Subnautica

Subnautica is a survival action-adventure game set in an open world environment and played from a first-person perspective. The player controls one of the few survivors of the crashed spacecraft known as The Aurora, Ryley Robinson, as he is stranded on a remote ocean planet known as 4546B.

The main objective is to explore the ocean of the alien planet and survive its dangers while completing tasks to advance the plot. Players can collect resources and blueprints, construct tools, build bases and submersibles, and interact with the planet's wildlife.

Roughly 1,000 years prior to the game's events, an alien race known as "the Architects" begins investigation of the ocean planet 4546B for a cure to the Kharaa bacterium, which has devastated their civilization. They discover that the Sea Emperor Leviathan species naturally produces "Enzyme 42" in its digestive tract, which makes the species immune to the bacterium. The last of the species is too old to produce the enzyme in sufficient quantities, and attempts to force its eggs to hatch (to extract the enzyme from her young) are unsuccessful. As the Architects grow desperate for a cure, they attempt to extract the enzyme from a related species, specifically the Sea Dragon Leviathan.

This leads them to abduct a Sea Dragon egg for research. Following the abduction, an adult Sea Dragon Leviathan attacks the research facility where the egg is being held in an effort to retrieve it. This attack causes the facility to collapse to the sea floor, resulting in the Kharaa bacterium being released into the ocean. With the situation worsening, and the containment breach inadvertently infecting the ocean with the Kharaa bacterium, the Architects place 4546B under quarantine while forcing the remaining Architects to upload their consciousnesses onto cache data hubs.

Subnautica was announced by Unknown Worlds Entertainment on December 17, 2013, with Charlie Cleveland as the director and lead gameplay programmer, and Hugh Jeremy as the producer. The music is composed by Simon Chylinski.

Cleveland was heavily inspired by Minecraft, which he noted "transformed the game industry" and "threw away all traditional challenge oriented and progression oriented games". The release of Minecraft overlapped with Unknown Worlds releasing Natural Selection 2. Feeling exhausted, the team wanted to try something new and decided to make such a game. Other influences included scuba diving, the filmography of James Cameron, and "just the feeling of exploring the deep, dark, alternately beautiful and terrible, ocean depths.

Subnautica received positive pre-release reception. Ian Birnbaum of PC Gamer described Subnautica as an "underwater Minecraft ", remarking that "with an experienced developer at the helm and a limitless variety of the oceans to play with, it's going to take a lot for Subnautica to go badly wrong. As the toolbox gets deeper and the shape of the end-game gets set, Subnautica will be a unique example of the ways survival can be tense, rewarding, and fun." Marsh Davies of Rock, Paper, Shotgun praised the rewarding nature of exploring the world of Subnautica, but criticized the "arbitrariness" and lack of intuition in some of the in-game recipes.

At launch, the game received "generally positive reviews" on all platforms according to review aggregator Metacritic.