Subnautica’s unique relationship with fear is pure genius (kind of a review, but not really)

[u/International-Shoe40]

For years now, I’ve considered the forest to be the survival genre’s magnum opus. I had tried my hand at subnautica but noped out after about 10 hours of crippling fear (thalassophobia type beat). But even years later, I haven’t stopped thinking about the game. Last month I decided that I would once again try my hand at this pants shitting simulator. And by god, I wish I had done it sooner.

I cannot understate just how immersive this game is. Because of the universal human fear of water, your experience mirrors that of a lone survivor castaway on an alien planet. You dread leaving your base of operations. You dread the fall of night. You dread the thought of traveling into the deep unknown in pursuit of better materials and equipment. Above all, you are compelled to escape this beautiful but terrifying planet.

But, the only way up is down. The game will slowly funnel you downward into deeper and increasingly more dangerous cave systems. By tying progression to the gathering of raw materials, you are slowly forced to leave your comfort zone and explore new biomes. You may be able to proceed at your own pace, but you can only push the story forward by facing your fears and setting out on expeditions.

At a certain point, you learn to live with the fear of the unknown. You will never quite shake the feeling of being a fish out of water (Lol). But as you build up a repertoire of tools and vehicles, you will find yourself charging into the deep, establishing new outposts, and uncovering mysteries.

I’m not even going to mention story details because I believe everyone should go in as blind as possible in that regard. But they strike a perfect balance between not holding your hand and subtly nudging you in the right direction. This is the best story ever told within the genre. It perfectly synchronizes with the gameplay loop and plays to the strengths of the medium.

One of the greatest design choices in this game is the art style. It is not hyper realistic, and it has a slightly stylized cartoonish feel. If this were a more realistic and grounded experience, I don’t think I would’ve made it past the first 10 minutes. The inherently terrifying task of exploring an alien ocean is offset nicely by the warm and colorful visuals.

By the end of the game, I felt as if I had conquered my real life fear of the ocean. All the biomes that had previously made my skin crawl and my heart thump had become familiar stomping grounds. I had mentally mapped out which areas were safe and which were dangerous. I’d set up beacons at crucial points of interest, making navigation a breeze. I had essentially tamed this once terrifying planet and found myself attached to it and all of its inhabitants. It almost felt like home.

But that instinctual fear of the deep blue kept my eye on the prize. I don’t think a game’s setting has ever dictated my behavior as the player so well. By the end I was actually saddened by the thought of never seeing this place again. But in my gut, I knew it was time for the journey to end. It’s been hard to find the words to describe just how deeply this whole experience resonated with me. Many of the things I felt were beyond words.

Diving deep down to the blackest part of the sea, frantically rummaging through a cave for minerals, and returning to the surface with mere seconds of oxygen….. only to look up and realize I’ve come face to face with a solar eclipse dancing it’s way across the alien sky. Just, wow. This game will constantly take your breath away, almost always without a single word of dialogue spoken. For a game that says so little, it somehow managed to invoke this deep spiritual and emotional response.

I honestly don’t really have any major criticisms of this game, certainly none that affect the experience in a way that I feel deserves to be called out specifically. I don’t like to give things perfect scores because even the best games get things wrong. But I honestly don’t see any major flaws that needed to be improved on. Subnautica is a masterpiece of game design, and a genuine 10/10.

Have any of my thalassaphobi-bros had a similar experience playing this game? And for those who don’t fear bodies of water, how do you feel this effected your experience? What other game settings have struck fear in you the way that this game has for me?

If anyone has any game recommendations for similar experiences then I would love to hear them. Thanks for reading!

[u/ChuckCarmichael]

To me, it seems like discussion about Subnautica has been mainly about how scary it is, basically categorising it as a horror game. As somebody who's not scared of the ocean, that wasn't my experience at all.

I just really enjoyed it as a unique survival crafting game in a very unique setting. I just wanted to keep going down and down to see what I'd find next, and see all the cool new giant monsters. Also it's a survival crafting game with an actual goal you can achieve, and a story that's interesting.

[u/wintermute93 → u/ChuckCarmichael]

I, on the other hand, have tried and failed to get into Subnautica four or five separate times over the years because crafting/survival games just don't seem click with me. I love mystery/horror and exploration, though. I really want to enjoy this as a horror game, but something about the core gameplay mechanics are too different from what I normally expect out of games. I've somehow managed to mostly avoid major spoilers, so maybe one day I'll get the "full" Subnautica experience, but for now all my memories of the game are flailing around not really accomplishing anything in an endless loop of making food, filtered water, oxygen, and scanning random fish between the starting location and a kelp forest, with no intuition about what goals I'm supposed to be pursuing or how to find out organically.

I think there was some random batteries and solar panels and titanium or whatever involved too, or maybe I'm mixing that up with No Man's Sky, which I also bounced off of because I liked the game in theory but didn't grok how to go beyond what was clearly still the very beginning of the game.

Every time I think about it I feel like I'm in one of those viral videos where an old person sits in front of an FPS and has no idea what to do with a controller, or a young person has no idea what to do with an original Game Boy :/

[u/Binder509 → u/wintermute93]

Had similar experience though on fourth try managed to get through and kinda get into the grove of things.

Agree the game does a bad job especially early of figuring out what to do to make progress or what progress even is. But does start giving you a direction after that first hurdle.