Then, in my own time, delved into a story that this time seems really focused on ideas about relationships. I've gone off on little jaunts, built oxygen pipe networks to better reach deeper caves, and enjoyed scanning all the new beasties I can find. So while they suggest on their store page that this contains a couple of hours of game to play, I've spent far, far longer poking around and gathering resources and getting the best diving tools I can build. Hooray! That's possibly the most important thing about why Subnautica worked so very well, and why everything feels in place for Below Zero: it too is a survival game with a sense of purpose, a constant notion of reason and direction, without the imposition of deadlines rushing you past all the interesting nooks and crannies it offers to explore.
By discovery you unlock the story, but are left to pursue it all at your own pace. As before, you're told at which depth locations can be found, and then left to your own devices to figure out how to get that deep without asphyxiating. Things get going rather faster here than previously, diving head-first into exploration of similar alien ruins within the opening minutes. Your PDA is yet again wiped of all blueprint details (sigh), so once more it's time to scan everything that can be scanned, gather rocks and plants for crafting, and fabricate your way to a better tomorrow. Familiar territory, with some familiar creatures, and plenty of new ones to tentatively swim near. Of course it's only moments before disaster strikes, the lovely base is gone, and you're trapped under the freezing waters in a teeny tiny rescue pod helpfully dropped by your sis. And more striking than the opening being set on land in a large established research base, was that relationship - there's another living person to talk to! She's part of a research mission to a polar region of 4546B, a year after the original game's tale, with her sister Sam orbiting above the planet in a base station. This time you're playing Robin Goodall, and she immediately lives up to her namesake, as you find PDAs explaining her ambitions to enculturate herself within alien communities. The following inevitably contains mild spoilers for the original Subnautica Once again we're under the sea, albeit in frostier conditions, with the first few hours and earliest biomes of a whole new adventure.
So perhaps it's not ultimately that surprising that Unknown Worlds would repeat the practice for their follow-up, Subnautica: Below Zero. Co-created with its players, but confident enough to maintain its creative direction, the result is one of the best games of the last few years. Not just because of its financial achievements - still dwarfed by some of the bigger names - but because of how it used the process to build and refine an exquisitely good game.
Subnautica is one of the great early access success stories.
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