Subnautica 2 devs say it's 'an exploration game first,' expanding on the first game's 'masterclass' in player-driven discovery

If you check the Steam listings for the Subnautica games, you'll find the "Survival" tag prominently featured—mostly on account of the gathering, and the crafting, and the risk of drowning in an overtly hostile biosphere. In an interview with PC Gamer ahead of its upcoming early access launch, however, Subnautica 2's developers say that's something of a misnomer.

"We often talk about Subnautica being a survival game when we're speaking publicly," said Subnautica 2 lead gameplay designer Anthony Gallegos. "But internally, we often focus on the fact that it's really an exploration game first, and the survival mechanics operate as something to support exploration."

According to Gallegos, Subnautica's survival mechanics are a framework more than a focus, providing the player with structure and momentum as they dive into its oceans to see what alien ruins and murderous leviathans they might find along the way. With Subnautica 2, he says Unknown Worlds has worked to refine its survival systems while maintaining that same emphasis on exploring the undersea depths of an alien world.

"We've largely tried to preserve what Subnautica had and look for more improvements on the user experience," Gallegos said, noting some of the sequel's quality of life improvements like proximity-based inventory sharing between lockers while crafting. "A lot of it was looking at the best in class stuff other survival games were doing and the annoying things we didn't like about Subnautica 1 and trying to elevate those while preserving the crux of things."

While some of its survival systems might feel familiar to returning players, creative media producer Scott MacDonald said "there are things that are going to catch you out"—like how the ocean itself behaves.

"We have currents in Subnautica 2, which we didn't have really in Subnautica 1 or Below Zero," MacDonald said. "So now, if you go around the corner and you're not paying attention, you could get caught in a current and be taken to a completely unknown place, even somewhere deeper than you expected."

Gallegos says it's not just the chance of being whisked away on an unfriendly tide that make Subnautica 2's seas feel like a new experience. The sequel has the obvious benefit of more modern graphics tech, and a shift in visual mood to make the most of it.

"One of the things that people talked about Subnautica and how much they liked it over Below Zero was that Subnautica felt a lot darker. And I would say our game feels a lot closer to the darkness levels of Subnautica one," Gallegos said. "The lighting feels much more dynamic. Bioluminescence pops in a way that it didn't before."

While that "might sound more like a visual thing," he says it "actually impacts the game feel as well," providing an almost palpable shift sense of danger as players swim out of shallow waters and into the more threatening corners of the abyss.

And then, of course, there are the sea monsters. Subnautica 2 takes place on a new world with new alien ocean fauna: In previously released trailers, we've seen giant crabs and massive squids unlike anything in the biomes of Subnautica 1, offering players the excitement of once again being unsure of what might kill them and when.

"We have a lot of creatures that look very different from things that you saw in Subnautica. That changes people's perception of the ocean," Gallegos said. "If we made yet another game there that paid a lot of homage to the original planet, I think people would feel pretty safe, because they know everything about that world at this point. They've been there a lot. In this new one, we get a lot of benefit out of the fact that people aren't familiar with it. They're back to square one: Random creature makes a sound, and they have no idea if it's friendly or not."

While the depths of Subnautica 2 might feel alien in a few different ways, Gallegos—who joined Unknown Worlds in 2021—said he and the rest of the dev team drew plenty of design lessons from Subnautica 1, which he called a "masterclass" in evoking a sense of player-driven discovery.

"Subnautica made people feel really clever, like they were discovering everything on their own—even if the level designers and artists and narrative were doing minor things to constantly point you in the direction of where they wanted you to go," he said. "Subnautica did a really good job of making people feel amazingly free in that world."

Key to Subnautica 1's formula, which the sequel aims to emulate, was how it presented objectives for the player: Rather than tell them directly with an on-screen questlog of explicit objectives, it pointed players at a beacon and left them to figure out what they'd need to reach it on their own.

"People felt like they weren't playing Subnautica the way they were told; they were playing their version of Subnautica," Gallegos said, "even if their version happened to line up with a lot of other people's versions because of the way the progression was really carefully designed."

That feeling, he said, is what Unknown Worlds hopes Subnautica 2 can offer. And apparently, it's already had some success.

"The best compliment we had when we had some of the early play testers was they were like, 'I feel like I'm returning to Subnautica,'" Gallegos said. "And we were like, 'mission accomplished.' Our goal was to return to that feeling while providing a new world to explore."

Subnautica 2 launches in early access on Steam on May 14.