Subnautica, one of the best games set under the sea, has just received a meaty graphics overhaul. The Eye Candy update adds a wave of new graphics options to the Early Access exploration game including bloom, motion blur and depth of field, as well as a 'Filmic Mode' that makes the game look more cinematic.

You might want to fiddle around with the settings when you first dive in because while turning them all on makes the game prettier it also appears, from the screenshots and the trailer above, to make it much more blurry. Now, that makes a bit of sense given the underwater setting but it could prove distracting for some. By playing with the new settings for a bit you should be able to get a new look that you're happy with.

Alongside visual changes, the update adds new voice-overs for abandoned bases and changes the way that some items work. The dive-reel, which is designed to let you retrace your steps, now guides you with balls of light rather than just a cord, and the prawn (a mining machine) will now place items you mine directly into your inventory so you don't have to go scrabbling around for them. Scanner Rooms are now easier to use, too, and won't show you items that you've already picked up.

The update also ships more than 250 bug fixes, including the perennial problem of your surface lifepod inexplicably drifting miles from its starting point, and a visual glitch that made stars shine through the moon.

Click here for the full update notes.

Ever made friends with a fish? Didn't think so. They're generally not amenable to humans, and fair enough too: we eat them. But the good thing about video games is that we can do things otherwise impossible, and thanks to Unknown Worlds, we can now be friends with a "Cuddle Fish" in Subnautica.

"The Cuddle Fish is an adorable companion creature," the update reads. "You may find Cuddle Fish eggs hidden around the world. Those eggs can be incubated in an Alien Containment module, and will eventually hatch into a Cuddle Fish."

So is the fish an alien then? Apparently so, but never mind, because its alien-ness is what imbues it with the ability to follow you everywhere, and to stay in a specific place if you command it to. There aren't really any other benefits to having a Cuddle Fish, but there doesn't need to be any other damned reasons to have a Cuddle Fish.

The video below shows off the Cuddle Fish in action. The update is available now.

Underwater levels in platformers, token diving sections in open-world games—they're usually not great. Swimming controls usually fill us with dread because they don't get the same care or finesse as everything that surrounds them. If we're going to get wet, it's better when games dedicate themselves entirely to representing the experience of being underwater. That's what these games do. 

They're not first-person shooters set at the bottom of the sea or games about fish who are also secret agents. The best underwater games draw inspiration from the life cycles of marine creatures, from what it's like to move through water, from all the dangers and wonders of the ocean. And fish tanks.

Flow

The bit in Spore where you're a single-celled creature working up the food chain was essentially an interactive screensaver, but still one of its best parts. Flow is basically that on its own. You're a microscopic wormy creature gobbling up plankton-like blobs: eat a blue one and travel to an ocean plane one shade lighter, eat a red one and travel to a deeper blue. Creatures one level over are always visible and as you shift, the outline of a ray three times your size might suddenly stop being a blur and become an orange threat ready to eat you.

Then Flow stops being a peaceful interactive screensaver, abruptly becoming a game about the circle of life.

 Insaniquarium

Drop a pellet and one of your guppies either eats it and grows, or doesn't and turns belly-up. At the basic level Insaniquarium is just about owning fish: decorative wet idiots who can't be trusted not to starve. Then you get a snail who helps you collect the coins your fish drop, and a swordfish who helps you fight off alien invaders who teleport inside your tank and will eat your fish unless you laser that alien to death. Insaniquarium takes the inane pleasantness of owning a fish tank and video gamifies the hell out of it.

Silent Hunter 3

As far as submarine simulators go, Silent Hunter 3, especially with mods, is as in-depth as they get. This is the game where people go for the full U-boat fantasy, playing without time compression so missions take literal days and they have to alter their sleeping patterns around it. If you yearn to fiddle with dials that let you adjust speeds down to the individual knot, then Silent Hunter 3 is for you.

Grab some graphics mods to spruce up the 2005-era looks and dive into the simmiest sub sim that's ever simmed.

Sub Commander

If Silent Hunter III is for pretending you're in Das Boot, Sub Commander is The Hunt For Red October. But where the Silent Hunter series are all studio projects, Sub Commander is the creation of one indie designer and closer to FTL. Your nuclear sub will catch fire at some point, spring leaks, suddenly become radioactive. As much as any patrol or encounter, your mission is to keep the sub running, equipping crew and assigning them to emergency repairs and hoping they don't asphyxiate because you'll need them for the next inevitable emergency. May they all see Montana, one day.

Song of the Deep

In Song of the Deep the ocean is a kids' book where hermit crabs have shops in their shells, a baby leviathan wants to be friends, and you pilot a homemade yellow submarine. It's not just for children, though. It's also a 2D metroidvania in the vein of Aquaria—undersea passages are blocked by water currents, or boulders, or a chubby pufferfish, and there are upgrades to defeat each obstacle. This is the sea from fairytales, everything better down where it's wetter, best played by parent and child together to enjoy the pretty backdrops and help each other past the harder puzzles and bosses.

Subnautica

Subnautica is about taming the ocean—an alien ocean admittedly—and learning how it can help you. You need synthetic rubber to make a pair of fins, so you find the vines whose seed clusters you need to craft rubber; you need more water so you grab a bladderfish as it swims past. Later Subnautica goes beyond basic stuff and you start constructing habitats, a network of breathing tubes, your own computers. You tame the sea and make a home that's also a farm and an aquarium, an octopus's garden of your own.

Abzu

There will be at least one moment in Abzu where your heart floats right out your chest and into your mouth. Maybe it'll be when you race alongside orcas, or a whale passes so close it eclipses everything. Abzu is about diving, and half of diving is looking at the life aquatic and going “woah”. The other half is movement, and Abzu does that well too. Your sleek diver never needs to breathe, you're free to tumble, turn, and follow interesting fish or race along with a current. Each undersea area is scattered with secrets, a simple puzzle to open the next area, and a hint of story delivered without words. Most importantly each environment, whether coral reef or deep trench, has an abundance of living things to swim with while the orchestral soundtrack does its thing and pushes your heart straight up.

The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human

In the opening minutes of The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human, you pilot a small submarine through the oceans beneath a frozen post-human world, and eviscerate a giant sea worm by swimming into its maw and out the ass. From there, Aquatic Adventure stacks up one quiet set piece after another on a tour through a thriving underwater ecosystem grown over the ruins of civilization. And as the last person alive, your only goal is simply to live, which isn’t always easy with massive, mutated sea creatures on your tail. As you explore, you’ll uncover the story of what led to the cataclysmic weather events that killed everyone but you, and find ship upgrades to become more efficient at murdering innocent marine life on your quest to outlive them, you monster. Accompanied by a catchy, somber soundtrack, The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human is a tragic twist on the action exploration formula, placing empowerment and progress behind reckless fish murder and ecological destruction. 

A few days ago, undersea survival game Subnautica received a humdinger of an update that added a new Silent Running mode to your aquatic exploration pod. This plays into one of the update's other big features: dangerous creatures that are newly interested in your previously safe Cyclops vessel. You'll need to enable Silent Running mode to deal with them, which turns off all exterior lights, replaces interior ones with an eerie red glow, and slows your pod the heck down, so you can sneak past those aggressive undersea monsters.

Other new features include a revamped Cyclops UI, a terrain-scanning sonar update, creature-detection on the HUD, and the ability to launch creature-distracting decoys. If the Cyclops vessel has been a harbour of refuge for you from the scary deep, you might be a little concerned to hear that it's just been made more fragile—it can even end up wrecked if it takes too much damage.

"Not only do creatures take an interest in your machine," the extensive update post explains, "but once damaged, the Cyclops can become wrecked. Take precautions necessary to mitigate emergencies onboard your ship. Luckily, Fire Extinguishers now have fancy wall holsters to aid in your firefighting. Use the Holographic Status display to monitor for damage and fires. Once the Cyclops reaches hull strength of zero, it will become wrecked. It can be salvaged for materials used in building add-ons later, but the machine itself can no longer be repaired or deconstructed".

You can read the full details of the update here.

Subnautica, to make use of someone else's reductivity, is basically underwater Minecraft, but even though it's still an Early Access game, Ian liked it quite a bit in his preview. And he (and we) will probably like it even more now that the Habitat update is out, because now players can actually build a base on the bottom of the sea, complete with large rooms, panoramic observatories, and even a moon pool. 

A moon pool!

Alas, that isn't quite as cool as I first thought it would be. As Wikipedia explains, moon pools are openings in the floors of marine vessels or underwater installations that provide access to the water in a calm and protected environment. In the case of Subnautica, the moon pool serves as a dry-dock for the Seamoth submersible—practical, but still something of a letdown.

The moon pool, glass-bubble observatories, and generic "large compartments" can be strung together with standard and glass corridors as well as vertical connectors, giving completed bases a look that falls somewhere between BioShock and Habitrail. Compartments have eight attachment points for connecting corridors, dive hatches, windows, and other base modules, and can also be customized (a little bit) with wall-mounted lockers, signs, and even an aquarium.

The update also brings with it a new Biome at the 200-450 meter depth, which includes unidentified flora, resources, and danger. Details on all of it, plus a cool little interactive demonstration of how habitat flooding works, are on the Subnautica Habitat Update page.

Hugh Jeremy works at Unknown Worlds—best known for Natural Selection 2, Future Perfect, and Subnautica—and he's got a rig cholk-full of water cooling. As Hugh explains below, the components of this powerful PC were originally in a case he custom built, which is unfortunately not very portable. Hugh was kind enough to show us his impressive setup and tell us about some of his favorite parts of PC gaming. 

What's in your PC?

• Intel i7-5820k @ 4Ghz
• 32GB of DDR4 RAM
• GTX 980
• 6Tb spinning disk storage
• 1Tb solid state storage
• EK CPU block
• Swiftech 320mm radiator
• EK 5.25in bay reservoir
• Laing D5 w/ EK top
• Laing DDC w/ EK top
• X99 board
• AX1200i PSU
• 4-bank fan controller
• About 1.5 litres of water

All of that feeds an Asus 2560 x 1440 screen at the magical 144hz.

There's also a Razer Blade & Macbook Pro 13 sitting here. I'm in the process of transferring from the former to the latter. Blasphemy, I know. From a parts perspective the i7 5557U in the Macbook is a really interesting little package. It's also pulling 1.1Gb/s read/write off the SSD, so credit to Apple where it's due.

What's the most interesting/unique part of your setup?

This machine is a bit weird, because it's derived from parts transferred from a custom water-cooling focused case I built out of aluminium and tears. At Unknown Worlds, we have a lot of freedom to work wherever we want on the planet. I was using my custom case in the San Francisco office, but at the moment I am working in Australia. I couldn't transfer the rig across the Pacific, disassembling it takes days, reassembling it takes days. So for now many of the parts live on in this Corsair case until I've got the guts to break out the power tools again and give them a proper home. The itch is growing.

What's always within arm's reach on your desk?

At the moment Statistical Analysis by Ya-lun Chou. It's not as boring as it sounds. Crunching data can help make better development decisions, and better games. For example, at Unknown Worlds we collect vast amounts of anonymous data about Subnautica's performance in the wild. From that data, we can work out what we're doing badly. For example, we were able to precisely measure out-of-memory crash prevalence, see that it was affecting large number of players, and devote the resources necessary to remedy it. 

Recently we worked out that 20%+ of Subnautica customers were trying to play with GPUs below min-spec, so now we're doing a better job of communicating min-spec, and assisting customers who don't meet it by providing information about GPU upgrades and so on. Chou makes sure I don't spout statistical lies.

What are you playing right now?

My Steam favourites list currently features Future Perfect, DayZ, Kerbal Space Program, Maia, Natural Selection 2, and Subnautica. A lot of these games aren't finished, or were available initially in a very unfinished state. I think this is one of the most exciting parts of PC gaming. We can be part of and influence the creative process.

What's your favorite game and why?

Right now, my favourite game is  Future Perfect. It's another Unknown Worlds game. I'm not trying to plug it though, I'm being genuine. I don't get time to play it much, and it's at a very early stage. But there is just so much potential. It neatly captures the strengths of PC gaming—access to unfinished games, iteration on those games, modding, openness.

I ve crashlanded in an alien ocean, the sole survivor of a terraforming mission. My life pod floats, luckily, and comes equipped with a high-tech 3D printer and a storage locker. For me to survive, I ve got to pillage the bounties of the ocean floor while trying not to starve to death or get eaten myself.

Subnautica is… well. I could dance around a bit, but it s underwater Minecraft. Reductivity is frequently not a virtue, and describing one game in terms of a recent mega-success always feels a little icky. Like when every startup company describes themselves as Uber for [other thing]. Even so, Subnautica, developed by Natural Selection 2 devs Unknown Worlds, features crafting, digging, monsters, hunger and thirst, exploration, procedurally generated vistas, and dangerous creatures that come out at night. It s Minecraft, except underwater.

That s not a bad thing, though. Minecraft s oceans were always a little sparse, populated by doofy octopi and sand. As massive and uncharted as real oceans are, they deserve the attentions of an entire game. Subnautica is on its way to being a lovely sandbox of underwater exploration.

Sea food

In its current state, Subnautica features two modes: survival and freedom. They are basically the same, but the freedom mode removes the game s hunger and thirst mechanics, and doesn t empty your inventory when you die. I found that, as in Minecraft, once I no longer struggled to survive, I quickly lost interest in the game. Subnautica is a game that begs to be explored, so I appreciate the option to simply turn off the survival mechanics.

In survival mode, a lot is riding on a successful first day. From the moment I wake up in Subnautica, I have a few minutes before I starve to death, and few more before I die of thirst. The immediate business of the day is outfitting myself with salt, freshly caught alien fish, and some gear.

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. Carbon and zinc get printed into a basic battery. A battery and some glass become a flashlight, and now I can see what s going on at night.

It s predictable, sure, but it s still incredibly satisfying. 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.

Sunburn

Though it is fun already, Subnautica does suffer from some technical problems. Terrain has a habit of popping in, especially when I got my souped-up submarine to full speed. On one occasion, I drove straight off the edge of the world because the next cluster failed to load. 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.

In addition to subs, Subnautica has a few interesting toys to play with. Flashlights and seascooters and location beacons are all available to help navigate the alien waters. My favorite gadget is the gravsphere, a plantable trap that captures fish. Deploy it, go hunting for scrap metal and minerals, then come back to a fresh fish dinner. 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.

Surviving can be a struggle in the early days, but a little luck meant I had extra supplies after a half hour. Once a surplus was safe, that was my cue to start pushing myself, diving deeper, swimming farther from the safety of my lifepod. Discrete biomes like mushroom forests, coral reefs, and cave complexes feature local resources and creatures, and they re all amazing to look at.

The designs and art of the alien sea creatures also deserve some praise. 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. There are fish shaped like boomerangs, trout with one giant eye, razor-toothed predators, and blowfish that explode. My favorite part is that I never know which animals are dangerous. 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. 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.

End game

Eventually, though, my well-stocked inventory started sapping the tension from the situation. Without a clock ticking down to a starvation death, I began having much less fun. 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.

Another limitation of the current build is that you re effectively tethered to the life pod. 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. I m hopeful that the devs plans for larger submarines will include one with an on-board fabricator to really set you free. Unknown Worlds also has plans for more animals, more crafting recipes, deeper biomes (accessible only with deep-diving subs), and more raw materials. The team is taking the idea of open development seriously, managing its to-do list on a public task board. 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.

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.