Unknown Worlds Entertainment have announced their underwater survival-crafting adventure Subnautica has moved from Steam Early Access into official release on PC. On Xbox One, Subnautica remains in Early Access for now, though it’s receiving the same updates as PC.
“Since the game’s beta release in 2014, Subnautica has received waves of positive and constructive feedback from our dedicated players,” said Charlie Cleveland, Co-Founder and Game Director at Unknown Worlds Entertainment. “The team is grateful to the community for the overwhelming support. We are proud to deliver an experience that gamers of all ages will dive into and immediately feel the thrill of exploration and survival in an expansive undersea world.”
Subnautica, like other big survival crafting games such as ARK: Survival Evolved, has benefited from years of Steam Early Access. Instead of waking up on an island of dinosaurs, you crash land into a vast alien ocean. From there you must scavenge for food and shelter, as well as keeping an eye on your oxygen bar. You can eventually craft vast underwater habitats as well as submersible vehicles.
There are three gameplay modes: Survival, Hardcore, and Creative. Survival is the normal experience, where you manage your hunger, health, and oxygen. Hardcore gives you only one life and no oxygen alerts. Creative dials it back, letting you explore the ocean and build your dream sea lab with no health or resources to worry about.
Subnautica is also available on Xbox One, but the developers aren’t ready to take off the Early Access label just yet: “We want to take more time with the Xbox One version of Subnautica, because we don’t think performance and stability on Xbox One is up to the standards of a released title,” states the official blog post. “We aren’t sure when we will launch on Xbox One, but we will be working hard on doing so as quickly as possible.”
A PlayStation 4 version is also planned later this year.
