I think the game could potentially spawn its own genre. Just have new games in different environments (in space, in underground tunnels, in a heavily-forested wilderness, etc.).
How would the genre be defined? Subnautica borrows many elements which are aren’t that novel on their own.
I certainly hope that’s the way they go with this. Discovering the world of Subnautica was (and continues to be) a hell of an experience. I’m very excited that I’ll get to go through it again almost as soon as I finish off this one.
Subnautica is a survival game and it isn’t all that different on a conceptual level from any of those games that came before it. But unlike any of those games, it’s a self-contained experience with a strong narrative. Most importantly, every other survival game I can think of is designed for hours and hours of grinding, whereas Subnautica focuses on exploration. It’s also a handcrafted world rather than a procedural one.
Just the other day as I was playing it, all I could think about was how much I wish a game like ARK Survival Evolved could have been this polished.
I agree that the strong story-driven element is a big distinguishing factor from most survival games, which tend to be survival-first, with the story feeling a bit tacked-on, if there’s any story at all. They’re sandboxes in which someone may decide to tell a story, while Subnautica is telling a story which also allows you to play in a nice sandbox.
Survival games are very hit-or-miss for me. They need either super-flexible crafting and construction, so that I can build crazy custom things, or they need a compelling story. I can’t get into “see how long you can survive” (Don’t Starve and The Long Dark), or “build a progression of ugly houses while collecting pokesaurs” (ARK), or–worst of all–“build stuff to survive only to have random online jerks trash it all” (also ARK, plus other PvP-heavy survival games).
One of the standouts for me, personally, was this was one of the few indy games that made it, IMHO. You see a ton of games that are early access that just never get finished, or when they are finished they just aren’t that good. This one is like Kerbal to me…one of those I got in early, played on and off as they updated all the way up to the final release of the full game, and I loved every minute of it! I haven’t played the new standalone game (yet), as it’s early access and I want to wait for a bit, but I am definitely all over this new version (already bought it on Steam…want to support the devs on this for sure). It looks really cool, and it’s more Subnautica…what more do I need?? Well, ok…would be cool if they had multi-player…
For me, and I suspect a lot of people, one of the appealing things about Subnautica is how pretty and colorful it is. The ocean setting allows for brilliant use of every colorm in the rainbow - fish, creatures, plants, everything offers a bazillion colors. That’s quite different from a lot of games; the prevailing color choices in amny of them are brown, black, and grey.
A similar game in underground tunnels, or a forest, might be dark and ugly.
100% agreed. There are games that by all rights I should love, but the color palette is so drab that I can’t enjoy them. I’m looking at you, Fallout series. When I play XCom, I customize all my soldiers with bright colors according to class – green for rangers, blue for specialists, etc. Partly this helps me distinguish who’s who in a firefight, but partly it makes the game prettier.
Subnautica’s beauty was a major part of the appeal for me. They took something that’s already spectacular on earth–coral reefs–and overlaid a coherent alien aesthetic that just took my breath away. Swimming around in the shallows and admiring the various glowy fishes was the most relaxing thing I’ve ever done in a game.
This could absolutely be transferred to other settings, but if they lost the brilliant palette or the strong aesthetic, they’d be taking away a lot of what I loved about the game.
You could just be creative. Underground caverns lit by glowing stones of various colors, glistening stalactites reflecting the light. Subterranean streams falling from waterfalls into lakes populated with bioluminescent fungi, teeming with glowing colorful fish. Caverns of crystal, stone bridges spanning lava rivers, maybe even shallower tunnels with roots poking through and the occasional beam of sunlight coming through cracks to the surface. It doesn’t have to be all drab browns, grays, and blacks.
I used to snorkel when I lived in Guam and many places were beautiful but nothing was quite as amazing as what you see in Subnautica, being a fantastical alien world. Other environments can be similarly fantastic, just think of the world of Pandora from the movie Avatar.
I’d play this game in a heartbeat. And of course you’re right - you could also make a space game bright and interesting. It’s just not usually the direction they go in; I should love Elder Scrolls games but they’re so brown and drab they literally hurt my eyes. I like Fallout but can only play it for so long before it starts to get hard to take. I don’t know if there is some technical reason for this, because realism isn’t an excuse. The world may not look like Subnautica, but it isn’t all brown, either, and if I wanted realism I’d just look out a window.
I am convinced one of the reasons World of Warcraft remains the dominant MMORPG is that it is unapologetically colorful.
Yep, and setting such games on alien worlds gives you free rein.
Forests, caves, cities, anything, can have vivid colors, abundant life and different biomes (or something equivalent) every few hundred meters.
That said, a game where you primarily are on land would be a huge risk for UWE.
If I worked there I would recommend either more swimming games and/or something similar like flying around a gas giant.
I was thinking the same thing, and their note about the seamoth being usable in water or space makes me think that may be their plan. A game set in orbit of a gas giant, with various stations and moons serving as destinations, would be fantastic.
That’s almost what No Man’s Sky is, right? It’s interesting to contrast these two games.
Both are Explore and Build and Survive games. Both have bases, and tools that let you grab things from nature, and threatening monsters, and hierarchies of vehicles. Both are pretty colorful.
But I loved Subnautica, and I got bored with No Man’s Sky (and I only played it once they’d put in the major updates).
The differences:
-Subnautica has a coherent aesthetic. The lack of procedural generation is a feature, not a bug, because every critter that’s there belongs there, and the geography can both create mood and shape narrative. The first time you find an entrance to the underground river, it’s breathtaking.
-Subnautica makes ecological sense. It’s not like I’m some science nerd saying, “The ratio of carnivores to herbivores is WAY OFF HERE GUYS!!!1!” but intuitively it just feels right to have lots of the little critters and a few of the big ones.
-Subnautica’s narrative is a lot better, and doesn’t feel tacked-on.
If Subnautica-In-Spaaaaace had a lot of the No Man’s Sky superficial characteristics, but had a better aethetic and a better narrative and made more intuitive scientific sense, I’d love that game to death.
Thinking further on Subnautica versus other survival games, it occurs to me that there is an interesting mechanical difference to consider: the oxygen meter.
Most survival games have food and water meters. Some have other additional meters, like The Long Dark’s cold and fatigue meters. The big mechanical difference between survival meters is the decay rate; water is typically a medium-term decay, food is longer-term, and most other meters are long-term (although they may be variable due to environmental effects).
By contrast, Subnautica’s third meter has an extremely short decay, but is much more easily replenished than the others. It’s possible to mitigate it in various ways, but there’s no way to move it even into the “medium-term” category. It keeps the survival process continually engaged, holding pressure on the player during most tasks, especially early on. The other meters give you 20 or 30 minutes before you have to tend to them; the oxygen meter starts at less than 1 minute, and at its best upgrade gives you less than 4. It provides a mild, but constant, sense of urgency whenever you’re out doing things, but leaves you completely alone in your safe spaces, not nagging you while you’re crafting, sorting supplies, doing interior design on your base, or whatever.
I wonder how much that contributes to the sense of engagement with Subnautica? The closest parallel I can think of in other games is a grip meter, like in Shadow of the Colossus and Breath of the Wild. Those aren’t survival meters, but they provide a similar sense of short-cycle pressure.
What if **Atamasama **'s hypothetical underground exploration game was heavily vertical, requiring you to climb between safe resting places, and had a grip meter? Would that make it more engaging, or less?
That’s a good insight. It has an immediacy that keeps you focused yet doesn’t punish you heavily if you fail. It makes everything you do underwater be on a soft timer.
Oxygen Not Included has something like that with un/breathable gases, with carbon dioxide pooling at the bottom of your base and biomes often having toxic gases.
I was thinking along those lines too, having underground gas pockets that are unbreathable. You might also have areas of high/low heat you can only be in for a limited time.
Oxygen Not Included is designed to be much more hectic and high-pressure, though, from what I’ve seen. Plus, of course, it’s colony-management, rather than individual survival, so even when you have one dupe safe, others may be (and probably are) getting into trouble. It doesn’t really offer the sort of “rest” space that you get in a base or vehicle in Subnautica.
That might work, but it seems like it would be less universal than the oxygen meter. I’m not sure what else would fit the bill, though. It could be an entirely fantasy element, I suppose, like a pervasive magical effect that you can only resist for so long at a time. Or, on the science fiction front, you might accumulate charge while moving through the outer atmosphere of Babale and Mijin’s gas giant, and need to find ways to periodically ground it or attract a lethal discharge from the clouds.
The oxygen meter adding constant urgency to the game is an excellent point. Especially early in the game when you want to explore deep, but have to return all the way to the surface to breathe - no parking the Seamoth or Prawn nearby to refill. Especially when you’ve actually been snorkeling and had the exact same experience - realizing you got distracted and stayed too long, and really need to breathe, but it’s long swim upwards to that precious, precious air.
Since you’re crashing on an alien planet anyhow, couldn’t the world just have a non breathable atmosphere?
There’s a game that still in early access called Breathedge that’s a lot closer to Subnautica than No Man’s Sky. The thing that Subnautica does well is provide a narrative structure to the open world survival game, and NMS only puts the most basic framework of one. More importantly, NMS is much more about freedom of movement:don’t like the planet you’re on? Blast off and go find a better one. Subnautica makes your base and then your boats sanctuaries that you’re more or less tethered to. it’s odd that those limitations end up making a more compelling experience, but there it is. While Breathedge is far from complete (the gameplay right now only last a couple of hours) when and if they finish it, I think you’ll find it a much closer (if goofier) space version of Subnautica.