Excellent sandbox-y survival game Subnautica, which you can still grab for free on the Epic Store, is now playable in multiplayer thanks to a new mod called Nitrox.
Its creator Sunrunner says it's still in "very early stages of development", but the foundation for a full co-op playthrough is there: it has synced player movement, basic animations, base building and item dropping, as well as a rudimentary chat system.
Because it's so early, Sunrunner isn't recommended for "casual play", but if you don't want to wait for extra polish you can download the installer from its Nexus page (you'll have to login to your Nexus account first).
Clearly, players aren't too bothered that it still has a long way to go, and it's been downloaded more than 35,000 times since it was added to Nexus Mods last week.
It's open-source, so the hope is that other modders will be able to iterate on it in future. The Unknown Worlds Entertainment dev team even commented on the mod last year, saying they "fully support" the project but that it would be "very hard" to get a multiplayer Subnautica mod looking as polished as the singleplayer game.
You can watch some footage from the mod below.
Thanks, PCGamesN.
Update: I originally wrote that you have to manually install the mod via instructions on its wiki page—you can actually grab an installer file from the mod's Nexus page (it's in the top-right).
The Epic Games Store doesn’t have forums. When Epic announced the platform, it framed this as a positive thing. No forums, it said, would stop toxicity from flourishing, and with Discord, Twitter and developers’ own forums, there are other ways to get in touch. One of those alternatives is Epic’s competitor, Steam, and some players have turned to its forums to get support for the Epic Games Store version of Subnautica.
Reddit user Revisor007 was on the Subnautica Steam forum when they noticed several posts asking for support for the Epic Games Store version of the game. "Can’t run Epic Games version without Epic Launcher anymore," one reads. "Where is the save location on Epic Games?" another asks. In one of them, a developer actually chimes in and offers a solution.
It’s hardly an epidemic, and looking at other Steam forums, they’ve yet to devolve into support forums for Epic users. The store gets mentioned here and there, but not in the context of asking for assistance. I also saw topics about console versions and Origin versions, so really this is just a matter of Steam still being this huge, ubiquitous thing that a lot of people use because they’re used to it.
Still, support on the Epic Games Store probably needs a rethink. Looking at store pages reveals no information about how to deal with issues with the game, beyond some social media links. If a game has bug reporting and a ticket system, that’s not clear either. It’s not just about offering support, then, but making it clear how you get it, too, and pointing in the direction of Twitter doesn’t cut it.
As Tom pointed out, the Epic Games Store is slick, but it has some key flaws, and a lot of those flaws are how it chooses to, or in most cases chooses not to, show important information.
The superb Subnautica is free from the Epic Games Store.
The undersea survival game is free to download until 27th December. It normally costs 19.49.
The Epic Games Store is the Fortnite and Unreal engine company's attempt to take on Steam. It offers developers 88 per cent revenue share, which is more than Valve's 70 per cent standard.
Epic Games wants you to pay attention to its new store, and it's not playing. As of right now, and until December 25, the outstanding underwater exploration sim (and horror game) Subnautica is free to take, and keep. This was previously announced shortly after the Epic Games Store launched.
Subnautica is really great: Philippa called it her favorite game of the last five years in her 89/100 review, and Steven explained the importance of water bottles in this all-too-true tale of spinning small troubles into full-blown catastrophes. It was enough to convince me to try it, even though survival games aren't really my thing, and they were so right—it's one of the best things I've played in years.
Not much more to it: Go to the Subnautica page on the Epic Games Store, click the "free" button, and go for a swim. You won't regret it.
After building a spectacularly large audience with Fornite, Epic is turning its game launcher into a Steam-like store—though one that offers developers a larger revenue share. The first games it's offering are now visible on the Epic Store .
First of all, Subnautica and Super Meat Boy, both great games, are going to be free for a limited time, starting later in December. Obviously, by creating an account, downloading Epic's launcher, and redeeming your free games, you become another person they can try to sell stuff to in the future. But also: free games. We recommend Subnautica big time, and it's normally $25, so it's an outstanding freebie if you enjoy singleplayer survival or alien squid encounters.
Another surprise is from Bastion and Transistor developer Supergiant. We'd never heard of a game called Hades until now, and yet here it is, available on the Epic Store in Early Access right now. We'll give it a look soon.
And what's that a little further down the list? It's Journey, the beloved PlayStation 3 exclusive we never thought we'd see on PC.
While it isn't long, there are other promising new games on the list. Satisfactory, which was shown at our own PC Gaming Show earlier this year, is especially interesting.
Here's the Epic Store's full starting lineup:
The Golden Joystick Awards have determined that Subnautica, the undersea survival sim that is really a horror game in disguise (and if you don't believe me, give it a try sometime and let me know how it goes), is the PC Game of the Year. CD Projekt's upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 took the title for Most Wanted Game, while Fortnite beat out not-on-PC heavyweight Red Dead Redemption 2 to claim the overall Game of the Year title.
Fortnite is a phenomenon, of course, and while I wouldn't necessarily argue that it's a better game that RDR2 taken in isolation, I don't see the Housers turning up on Ellen anytime soon, or shit-talking an entire nation just because they can.
Subnautica, meanwhile, is spectacularly good: Excellent as a survival game, but with so much more going on beneath the surface (pardon the pun). It suffered from a few niggling technical issues but was otherwise a serene, sublime experience of remarkable beauty—except when the bad things happen, and then it's a five-alarm nope back to the surface for a few minutes. (Or days.)
I am down with the winners, in other words, but feel free to debate their merits in the comments. The full list of victors is down below:
The 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Hidetaka Miyazaki, president of From Software and producer/director on the Dark Souls games, Bloodborne, and the upcoming Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.