritic, Subnautica received "generally favorable" reviews getting a metascore of 87/100 on PC, 80/100 on PS4, and 81/100 on Xbox One.

Ian Birnbaum of PC Gamer described Subnautica as an "underwater Minecraft", remarking that "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. As the toolbox gets deeper and the shape of the end-game gets set, Subnautica will be a unique example of the ways survival can be tense, rewarding, and fun." Marsh Davies of Rock, Paper, Shotgun praised the rewarding nature of exploring the world of Subnautica, but criticized the "arbitrariness" and lack of intuition in some of the in-game recipes.

Subnautica is heavily praised by many Youtubers for being very original.

T.J Hafer from IGN gave the game a 9.1/10. Commenting that Subnautica was one of the few games he would love to wipe from his past and start over fresh. Claiming the game to be "legitimately terrifying", similar to when playing horror games such as Amnesia or Outlast. Praising the uniqueness of the biomes, as their visual identities and soundtracks helped solidify their uniqueness. He also gave praise to the audio, claiming it helped him in identifying which biome he was in and what creature he was dealing with.

Hafer heavily gave praise to the Story, explaining that Subnautica does a very good job at telling a compelling story, noting the complexity and nuance of a great sci-fi film. He also complimented the well-written journal entries and audio logs with uncommonly high-quality voice acting. T.J commended the fact that the story was not a forced element, and players could explore and progress at their own pace.

Hafer criticized that sometimes the progression dragged at spots. He furthermore gave notice to when his immersion was disrupted by pop-in and jarring levels of detail changes. claiming he would have loved more options to help smooth it out.

Overall, T.J came to the verdict that Subnautica is a template for what open-world survival games should strive to be, as the game was fantastical, fresh, and frightening. [1]

System Requirements

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Minimum

OS	Windows Vista SP2 or newer, 64-bit
Processor	Intel Haswell 2 cores / 4 threads @ 2.5GHz or equivalent
Memory	4 GB RAM
Graphics	Intel HD 4600 or equivalent - This includes most GPUs scoring greater than 950pts in the 3DMark Fire Strike benchmark
DirectX	Version 11
Storage	20 GB available space

Recommended

OS	Windows Vista SP2 or newer, 64-bit
Processor	Intel Haswell 4 cores / 4 threads @ 3.2GHz or equivalent
Memory	8 GB RAM
Graphics	Nvidia GTX 550 ti or equivalent, 2GB VRAM
DirectX	Version 11
Storage	20 GB available space

|-| Mac OS X=

Minimum

OS	OS X 10.9 Mavericks
Processor	Intel Haswell 2 cores / 4 threads @ 2.5GHz or equivalent
Memory	4 GB RAM
Graphics	Intel HD 4600 or equivalent
Storage	20 GB available space

Recommended

OS	OS X 10.9 Mavericks
Processor	Intel Haswell 4 cores / 4 threads @ 3.2GHz or equivalent
Memory	8 GB RAM
Graphics	Nvidia GTX 550 Ti or equivalent, 2GB VRAM
Storage	20 GB available space

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External Links

• Subnautica on Steam
• Subnautica on Epic Store
• Subnautica on Nintendo Switch
• Subnautica on PS4 & 5
• Subnautica on Xbox One & Series X|S

Trivia

• Subnautica shares the same universe as the Natural Selection series.
  • This is further supported, as the company Alterra is a manufacturer of various supplies in all games by Unknown Worlds.
• Subnautica is titled “Descend” in early prototypes of the game.
• Player can unlock the Earliest Access 2014 Version and Early Access 2014 Version in "Check code" by entering code "subnauticaearlyaccess" in Steam Properties.
• The original PAX 2014 version can be accessed by putting pax2014version in "Check code".

References

• Subnautica on Wikipedia