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Subnautica: A Horror Game In Disguise?

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The amazing game of Subnautica is marketed as an underwater survival/adventure game. However, there is another aspect within the game that is not listed: Horror. Horror is an essential component of making Subnautica what it is.

Now, Subnautica does not use jumpscares, or blood and guts like you would expect in any other horror game. Instead, Subnautica uses a few aspects that i will talk and elaborate on.

The first aspect i would like to talk about is the fear of the unknown. The game just dumps you straight into a alien planet you are unfamiliar with right from the beginning. Phychological research has proven that humans have a strong tendency to repel things that they are not familiar with, and sticks with the things they are. This unknown planet aspect causes the player to have thoughts about dangerous creatures they don’t know about that wants to kill them.

The second aspect would be progression. In the game, you have to visit specific points on the map in order to progress further into the game. When you go to the locations, you will already be overwhelmed by the fear of the unknown, but to add to that fear, the developers of the game decides to put the most dangerous creatures in the entire game patrolling the places that you are forced to go to in order to progress further into the story. This will give you a feeling that there is always something big and dangerous chasing you, no matter where you go.

The third aspect is thalassophobia. If you don’t know what that is, it is the intense fear of large, and deep oceans. This aspect kind of overlaps with the fear of the unknown, but it also has some characteristics of its own. For example, if you’re swimming in an ocean on Earth, you can say that there may be a few fishes underneath you, or maybe a few sharks (no biggie right?), but you can be pretty sure there WILL NOT be a giant 100 meter long leviathan swimming in the same waters as you. But on an alien planet? Who knows what will be in the water?

The fourth and last aspect i will elaborate on is ambeince and sound design. It is common knowledge that the deeper you go in the water, the less light there will be, and in Subnautica, you are required to go deeper in order to progress. Now imagine this: You are 900 meters below the surface, your oxygen is running low and you are trapped in an seemingly endless void of dark waters, trying to find your orientation and your submarine. You hear a roar in the distance. You look around, attempting to find the source or the roar, but only to find nothing but pitch blackness. Words cannot describe the amount of fear and panic you would be in. Adding to that scenario, a creepy soundtrack of ambience voices, and faint clicks starts playing. Subnautica has tons of different soundtracks, and theyu are unique to every biome, reflecting the amount of threat the biome posseses. For example, in a safer area, the music would be light, peaceful, and happy. But when ytou start to go into a more dangeorus area, the music wil change into a creepy, and mysterious white background noise.

Obviously, these four aspects i have listed are not the only ones. There are many more that are designed to play with your mind, and to bring fear into you. A beginner player may be absolutely overwhelmed by fear, and may be tempted to delete the game, or try to forget about the game (that’s what i almost did haha), but if you keep playing, you will soon learn to overcome and look past the fear. Once you do that, you will see the true beauties this mysterious planet has to offer.

-Torres H.

Subnautica

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Subnautica is a survival game that takes place on an alien planet called 4546B. The planet is covered almost 100% with either shallow or very deep ocean. This amazing game contains many different types of fauna, flora, and locations for you to discover.

It is the late 22nd century, and humans have began to colonize space. The Aurora, the large spaceship you are on, was assigned a mission to construct a phasegate for hyperspeed space travel. While performing a slingshot maneuver around planet 4546B, the Aurora experiences a large energy pulse (basically a laser beam) coming from a mysterious source within the planet. Only half of the 50 lifepods aboard launched, as the other half were completely destroyed. 9 of the 25 lifepods launched made it to the planet, but only one was undamaged. You are the one in that lifepod.

With the backstory out of the way, now lets talk about the game content. After landing in your lifepod, you have to immediately find resources on a planet you are unfamiliar with in order to survive. You can craft many different things with one machine due to the insane technology they have in the 22nd century. In some point in the game, you will receive radio S.O.S. signals from the other 8 lifepods, but by the time you get to the pod, the survivors have already been killed by the planet’s creatures.

In the game, you can craft submarines that aid in you in going deeper into the ocean, which is one of my favorite aspects of this game. However, my absolute favorited thing about this game would be the biology/ecology within it. There are vast biomes that contain many unique creatures and plants that has specifically adapted to that biome for them to survive, from things like fins for them to swim faster, to plants removing pigments due to the lack of nutrients in an area.

Now you may be asking: How do you escape the planet and go back home? Well, you’re going to have to play the game on your own to find out 🙂

I simply cannot tell you every single little thing about the game in this one article because there are just way too many. But there are many different lores and aspects to the story I didn’t cover, so I 100% recommend you to try this game on your own, especially if survival games are your type of thing.

-Torres H.

Subnautica Game Review

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Subnautica on Steam

I had never been a fan of survival games. Their grindy, repetitive gameplay, and often disappointing storylines had never captivated me in the same way that other games could. Then I found Subnautica. This game blows almost all other survival games out of the water (pun intended). There’s a deep story, interesting mechanics, and all sorts of cool flora and fauna.

Subnautica is a survival/crafting game set on an aquatic alien planet. The playable area is the inside of a volcanic crater, with the crater edges serving as boundaries. Within the crater is a plethora of explorable biomes, some safe and some deadly. As there is no provided map, you’ll need to learn how to find your way around with a compass and some landmarks.

The storyline is well-executed without feeling forced or choppy. The main thing I like about this game is that there’s not much hand-holding. There isn’t a concrete tutorial, and you can play the game for hours without completing any of the story elements.

Finally, one of the best things about this game is how it uses terror. I wasn’t expecting this game to be scary. It was absolutely chilling. Rather than using cheap jump scares or gore, this game gets you to scare yourself. When you’re in the middle of a pitch-black ocean and you hear a roar in the distance, or when you look down to see nothing but crushing depths, it’s terrifying. It’s really well done.

The only complaint with this game is performance. The game normally looks stunning, but there is often lag and rendering issues. These problems slightly break your immersion, but if you’re okay with some graphics glitches every now and then, it won’t be a problem.

Overall, this is a great game for anyone who doesn’t have thalassophobia (look that one up). Other than a few performance-related issues, there’s nothing I’d change about this game.

Rating: 9/10

-Josh M