Subnautica is an open-world single-player survival game created by Unknown Worlds Entertainment.

In this game, you play as a stranded astronaut on an alien planet made up of almost entirely ocean. Your one goal is to escape this alien world.

This game is the perfect blend of adventure, exploring, survival and thrill. While most survival games struggle to keep things interesting, Subnautica manages to have you hooked on the game the whole time.

Subnautica maintains this interest with its unique environments, sense of achievement, achievable yet challenging goals and open-world freedom.

The focus isn’t primarily on the survival part of the game, you aren’t stressed out about getting food or shelter the whole time. At the same time, its survival aspect is still enough to present a little challenge. Instead, the focus is on the world and exploration aspect of the game.

Unfortunately for you, this vast ocean is inhabited by a large variety of aggressive alien species. These monsters range from a massive translucent leviathan to a football-sized fish that explodes when you get close.

In this game there is no viable way to attack the creatures first; therefore, your only real options are dodge, escape or hide.

To complete the game, you’re forced to traverse through terrifying biomes, face the deadliest of creatures and explore the ruins of this world. Progressing forces you to face your fears and explore through the open ocean to gather resources and blueprints.

Nothing quite matches the fear of seeing the shadow of a reaper leviathan swimming over you while you have nothing but a flashlight and little pocket knife.

Subnautica is also a great introductory game. This was one of the first games I ever played and to this day it’s easily one of my favorites.

One choice the developers of the game made was by making so much of the game optional. There are creatures you may never see and places you may never visit, but it’s all there for you if you want to explore.

Almost all of the lore of the game can be completely ignored if you aren’t into that, but if you are, it’s still an interesting and fleshed-out narrative you can explore.

The biggest issue people have with the game is that it’s not optimized for the Nintendo Switch and often crashes. The other issue people have is that there is no autosave feature so when people crash they lose progress if they forgot to save.

I have encountered issues with the manual save but for the most part after crashing I never lost more than an hour of work. My favorite part of this game is the experiences you get playing it, so I didn’t mind getting back what I lost for the most part.

Subnautica is a masterpiece of a game. If you enjoy survival-type games, I highly recommend it.