Subnautica

Subnautica
Developer(s)	Unknown Worlds Entertainment
Director(s)	Charlie Cleveland
Designer(s)	Charlie Cleveland Team
Programmer(s)	Charlie Cleveland Steve An Max McGuire Dushan Leska Jonas Grohmann Vyacheslav Sedovich Scott Thunelius Andreas Urwalek Igor Popof
Artist(s)	Cory Strader Brian Cummings Scott MacDonald Brandt Wojak
Composer(s)	Simon Chylinski
Engine	Unity
Platform(s)	Windows OS X Xbox One
Release	'Microsoft Windows, OS X'Xbox One
Genre(s)	Adventure, survival, open world, underwater
Mode(s)	Single-player

Subnautica is an open world survival game in development by Unknown Worlds Entertainment. Subnautica allows the player to explore an aquatic alien planet by scuba diving and traveling in submersibles, while collecting resources and food to survive. It was released on Steam Early Access on December 16, 2014, and is currently in development for Xbox One. Full V1.0 release is planned for January 2017.

Gameplay

The player controls in first-person view the lone survivor of a crashed ship on an aquatic planet. The main objective of the player is to explore the open world environment and survive the dangers of the planet. Subnautica allows the player to collect resources, construct tools, bases, and submersibles, and interact with the planet's wildlife. Players must keep themselves adequately hydrated and fed, and must also maintain their oxygen supply while traversing underwater (Survival Mode). The game includes a day and night cycle. The game also includes three other modes: Freedom mode, in which only hunger and thirst are disabled; Hardcore mode, which is the same as Survival, except that if the player dies, the player will no longer be able to respawn; and Creative mode, in which the hunger, thirst, health, and oxygen features are all disabled, all the crafting blueprints are acquired, but items need resources to be crafted and the submersibles do need energy and can be damaged. The game is mainly set underwater, but there are two fully explorable islands.

Plot

The game takes place in the late 22nd century, when humanity begins to colonize planets around space. During colonization, various vessels were sent to the said planets, each one with a specific mission. One of the vessels, the Aurora, was sent to the ocean planet 4546B to create a phase gate. It also had a second, secret mission, which was to find any survivors of the mining vessel Degasi, which went missing about ten years before the Aurora mission began. However, during its descent, It was struck by an energy pulse of unknown origin that critically damaged the hull, making it crash-land onto the planet's ocean floor. During the crash-landing sequence, several lifepods were launched. One of these lifepods (more specifically, Lifepod 5) contained the player. During the lifepod's impact with the water, a Fire Extinguisher and a panel came loose and bounced inside. The panel manages to strike the player's head, rendering the player unconscious for 3 hours, who then wakes up only to see a huge fire inside the lifepod. The player rushes to pick up the fire extinguisher and puts the flames out.

There are at least 16 other lifepods, most of which landed successfully. One landed too close to the Aurora, and another plummeted into the water. However, during the 3 hours the player was unconscious in their own lifepod, the other lifepods experienced fatal situations, wrecking them and killing the personnel inside, marking the player as the only Aurora survivor. The player can find the lifepods, and collect the occupants' PDAS, detailing their own fate.

After about 5 in-game days, a radio message comes to the lifepod, which explains that a passing Cargo ship, called the Sunbeam, has picked up their distress signal, and are coming to help, telling the player that they are going to land on a nearby island to rescue them. When the player arrives, the Sunbeam's captain, Avery Quinn, tells them that they are in orbit, however, mid sentence, an alien superweapon, dubbed the "Precursor Ground To-Air Weapon System", fires at the Sunbeam, destroying it.

While progressing through the game, the Aurora explodes due to instability on one of the drive cores and opens several passages to the ship's reactor room, which the player can access with a radiation suit and fix the reactors, causing the radiation around the Aurora's crash site to dissipate within 3 in-game days. The Aurora also contains several Data Terminals, which can be loaded into the player's PDA and read to reveal a part of the story, and point to new locations on the map. The player also finds a large exosuit, called the P.R.A.W.N. Exosuit, and a small submarine, called the Seamoth, which makes exploring otherwise dangerous areas significantly easier. Through the Data Terminals found in the Aurora, the secondary mission of the Aurora is revealed to the player.

Later during the game, the player discovers information about the planet's native intelligent species (known as the Precursors) and the lethal bacteria, the Carar, by following the blast origin coordinates from the Aurora Blackbox Data. The Precursors put a massive energy cannon in place to prevent any alien life from entering the planet and potentionally spread the Carar to other planets, which could have untold consequences. The Precursors are revealed to have constructed four bases on the planet over one thousand years ago, the "Precursor Ground-To-Air Weapon System", the large energy cannon that shot down the Aurora, Degasi, and the Sunbeam. The "Secondary Bio-Research Facility", which was a testing facility for creatures infected with the Carar, however, this base was destroyed by an escaped creature, and event that also unleashed the Carar onto the planet. The "Precursor Thermal Power Generator", which powers the other bases aswell as the Warpers, a bio-mechanical life form developed by the Precursors in order to stop the spread of the Carar. The Primary Research Facility, which is located in the planet's deepest biome, which currently houses the largest creature in the game, the Sea Emperor, which is the last of it's kind due to the Carar. Due to the severity of the Carar, the Precursors made the Warpers, an intelligent hunter that is not native to the planet, the Warpers are meant to kill any creature infected with the bacteria, as a means of destroying it. It is later revealed that the player is also infected, and Warpers will hunt the player aswell, going to extreme means of doing so, such as teaming up, warping in other creatures as help, or warping behind the player as a means of confusing them.

Development

Subnautica was first announced by Unknown Worlds Entertainment on December 17, 2013, with Charlie Cleveland as the game director and lead gameplay programmer, and Hugh Jeremy as the producer.

The development team opted to use the Unity engine rather than Spark, the engine used for the company's previous game, Natural Selection 2. Subnautica producer Hugh Jeremy justified this decision because of the different demands that the game places on the engine, and "because [the team] does not include people working on Spark, it's not appropriate for Subnautica to use Spark. By using Unity for Subnautica, Spark can continue to develop in certain directions, while Subnautica develops in others. To use Spark for Subnautica would be like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole."

The development team also opted against the inclusion of lethal weapons in the game. Charlie Cleveland, the game's director, described Subnautica as "one vote towards a world with less guns," and had felt inspired by real life gun violence, including the Sandy Hook shooting, to encourage players to think about "non-violent and more creative solutions to solve our problems."

Subnautica was released on Steam Early Access on December 16, 2014, and is currently in "early access" development. It was released on Xbox One Preview (like Early Access) on May 17, 2016.

Full V1.0 release is planned for early 2017; most likely February or March.

Reception

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.

External links

• Official website