Subnautica

2014 survival video game in which you crash land on an ocean planet and have to deal with exploration underwater. It had a lengthy Early Access period and was finally 'completed' in 2018.
I played it in early 2020. I'm not sure what made me start it, but I really knew nothing about it and was quite quickly hooked by the gameplay loop. I played it a crazy amount for a couple of weeks - I think I did nothing else for one entire weekend. I remember having to stop myself playing when it reached like 5am but I could have carried on as I was working on building up my base and reaching the next depth level of the ocean and finding more rare resources and blueprints. But after I lost my big submarine in the depths and realised there wasn't much more to see, I stopped playing. Kind of like Breath of the Wild I guess.
It was a fresh and interesting setting, which is probably the main reason I got into it. I like exploring new settings and new progress trees, like when I first encountered Morrowind and Fallout 3. Surprisingly, most of the online discussion around it emphasises how scary the ocean and the creatures are, which didn't strike me at all. The leviathans were just sort of annoying and ignorable - I really didn't find their design to be scary.
There's a sequel in development but I think I might find it boring having played this one.
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Category:Works
Category:Video games
Category:2010s video games
Category:Video games with 1 rating
Category:Survival video games
Category:Video games played in 2020
Category:PC video games