I was wondering which games might make the “Things To Play Over The Christmas Break” list this year when the Subnautica [official site] Precursor update got released. I went through a really big Subnautica love affair earlier in the year, but decided to step away for a few patches as the game is still in early access and I didn’t want to lose the magic by mining out each update in turn. Then Precursor arrived and is tempting me back not only with alien tech and more in the way of narrative but NEW CAVES! … [visit site to read more]

If Pip were around, she’d focus on how the latest Subnautica [official site] update added a lovely big undersea tree and new glowing Ghost Rays to swim around it. She’s a peaceful one, our Pip, probably hoping to build another wonderful seabase near that tree. However, Pip is at EGX today, so Pip can’t write this. Instead, you get me telling you about the awful new hostile sealife in the aquatic explore-o-build-a-surviver’s ‘Dangerous Creatures’ update. How do you fancy meeting a humanoid cuttlefish with knives for hands? Or what appears to be an aquatic Tyranid Hive Tyrant?

… [visit site to read more]

I go away for two days and PRAWNS! arrive in Subnautica [official site]. I’m not actually talking crustaceans here, but a special suit with that acronym which arrived in the PRAWN update (Pressure Re-Active Waterproof Nano Suit). It has a claw arm and you can add a whole bunch more useful nonsense as well. This is my kind of augmentation tech. Deus Ex: Fishkind Explored.

… [visit site to read more]

A fair few people said they wanted a little tour of my Subnautica [official site] Volcano Base so I’ve made a quick video to show it off – especially the garden which is packed with bioluminescent plantlife!

… [visit site to read more]

This post was originally published as part of the RPS Supporter program>

I’m playing a lot of Subnautica [official site] at the moment, spending hours beneath the waves, doing the floaty equivalent of pottering and gardening.

I think the reason I’m having so much fun, despite being historically infuriated by survival games, is that one mode allows you to ditch the hunger and thirst constraints. I’m still surviving in that I worry about my oxygen and my health and I like how that guides and paces my exploration. There are constraints to navigate but not the constant irritant of hunger and thirst as it tends to manifest in this tranch of gaming.

… [visit site to read more]

Over the last three days I seem to have racked up 18 hours in Subnautica [official site] and several more than 2,000 screenshots. I’m playing in Freedom mode so I can ignore food and drink requirements and spend a lot of my time building little bases to act as viewing platforms for kelp forests. BUT! I also discovered the freecam command in debug mode so here is a whole gallery of undersea loveliness to try to communicate why I’m spending so much time under the sea!

… [visit site to read more]

The most important things in the world, we all know, are swimming in the great outdoors, admiring flora and fauna, and caring for plants. Subnautica [official site] already had most of those covered as it dunked players onto an ocean-covered alien world to explore, build bases, and survive, and now it’s expanded flora-fancying too. Along the journey through Early Access, the Farming Update has added horticulture for scientific, nutritional, and decorative purposes in growbeds and pots. Subnautica’s plants are gorgeous, so I’ll be delighted to plant my own alien garden.

… [visit site to read more]

I’ve had Subnautica [official site] for a while now, but only got around to installing it this weekend. As it continues to ascend out of Steam Early Access, the undersea explore ‘em up has spat out a big update with a few things that made me want to dive in. For starters, undersea bases can now have all the cool glass corridors and viewing domes that really set off a seahome look. On top of that, it’s got an eerie new reef biome hundreds of metres down, and I do dig unearthly dark waters.

Best of all: you can put a little fish tank in your base to keep pet fish.

… [visit site to read more]

Explore-o-survive ‘em up Subnautica [official site] might not have yet left Early Access, but it has now entered my cool books. Docking ships in video games is pretty great in general, a small moment hinting at the grand scale of a world, and even better is docking inside a larger vessel you can also control. Subnautica has that now. An update yesterday added a big new multi-level submarine you can dock smaller subs with and clamber around inside of.

… [visit site to read more]

Each week Marsh Davies dips a toe into the unknown waters of Early Access and returns with any stories he can find and/or decompression sickness. This week he slaps on a snorkel and dives into alien aquatic survival game Subnautica. Snorkel is a great word. Snork snork!>

2014 was the year of the indie survival game. 2015 looks very much like it might be the year of the indie survival game as well. 2016 is the year that the secret cabal of indie survival game developers finally steps from the shadows to unleash its terrible global coup. Within minutes of the first shot, indie game genres fall, devoured by the unstoppable tide of survival mechanics. Early Access devs planning coherent end-games are forced to fight each other to the death in a bleak, under-resourced wilderness with guns improvised from baked-bean tins. In sick mimicry of the cabal s evil creed, games can now only conclude with the player s own expiration from starvation or hypothermia. To play is to die! To play is to die! the regime s fanatical adherents shriek from loudhailers as the speedrunners, twin-stick shootists and visual-novelists are forced into the re-education pens. No one misses the Dota players. It s only the devastating invasion of the Sokobeasts, a hyperintelligent alien race fixated on abstruse block-pushing puzzles, that forces the regime to see its terrible error. Only then does it regret marooning Jon Blow and Stephen Lavelle on a spit of sand in the Pacific with only a snooker cue and a single sausage-roll between them. How the regime had laughed at that. Well, they re not laughing now. Because they re dead.

… [visit site to read more]