Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash.
Subnautica
I have never played such an immersive game. From the moment the game starts you are thrown into the action and then left to figure out things for yourself.
You are a survivor of a spaceship crash. You, like the character you are controlling, have no idea what to do. Slowly you are prompted, through great story mechanics, how to keep yourself alive.
A large portion of this game is resource collection and crafting. Rather than it becoming tedious it is handled very well. The different resources that you require throughout the game. Having said that you often need to recollect and rebuild items you have previously.
This allows you to quickly become familiar with the basic building blocks and as you require different resources you are forced to explore further from the area you are familiar with.
As you enter new areas you find new challenges and new resources which in turn will allow you to travel into the next area.
The story also evolves as you explore. This is controlled via radio messages that you receive to your escape pod. The messages guide you to new areas and give you clues about where you should explore to continue the story.
How much game time will you get?
Having said this you have complete control over the speed at which you want to expand. Two of my friends had played this game. One of them started about the same time I had and finished the game in around 30 hours.
I spent more than four days of game time to complete it. Mainly because I loved the game and was not wanting to rush through it at all. The other reason that I was very methodical in my approach to exploration.
The world is also terrifying at points. So much so, that to start off with I didn’t leave the safety of my escape pod and later, my base.
The game allows you to play however you want. You don’t get punished for spending a lot of time building up a great base nor do you get rewarding for speed running.
The deeper story?
There is a lot going on here. On the surface you have the basic survival story. Gather what you need to survive. Expand and build the next level of gadgets. But as you explore you gain new information via your pda. You can find information by scanning local flora and fauna. Information is also found by picking up other pdas.
You can engage with this information as much or as little as you want. Which is great. If you read all the information and explore as much as you can you will learn many interesting things about the planet you find yourself on.
While this information isn’t key to completing the story I found it made things easier. You understood how creatures would respond and what to expect as you travelled to new locations.
This level of storytelling that you could choose to participate in, or not, was brilliantly done.
Who will enjoy this game?
People who love crafting a collecting games like minecraft will love this game. But even those who find that sort of game play tedious will enjoy this because of how intuitive it becomes.
The world of Subnautica is beautiful. I often found myself just gazing off into the distance of the world, looking at how the different species interacted.
Base builders will love this game as well. But you can almost completely ignore this part if that isn’t for you.
There is a pretty strong horror theme to the game so if you scare easily than it probably isn’t for you. But the scares are to serve a purpose. They are to stop you exploring beyond your current capabilities.
I have a mate who hates all things horror and loves this game so perhaps it isn’t as scary as I felt it was.
This is an example of some game play on my youtube channel. I often stream on twitch which you can find here: https://www.twitch.tv/writermuses
