What is Reddit's opinion of Subnautica?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Subnautica is the only one I've seen with any merit. The game is already well-built and is getting big monthly updates on the road to release. But the thing that really impressed me is that the developer Trello roadmaps and development notes are public for anyone to see and follow. You can also opt-in to the experimental builds on Steam and play the same release builds the devs are using, sometimes with multiple updates per day. Unknown Worlds is treating its early access players like investors and it's really refreshing to see. It's a shame the game is still kind of in the shadows because I think its early access attitude ought to become thew new gold standard for everybody.

Subnautica is also an interesting example because while it's clearly a survival game in its current state, that's not actually how the final game is intended to be.

>We’re not making a sandbox game, nor a building game, nor a survival game, although at times we thought we were. We’re building a game where you feel like a scientist who has crash-landed on an aquatic alien world and is learning how it (and its strange inhabitants) work. It’s a game of exploration, discovery and theme. A game currently without a specified goal. A game without extrinsic rewards. A game without combat and weapons (more on this later). I guess we shall call it an Adventure Game, for lack of a better term.

The devs have been pretty careful not to call it a survival game in any of the media I've seen, but that hasn't stopped journalists or anyone else from calling it what it pretty obviously is in its current form.

The Long Dark is doing something similar, too. The original pitch was for a game with both a story mode and a survival mode, and they decided to only have the latter in Early Access so people won't burn themselves out on the half-finished story mode before it's finished.

Subnautica. It's an open world survival game where the survival mechanics take a backseat to the exploration of an absolutely beautiful alien water-world. There's not much content, but what's there is fun, and it's worth picking up just because of the absolutely engrossing world. Seriously, as a fan of alien biology, this was an absolute treat.

They have already stated they're not adding multi-player for awhile yet, as they're a small team and would have to basically remake the game :(

Source: link

Project Zomboid gets my vote for the best. Even in early access it's deep and feature-rich, and though there are MP variants, it is a great SP game.

If you like aquatic-themed survival, Subnautica is pretty good.

7 Days To Die is one of my favorites, but it has been going through some buggy growing pains as they progress through development.

Short answer: no current plans. Long answer here. If they do add it, it will likely be a separate release after launch, ala the Don't Starve model.

They've made a statement on this a while ago which said something along the lines of "We're not saying that we're never gonna make co-op, but even if we decide to start working on it don't hold your breath because it's at least a couple of years down the line."

EDIT: Found it. This post is a year old, but co-op is still nowhere on their development roadmap and they said it'd take months of work. So even if they started on co-op right after release and dropped everything else, the earliest time we would expect to see it is about this time next year.

It's a great game, very atmospheric and in line with what this sub usually posts. The other planet thing means there is no Earth fauna but there are shark like creatures and other crazy looking underwater life.

It's not out yet, but Natural Selection 2 developer Unknown Worlds is working on a game called Subnautica.

I think the alpha/beta should be out later this year.

They seem to be redoing HUD in August. But I wouldn't be surprised if they break something in the process and we have to wait until the next fix. Early Access, we asked for it. ;)

As far as I know, multiplayer is not coming in the near future.

http://unknownworlds.com/subnautica/subnautica-multiplayer-when-if-how-and-why/

But later they said, multiplayer will be a top priority after the v1.0 release. I wouldn't hold my breath until at least one year after 1.0 though.

>We have to be honest about this: “we’re not working on multiplayer right now” means there is zero, nada, zilch, absolutely no possibility of multiplayer any time in the short or medium term.

Source

I'm disappointed too :(

Edit: They said adding multiplayer would require redoing everything, but they knew they wanted to add multiplayer. Why haven't they been designing things to prepare for multiplayer eventually?

When you say etc. are you factoring in games like Rust, ARK, or 7 days to die? Seems like you're looking for a game with a solid single player too, so I'll ignore the usual multiplayer steam hits.

I feel it's a contest between The Forest and Subnautica.
Personally, I'm a HUGE Subnautica fan.
They have a Developer Trello which is updated in real time as they work on stuff.
It's also very polished, and extremely immersive.
They have storyline enhancing webpages for every update.

I could go on and on about their dev team, but the game is solid and unique.

The Forest has such an amazing atmosphere, and is really a beautiful experience for a couple of hours.
Horrible AI and weird FOV make it hard for me to really enjoy, but your first "playthrough" is exciting as hell.

Consider 7 days to die as well. Very good game.

I don't think any devs are very active on the reddit (I may be wrong.), but they post daily updates on trello and the change tracker.

As for updates to the stable branch of the game, I believe they post updates on their main website.

In case you have not seen it, there is an excellent post from the devs linked on the sidebar of every reddit/subnautica page about this very question.

Here is a direct link if you want to read what they said about it, but everyone's comments on this page are fine summaries of it anyway.

This doesn't fit your criteria for zombies or medieval but if your after something that breaks the tired cliche for these games, try Subnautica. Very similar to Rust but set underwater.

Pretty fun game, still very much a work in progress. The official site for the game can be found here.

Unknown Worlds is a pretty good developer, I trust them for early access on this title. They did a great job with the first two natural selection games and really seem to know what they're doing for the most part.

That's true. Much of what was discussed in the video would go a long way to alleviating the issue. I remember reading somewhere (it may have been discussed in the previous Patchology video) that planets may end up having things to discover; such as ruins and crashed ships/stations. That alone would go a long way to making things more interesting; though not dynamic.

For example, Subnautica doesn't have much in the way of content yet (there's still a decent amount, just not as much as there will be), but just exploring the environments and discovering weird and wonderful sights/flora/fauna is fun.

Yes, they are. The new features are very much in development with both graphic and game play bugs. But on the other hand... glass tubes!

Here is a link to their blog with the information you are probably looking for. http://unknownworlds.com/subnautica/coming-next-habitat/

from the trello dev roadmap:

> As much as we would love it, we're not making multiplayer/coop. Here is the definitive post talking about this.

Well in the starting pod there is a storage: http://unknownworlds.com/subnautica/files/2014/12/storagelocker.jpg

For me it's always enough until when I start building a base. When you start building a base, you can build the normal lockers with the building tool and they should be fine and not glitched.

Have you clicked on the "multiplayer" info tab on the right side of the screen? It's under "Other Information." Interesting read, and if you haven't read it, you should.

Here is the direct link in case you are on mobile.

Sounds great. Though even simply living on the moon near one would be amazing.

Just floating masses of stone will look out of place, though, so developers will have to be creative with that. I see these islands as something very alien... Floating islands of Subnautica, for example. Imagine some kind of alien jellifish clusters/microorganism colonies suspending islands among the clouds, in an endless ocean of gas. They could be producing these islands as a by-product of their life cycle, some kind of hardened organic mass which can sustain its own biome. They will come in all shapes and sizes...
Or how about mysterious gravity-defying energy crystals that attract matter from the space (meteorites, meteoroids, comets) and amalgamate it into a beautiful landmass?

Oh damn, you made my imagination run wild, i won't be able to get it out of my head now :Z

You can check the Subnautica wbsite for latest update details. They post each update there and to what platform it applies to. There's also email feeds for each platform you can subscribe to to get notified when an update is made.

Based strictly on looking at the front page, it looks like PC is on Bones Update, while XBox is just lagging at the Dangerous Creatures Update. This is pretty common, with Microsoft/XBox submissions being a bit more stringent/time consuming, typically being behind PC by only about a half month.

PS: PC Twitter account and Xbox Twitter account

If early access is your thing, I'd say go ahead and get it now. Aside from some optimization issues, the game is very playable in it's current state.

Edit: As for multiplayer, link.

It's the pre farming update I believe right?

Here is what was added in farming. http://unknownworlds.com/subnautica/farming-update/

So for console commands I would think the reaper leviathan would work, Sea Dragon was added as a spawnable in the most recent stable update to pc I think. (Machine update).

And you are using the right command?

SPAWN [NAME] [#]

SPAWN ReaperLeviathan 1

Not sure if you need the caps on the reaper part, ah well trial and error.

There were a couple critters added to the recent update so I'm afraid of sharing there names in case of spoilers.

Also I wasn't aware xbox one could use console commands, how is it?

For the lazy

“Adding multiplayer support to Subnautica is something we would love to do. In fact, the game was originally conceived of as a co-op experience. However, as we started to develop the game, we skipped multiplayer to be able to release the game faster.

Now we find ourselves in a difficult situation: we all really want co-op player, but adding it would take us many months of work. We almost have to start over from the beginning, as it affects everything. If our small team decided to add multiplayer right now, we probably wouldn’t be able to improve any other aspect of the game for a very long time.

So we’re not sure what we’re going to do, but we’re not working on multiplayer right now. The most important thing is to make sure the exploration, crafting and creature experience is working well. Maybe before v1.0 we’ll figure out a way to hire another team to help us with networking, or maybe we’ll release a new version of the game later that supports co-op (like Klei did with “Don’t Starve Together”).”

Multiplayer isn't happening any time soon.

The exploration of a lonely, underwater world is sort of the point. There isn't really much to do in a goal-oriented sense, no - but there's quite a lot of ocean to see. Gathering the parts and gear to head 400m down into a cave and build a little base in a jelly mushroom cave next to a lava vent, roving about in the Seamoth, and building massive sprawling bases are all pretty fun though.

Especially if you do what I usually do and ignore the Cyclops - just get a 'moth to scoot around in near the surface, and if you want to go deep - pony up and swim down there in your wetsuit. Take three or four expanded airtanks and some titanium/glass/lithium with you and build a little reinforced base down there to resupply your air, it's a lot more atmospheric and fun when you aren't always cozy and safe in a sub.

Heh.. Im a QA/Playtester on http://unknownworlds.com/subnautica/ - And UWE newer updates the community or involve the QA and player base in anything... Keeping stuff secret right up untill the release is the way to go! /irony

I've always kinda felt that way with those things.

I've only really found them once or twice... they're only in open-water, and I usually stick to the seabed, but they're awesome!

Subnautica has early DK2 support (http://unknownworlds.com/subnautica/), not properly playable yet but works really well for sightseeing an alien ocean. We're in early access on Steam and VR will be fully supported on release.

Thank you. Glad you liked it!

The inspiration for the world comes from Subnautica. I found fish jokes here, and the story... uhmm... not sure, maybe just me surrounded by lots of people interested in different things than me + subconsciously wanting to have a friend like MC :D

IMO I want the cyclops to be like like this intead of the giant white sausage we currently have

I just gave their main website a cursory glance, and it looks like it's now also available on Xbox One Game Preview. If you check out the website and forums, along with the ones on Steam, you might be able to learn if they'll port it to PS4.

The only reasons I can think of (as a non-programmer) for not porting it to PS4 would either be a console exclusivity deal with MS, or that they'd have to rewrite some portions of the game, since PS4 uses Linux and OpenGL, while Xbox One runs some version of Windows and DirectX.

The hardware itself (just talking the vanilla versions of the consoles, not PS4 Pro or Scorpio) have pretty much identical hardware, so it's not like going from the Xbox 360s Xenon to the PS3's Cell architecture.

They've made a post detailing all the significant changes here: http://unknownworlds.com/subnautica/prawn-update-changelog/ - the first entry confirms the sound bug caused by the scanner room is fixed!

They have stated that they planned for multiplayer in the beginning but cancelled it, for now they are not even considering it until after release when bugs are all fixed. At the rate of survival games getting released, I wouldn't expect it for a long time.

Source here: http://unknownworlds.com/subnautica/subnautica-multiplayer-when-if-how-and-why/

Here are some game related links to help you out on the game or even to find more information about the game.

Subreddit: /r/Subnautica

Website: http://unknownworlds.com/subnautica/

Forums: http://forums.unknownworlds.com/categories/subnautica-xbox-one/

Those are always good resources, especially the dev Trello!

• I'm not sure how many more species are planned for the Subnautica world, but there are a few in-progress pieces for creatures like the Rock Puncher. There's no guarantee they'll make it in the game, but the experimental branch recently got a large push of in-progress creatures, so we can hope for at least a few more :)

• Many more animations are planned, and some are even in-progress, but linking up animation to gameplay is very complicated, so it'll take some time.

• As for the questions about multiplayer / co-op, it's been said that multiplayer is something that the team would love to have, but "there is zero, nada, zilch, absolutely no possibility of multiplayer any time in the short or medium term" due to the complexity of the task, and the amount of time they'd need to take away from other aspects of the game in order to get it up and running.

No, this is not true.

Right from the patchnotes:

>Exactly what it sounds like - Creatures now respawn! If killed or eaten by another creature or the player, the creature will eventually respawn.

Please read the whole patchnews first.

Update on Subnautica provided by u/Habbert in another thread:

http://unknownworlds.com/subnautica/subnautica-on-steam-with-the-oculus-rift/

Basically, the Steam version will be updated to 1.3, once devs have completed testing.

oh shit and there was just a subnautica update today; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qptyqKkeaJQ,

although that video is definitely the one that sips saw at the start of this series (the video was linked in today update notes), i guess they added a bit more to that sequence http://unknownworlds.com/subnautica/crash-sequence/

There's like, a lot man. A year ago would be somewhere around when they implemented the Cyclops or the first seabase update. Probably a good 90+ percent of the buildable items currently in game have been added since then. The crash site update was 9 months ago, and moonpools were added 6 months ago, if that helps you narrow down how long it's been since you played.

I'm not sure how many creatures have been added in that time, but definitely the shocker, crab snakes, and reaper laviathan.

If you want more details, I would just go to Unkown Worlds' Blog archive and read through the update posts. It's probably more legible, if only slightly less thorough, than trying to sort through the Trello.

Release builds always get posted with the features implemented on the main website such as , http://unknownworlds.com/subnautica/shocking-update-released/,

Experimental gets updated almost everyday, so there is no way to keep a rolling constant of whats going in, but you can kind of figure it out by watching the checkins @ http://subnautica.unknownworlds.com/#/subnautica/checkins or the production tracker @ http://subnautica.unknownworlds.com/#/subnautica/production-tracker

Pretty sure the Devs have stated that multiplayer would be something they'd like to do, but don't expect it before forever, if ever. They said it'd need reworking a looooot of the stuff from the ground up again and so, it's something they'd like as much as the players, but realistically won't attempt (never before any finished release anyways, if ever).
Official post
Essentially, they don't want anyone building their (or others') hopes up and then get blamed of not delivering. So their official stance is "no multiplayer planned" so that they can't be accused of false promises. I find their approach very smart and safe as it avoids future bad rep and frustrations. And if they do add it? Well who will complain?

Shame, as there's two seats in the lifepod. Hah.

Fear not, new diver, they've at least considered a robot companion. The concept art here shows an unknown cave creature being illuminated by a robotic pod. We know this isn't a prototype seamoth because you can see the diver's mask on the edge of the picture.

Holy shit this game looks awesome!

Here is the link and a Lets Play part 1, part 2 for the lazy ones.

I'm currently following the development of a great Unity game called Subnautica. They use particle-fish to great effect for the smaller wildlife. As long as you don't really need to interact with the fish in your ocean, I'd go with particle effects.