Highly recommended, especially for people with deep-sea phobia, for playing at night.
Above all, at the beginning of the game, you should go to the front of the Aurora, where there is a lot of useful stuff.

Horror is a genre that defines many of gaming's most famous titles and franchises that I find makes for many memorable experiences, whether because it is fully intending to scare its players as a true horror title or taking a more subtle approach through means of tension within the atmosphere of a carefully-crafted world that gets to people's nerves in ways one might not expect when doing the usual intended game activities.

Naturally the depths of the sea are a key setting for many an iconic movie as well as the world of literature and novels, seeing how the void of the deep waters is home to many a scary aquatic fish as well as particular 'otherworldly' denizens that such Lovecraftian works as 'The Night Ocean' and 'The Call of Cthulhu' explored to a terrifying degree where psychological horror is concerned, particularly with the discoveries surrounding 'Abyssal Gigantism' and the mythos that stemmed from all of this bizarre science in the world of Ichthyology!

It's not surprising to see why Subnautica was a natural contender for 2018's horror scene, given that it is primarily an underwater exploration game that puts you in the shoes of a survivor of the Aurora spaceship that crashed onto the planet simply known as '4546B' under mysterious circumstances. From there, your main goal is to survive by means of extracting various resources from the surrounding land under the sea (be they minerals, plants or small fish) to help you survive in this new alien environment.

One thing I should note right before delving any further into this particular title here is that I have had previous experience with Subnautica before, indirectly via several playthroughs back to near when this game first launched in 2018 then getting a chance to experience it for myself on the PlayStation 5 in the form of the second entry, Below Zero, that I will be making several key comparisons as to what makes Subnautica so great and effective at what it seeks to accomplish as a horror experience whilst also making pointers as to how certain features missing or lessened in its sequel made it a less enjoyable time for players overall.

To start off, one of Subnautica's greatest strengths is its clear focus on a more slower style of exploration, given the limitations in your ability to move underwater and the many upgrades you will need to acquire to improve your speed in traversing the many biomes under the sea with increasingly dangerous hazards to navigate. Since the slow-paced exploration does wonders in adding to the overall immersion of the world you inhabit as the team behind Subnautica carefully designed the different areas as well as the intentional muted usage of audio, hearing the monstrous roar of some alien beast off in the distance and not quite being able to tell how far off it really is and the general isolation of the player truly encapsulates that feeling of unease as you progress further downwards.

What I also quite like about the way Subnautica's map is designed is how all paths eventually lead to a route towards the deeper biomes in a way that seems natural to this alien world and how this lends itself well to exploration and the push to go further down by means of getting various resources to build upon what you have and to expand your 'arsenal' of diving equipment, noting that there are very few weapons to fight off the many predators and threats of Planet 4546B (this game's method of explaining this and other info can be found via PDAs and fauna/flora whose data can be scanned with a specific tool for this exact purpose alongside blueprints for many of the items you'll need to craft in order to thrive) which in turn leads to a different approach on how to handle these dangers compared to most horror games.

It also helps that this game delivers on the terror of diving deep beyond where practically 99.99% of all humans will ever go, since Subnautica is an experience worth trying out for any fan of the horror genre, be they casual fans or hardcore fanatics! Having to face off not just against the usual small and large predators of the sea but also eventually coming across the revered 'leviathans' that strike fear upon first hearing them, and that's assuming your first sight of them is a straight-up jumpscare via an unexpected sudden attack from behind in the vast open waters or the larger caves deeper underground where these aquatic behemoths tend to lay in wait for their prey!

Evidently Subnautica has not gotten to where it has here in 2025 with over 280k reviews and an overall rating of 97% without at least being a pretty solid title in its own right, something my review will likely not change the minds of those who already have tried out Subnautica and loved it or the rare few that simply did not gel with it. However, I wish to further strengthen my review of this splendid horror game by comparing it to what some will say is a direct 'sequel', though I believe it was originally intended to be DLC to this game but grew to a scale of being its own entry in the Subnautica series.

I am, of course, referring to Subnautica: Below Zero which has caused a lot of controversy in the direction it took the underwater exploration game by shifting its focus from horror being a secondary but significant element of Subnautica's gameplay with isolation being a key theme into leaning more towards a character-focused storytelling of immersion, letting the players take the shoes of somebody who isn't just a silent protagonist but rather a fully-voiced character that enabled the development studio behind this game, Unknown Worlds, to explore more of Planet 4546B but from a more arctic landscape as opposed to the warm tropical waters in the first title.

The reason I bring this up is largely down to how the sequel does succeed in some key areas, mainly the core mechanics of exploring a new underwater environment and gathering resources to progress whilst interacting with friendly flora/fauna and evading the more dangerous ones alongside expanding on the base building system further that makes it that much more of a joy to set up and create your own base, whether on land or setting on shallow waters to the very deepest parts of the tundra sea.

With that said, many have played Below Zero and found it lacking in several departments, with the storytelling suffering greatly from a shift in the writing department back when Subnautica first released in 2018 and the gameplay no longer feeling so enjoyable due to many of the bigger threats either lacking that same aggression which could pounce upon you when least expected or those that overdo it to a point of actively becoming a nuisance. (A certain huge worm of the icy plains is a key example of Below Zero's faults!)

And it goes without saying that the bright and colourful visuals of Below Zero were too saturated in how the more cramped cave spaces (hence no mighty 'Cyclops' equivalent in that game) ironically give a weird feeling of safety by being able to hide from the larger fish that you would normally be exposed to for most of your time spent deep underwater, a key design choice with the larger spaces when going deeper in the original game as all of that murky water you had to navigate made the risk of a sudden encounter with a ferocious leviathan very much a real threat whilst Below Zero failed to achieve that same effect.

No doubt that Below Zero is a game that can still be enjoyed with the right mindset, however it is still a downgrade compared to the original game and, with the release date of the upcoming Subnautica 2 on the horizon, I hope to put this forward as an informed piece on how the true sequel to this unique title should strive to become. With that said, I wholeheartedly recommend this underwater open world game to those still curious about it or those looking for a new type of horror to experience and, with some hope and luck, the upcoming sequel should prove to be a worthy successor of the Subnautica series!

ocean spooky