Subnautica previously spent three years in early access form on PC
Subnautica
WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE... MARTIN KITTS
PUBLISHER UNKNOWN WORLDS / DEVELOPER UNKNOWN WORLDS / RELEASE DATE OUT NOW / COST £23.99/$29.99
shallow and littered with smaller
pieces of wreckage that can be
salvaged to fabricate the necessary
equipment for probing the depths.
There are also creatures here.
Mostly they’ll leave you alone, but the
food in the escape pod won’t last long
and you’ll have to stave off hunger
somehow. Pretty soon you’ll need to
craft a weapon and find out which of
the more docile animals can be eaten
and which ones will spray poison or
explode if you try to touch them.Beasts below
The further you go, the creepier
the alien ecosystem becomes. The
biggest, strangest beasts lurk in the
gloomy depths, announcing their
presence in the darkness with eerie
noises that urge you to head for the
surface rather than press on and
discover their source. When visibility
is low and you can’t be entirely
certain which way is up, it’s most
disconcerting to find a murky shadowSurviving a crash-
landing on an
unexplored water-
world could be
considered a stroke
of luck, but while
a swift, fiery death was avoided, a
slower demise from dehydration,
starvation or drowning awaits. That’s
if the planet’s aquatic residents don’t
eat you first.
Emerging from the floating escape
pod, the sole visual reference point
in an endless ocean is the vast
wreck of the spacecraft Aurora, lying
atop a nearby reef. There’s a great
deal of exploring and crafting to be
done before you can get inside its
radioactive hulk, and for the first few
hours of the game, the cramped pod
will be your only sanctuary. At the
beginning, your diving ability is limited
by a lack of breathing equipment,
and you can’t get too far down before
having to surface again for oxygen.
Luckily the landing site is relatively
slowly resolving into a sea monster of
startling proportions.
Building a more stable base of
operations is important, but there are
many steps to take before you can
get fully into the game’s extensive
construction options. Limited
inventory space means you’ll have to
carry materials bit by bit or construct
a series of underwater lockers to
store resources close to where they’re
needed. Progress can be slow, but in
time it’s possible to build an elaborate
system of rooms and tubes, stocked
with all the equipment you’ll need to
establish new frontiers, ever further
from the starting location.
There are a couple of vehicles to
research and build – the essential
Seamoth submersible provides
much-needed mobility, while the
giant Cyclops is effectively a mobile
base that can be furnished with a full
range of habitat equipment and can
also carry a docked Seamoth. When
piloting the Cyclops you’ll have toshort
cutWHAT IS IT?
Survival, exploration
and construction in
an undersea
environment.
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
Minecraft with
man-eating alien fish
and the threat of
starvation.
WHO’S IT FOR?
Fans of the likes of
Ark: Survival Evolved
andandNo Man’s SkyNo Man sSkyy.080 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE
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