You’ll get that sinking feeling
Subnautica brings deep-sea diving to PS4
Fear of the ocean is pretty common. And for good reason. The sea is a huge expanse – it’s the unknown. Fear of the sea is basically the terror of space, but right here on Planet Earth. And Unknown Worlds’ new game makes the most of it.
“We didn’t set out to make a scary game when we started developing Subnautica five years ago,” Charlie Cleveland, Unknown Worlds’ founder and director explains. “We wanted to make an open-world underwater game where you didn’t kill creatures.” And they achieved that; this underwater exploration game can, at times, perfectly encapsulate the joys of deep-sea diving. But the devs felt they had to capitalise on the primal fear they’d accidentally touched upon. “Some of it happens unintentionally due to innate fears that many of us have. Once we saw these psychological factors at work, we focused on them to create thrills,” says Cleveland.
Subnautica is sure to create many more fans of the lands beneath the waves. There might be plenty we still don’t know about our oceans on Earth, but the epic journey you undertake in the game is even more mysterious. You play the sole survivor of a crash landing in the ocean of 4546B, an alien planet. Plenty of dangerous creatures lurk in the waters, but so too do wondrous things await. Everything you discover is strange and exotic (if occasionally very frightening). You’ll also need to collect resources to survive if you want to tell tales of your findings to others in the future, pushing you to keep exploring.
DANGEROUS CREATURES LURK IN THE WATERS. SO DO WONDROUS THINGS.
Subnautica crash-lands on PS4 around the time this issue hits shelves. Dive in!