Underwater Interlude

Last night was very odd for me gaming-wise. It was one of those days where I got home from work and felt exhausted no matter what I did. My intention was to try out Warframe with the other Aggrochat folks, but it was taking a few minutes to download and I was getting sleepy and impatient. I spent a bunch of time staring at my Steam library and poking at things until I finally settled on Subnautica.

Reusing this image because these giant squid monsters are still amazing.

I talked about my feelings for this game a while ago when I first got into it. I really loved building a cool undersea base and exploring. Unfortunately a bit before the holidays they added an update that changed some of the terrain and messed up my structures. These are the perils of playing a game that is still in Steam early access. On the plus side, they do keep adding new cool things almost every month or two. The newest one supposedly lets you access some new areas of your crashed ship, so I definitely wanted to check it out.

Starting up a fresh game was a bit daunting after all the hours and work I had put in and lost, but it was the only way forward. I waffled for a minute trying to decide between a normal game, or an exploration-mode only setting where you don’t have to worry about silly things like food, water, or oxygen. Eventually I decided to stick with the normal survival mode, since the “story”, such as it is, supposedly doesn’t progress in exploration mode.

This game is perfect for relaxing. The sea creatures, underwater vistas, and even the music are very pretty and for the most part very chill. Sure, every once in a while a sea monster tried to eat me, but that’s a small price to pay. Starting from scratch was a little annoying, but within a half hour or so I had a store of food and water and an all-important O2 tank. By the end of the evening I had a 1-room structure and had even managed to build a mini-sub, so the next time I play I should be good to go exploring  and gathering resources.

I didn’t manage to get far enough to start exploring the new stuff yet, but I did see some signs of the changes in the past few updates like new crafting recipes. I am incredibly glad I fired this game back up , it was a perfect calm way to spend the evening. If you weren’t sold before by “sweet underwater exploration plus building cool sea bases and submarines” then there’s probably nothing new that would change your mind. If you were on the fence though, it might be worth checking out. It is definitely more than enough to distract me until Diablo 3 takes over my world tomorrow night!