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When the studio behind Subnautica says it wants the sequel to spend at least two years in early access, it is worth paying attention. The original spent three years in that phase before launching properly in 2018, and Unknown Worlds Entertainment are pretty adamant that this is the right formula for their beloved underwater survival title.
By the time you read this, Subnautica 2 will be available in early access at €29.99, with a new planet, a new cast of creatures, and a story that has nothing to do with the original. It's the studio's way of creating a game that brings similar vibe to the table, but under a fresh new coating that introduces a slate of new features.
The setup is grim in the way Subnautica does grim best. You wake up on a planet that was supposed to host a human colony, except the colony failed and everyone is gone. The team namedrops Everybody's Gone to the Rapture as one of the inspirations for its mystery narrative. You don't know who you are or how you got there, and the answers are presumably buried somewhere very deep and very dark.
Visually it is a proper step up, and the team is not shy about saying so. The sequel is built on Unreal Engine 5, with Nanite handling the geometry density and Lumen taking care of global illumination. In practice that means the underwater environments look dense and realistic, with light filtering through them in a way the first game could only gesture at. The biome count starts at over ten for early access, with the team promising 14 to 20 hours of content at launch. That my not be much for some, but it's certainly a solid start.
The horror is back, which will reassure anyone who spent the first game gripping their mouse a bit too tightly. The developers are clear that they wanted the sequel to keep its dread, and that as you go deeper the experience gets darker and scarier. One member of the team described it as deep water stuff that will trigger your claustrophobia. The Collector leviathan was singled out as the sort of creature you will want to avoid for most of the game. Infected areas are also being built to feel visually and mechanically distinct, so the planet's sickness is something you can read in the world itself.
Survival has been reworked in some interesting ways. You cannot just eat alien food the moment you find it. The planet grants you adaptations as you progress, opening up new food sources and ways to keep yourself going. Crafting and scanning are still central, with the scanner letting you catalogue creatures, recipes, and objects much as before. There is a new vehicle called the Tadpole, which uses a chassis system that changes how it handles. One chassis turns it into a fast and maneuverable runabout, another leans into hauling cargo, and the implication is that you will end up swapping setups depending on what your routine looks like that day.
Base building is where the team is leaning hardest into player expression. Everything is customisable, including the windows, which sounds minor until you remember how much time you spend staring out of them. The pitch is that your base should look like yours, not a default template, with plenty of room to fuss over the aesthetics.
Creatures are getting smarter too, with the developers wanting them to feel alive even when the player is not directly looking. The aim is fauna that can hold more than one thought at a time and react appropriately, rather than the stock patrol patterns most survival games default to.
Co-op is present, but never forced. The full game is playable solo, and the developers stressed that nothing in the campaign requires a second player. Your companion character, for what it is worth, will not talk to you outside of base, which keeps the open ocean feeling like your problem alone.
The roadmap is where the two-year early access window starts to make sense. The first major update is focused on quality of life, with improvements to the biomod system, blight encounters, gameplay and vehicle docking, plus more passive biomod slots and the long-overdue ability to sprint.
The 1.2 update is the co-op pass, bringing hub systems, base building tools tuned for groups, proximity voice chat, player emote and a player revive system the team is investigating. After that, the developers are talking about big expansions to the world itself, with new biomes, creatures, leviathans, vehicles, tools, and the next chapter of the story.
If that sounds like a lot, it is, and that is rather the point. Subnautica 2 is not trying to land fully formed. It is trying to grow in public, which is exactly how the first one became what it became.
