Subnautica

Worth buying? What 300 Steam reviews say.Worth buying? Here’s what 300 Steam reviews actually say.

Overwhelmingly PositiveOverwhelmingly Positive · 97%2018

The verdict

A landmark underwater survival game with gorgeous biomes, tense thalassophobic horror and addictive exploration. Skip it if you hate grind, vague direction, or having no autosave and no map.

Great for

Players who love atmospheric exploration, discovery with little hand-holding, and a bit of deep-sea horror

Main risk

Vague direction, no map and late-game fetch grind can feel tedious, with save-losing bugs

What players love

Terrifying leviathans and thalassophobia

Mentioned in ~1 in 3 positive reviews

“Subnautica is a rare case where the game scares you not with monsters but with silence.”
Steam review · translated · 55.3 h played ↗

“The game doesn't need constant jumpscares to be scary; the darkness, sound design, and not knowing what's around you do most of the work.”
Steam review · 34 h played ↗

“Manages to be both a super relaxing undersea exploration game and a deep ocean abyssal horror anxiety simulator at the same time.”
Steam review · 46.5 h played ↗

Gorgeous, immersive alien ocean

Mentioned in ~1 in 4 positive reviews

“Genuinely one of the most beautiful and immersive games I've ever played.”
Steam review · 344.4 h played ↗

“Moving from colorful coral reefs to pitch-black, menacing deep-sea trenches is incredibly motivating.”
Steam review · 40.2 h played ↗

“The game is wonderful, great immersion and atmosphere, a well-thought-out world”
Steam review · translated · 57.4 h played ↗

Rewarding exploration and discovery

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 positive reviews

“Exploration of the unknown is top notch”
Steam review · 2028.1 h played ↗

“The story is also surprisingly good, especially because the game lets you discover most of it yourself instead of constantly giving you objectives.”
Steam review · 34 h played ↗

“The game hooks you through exploration — you constantly want to dive a bit deeper and find a new biome or blueprint”
Steam review · translated · 49 h played ↗

Fun base building and vehicles

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 positive reviews

“I personally just make one giant super base and it was sick, speaking of sick THE CYCLOPS I love that thing so much”
Steam review · 74.2 h played ↗

“Base building is the greatest”
Steam review · 2028.1 h played ↗

“The Prawn Suit is a vehicle with a jetpack and powerful combat arms”
Steam review · translated · 4.5 h played ↗

Compelling story told through discovery

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 positive reviews

“What really surprised me was how good the story was, the main ending point of the story made me feel all teary-eyed”
Steam review · 81.1 h played ↗

“I find the story to be the absolute best feature of this already badass game.”
Steam review · 344.4 h played ↗

Great sound design and music

Mentioned in ~1 in 10 positive reviews

“Sounds and music are outstanding”
Steam review · 2028.1 h played ↗

“The soundtracks are amazing too.”
Steam review · 43.9 h played ↗

What players complain about

No map or direction; needs a guide

Mentioned in ~1 in 4 negative reviews

“After the start of the game it never gives you any sense of direction, nor does it give you the liberty of having a map or free markers.”
Steam review · 25.8 h played ↗

“A game you have to play with Google. Or swim for hundreds of hours with no idea what to do or where to find the next clue”
Steam review · translated · 55.7 h played ↗

“It is not possible to play more than about 10 minutes without finding a hints and tips site.”
Steam review · 19.9 h played ↗

Late-game grind and tedious travel

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 negative reviews

“The mid to late game, once you have to cover bigger distances, is absolutely horrible. The vehicles are *sooo* slow, and you have to go back and forth soo much.”
Steam review · 23 h played ↗

“the late game is such a snore. leviathans lose their spook factor pretty quickly, and a majority of your time in the 2nd half of the game will be spent going back and forth for arbitrary items”
Steam review · 113.6 h played ↗

“Interest drops fast after about 5 hours, once all the interesting spots are explored; then it's dull swimming from point to point”
Steam review · translated · 8.7 h played ↗

Game-breaking bugs years after release

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 negative reviews

“it's amazing the developers have failed to fix show-stopping bugs on a game released 8 years ago. incredibly shoddy work.”
Steam review · 68.2 h played ↗

“the last alien base wouldn't load properly no matter what i did, my prown suit got stuck in it's floor and i'm permanently locked out of finishing the game”
Steam review · 39.7 h played ↗

“The game is good overall but very buggy. I've died several times on hardcore near the end because of bugs”
Steam review · translated · 27.3 h played ↗

No autosave and lost progress

Mentioned in ~1 in 9 negative reviews

“Game seems fun until it closes all by itself and you discover there is no auto save and you just lost HOURS!!!”
Steam review · 6.3 h played ↗

“What kind of game doesn't auto save when you quit? I lost hours worth of progress with no warning.”
Steam review · 1.6 h played ↗

“THE LACK OF AUTOSAVE. I got absorbed, forgot to save, played 3 hours since the last save”
Steam review · translated · 27.4 h played ↗

Tiny inventory, no stacking

Mentioned in ~1 in 11 negative reviews

“It's the fact that there is absolutely no stacking in this game and each material/item takes up 1-4 slots.”
Steam review · 16.4 h played ↗

“Items for some reason don't stack and the inventory is small…”
Steam review · translated · 30.9 h played ↗

Mod-breaking update and removed old versions

Mentioned in ~1 in 19 negative reviews

“Devs made a random update screwing over all mods and then delisted the old version so it's impossible to even play the old one.”
Steam review · 75.8 h played ↗

“You killed the whole mod community with update 2.1.”
Steam review · translated · 22.8 h played ↗

System requirements

From the Steam store page

Steam Deck: Verified

Minimum

OSWindows Vista SP2 or newer, 64-bit

ProcessorIntel Haswell 2 cores / 4 threads @ 2.5Ghz or equivalent

Memory4 GB RAM

GraphicsIntel HD 4600 or equivalent - This includes most GPUs scoring greater than 950 points in the 3DMark Fire Strike benchmark

Storage20 GB available space

Recommended

OSWindows Vista SP2 or newer, 64-bit

ProcessorIntel Haswell 4 cores / 4 threads @ 3.2Ghz or equivalent

Memory8 GB RAM

GraphicsNvidia GTX 550 Ti or equivalent, 2GB VRAM

Storage20 GB available space

OSWindows Vista SP2 or newer, 64-bit

ProcessorIntel Haswell 2 cores / 4 threads @ 2.5Ghz or equivalent

Memory4 GB RAM

GraphicsIntel HD 4600 or equivalent - This includes most GPUs scoring greater than 950 points in the 3DMark Fire Strike benchmark

Storage20 GB available space

More games to check

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Once Human

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analyzed 3 h ago

No Man's Sky

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