A time capsule is a boxful of objects from today's world, buried or otherwise hidden away so that people from the future can rediscover and understand current Hot Trends such as wearing mismatched socks or electing washed-up businessmen with fascist tendencies. Unless, that is, it's a time capsule in sci-fi ocean survival game Subnautica, in which case it contains: THE FUTURE. Developers Unknown Worlds have been sneaking pictures of the forthcoming Subnautica 2 into the original game's time capsules, offering glimpses of its flora and fauna.
]]>A financial report from Subnautica 2 publisher Krafton said the underwater survival sequel would adopt a "game-as-a-service model". Cue much gnashing of teeth and rending of shirts, so much so that developers Unknown Worlds have clarified what that means. "No season passes. No battle passes. No subscription."
]]>“The Next Subnautica” is targeting a release date in the first half of 2025, according to the latest financial report from PUBG publisher Krafton. Unknown Worlds are back in the development seat for their third underwater survival dip, following the terrifying breakout first game in 2018 and its icier sequel Subnautica: Below Zero in 2021.
]]>Our list of the best open world games on PC is for those who look at a forest and think about seeing what's in the middle. For the players who really do want to climb that mountain. Sure, the size of games these days means in some sense they all have an open world, but here we're leaning in to those games that want you to adventure, where the onus is on exploring and seeing what you find. These are the games where part of the destination really is the journey, and you can tell the devs wanted you to stop and look around every so often to see what you could find. They might not be for everyone, but if you're the sort of person who likes getting lost in a game for a long time, then these open world games will help you do that.
]]>Hot (weeks) off the back of Sons Of The Forest and the Resident Evil 4 remake coming out, we're celebrating your bestest best, most favourite survival games this month. Your votes have been counted and tallied, and your accompanying words of praise and affection matched accordingly. But which game has survived to make it to the top of the pile? Come and find out as we count down your 25 favourite survival games of all time.
]]>Everyone loves Subnautica, the beautiful, terrifying, no-combat underwater survival game. Have as many people also explored the chilly seas of similarly excellent standalone expansion Subnautica: Below Zero? No. So here's a chance to fix that: Below Zero is currently 58% off in Steam's Base Builder Fest.
]]>Subnautica sees you play as the lone survivor of a space crew whose ship has crash-landed in the middle of a vast alien ocean. To survive, you'll need to dip into the sea and use your trusty knife to carve kelp and mine rocks to slowly kit yourself out in gear that'll help you survive betterer. But most importantly, dip furtherer.
]]>Aquatic open-world sci-fi fest Subnautica has hit 2.0 with its Living Large major update, bringing the game's quality up to par with sequel Subnautica: Below Zero. The update brings across some snazzy construction parts from Below Zero, meaning you’re now free to trick out your bases with surface hatches and glass domes. Nice. It also sweeps away more than 800 bugs, including ones that affected base building, vehicle navigation, and piloting. Living Large adds an unstuck button to the menu too, in case you get into peril on some geometry below the waves and can’t free yourself.
]]>I'm not a very big enjoyer of horror games. On the very rare occasion that I do boot up a horror game, a chemical change seems to occur in my body. The part of my brain responsible for going "holy mother of hell get me away from this scary thing" is dampened. I expect to be scared, and therefore I'm more resilient to said scariness. I might just not be very good at getting into the horror games mindset. My brain is too busy battening down all the hatches and readying the engines of war against the oncoming spookies and ghosties.
The times I've been most scared playing a game are when I don't expect to be scared. And what better way to lull myself into a false sense of security this Halloween than to play an otherwise not-so-scary game, with just one particularly horror-esque moment?
]]>Subnautica is, according to us, the best survival game. Its standalone expansion Subnautica: Below Zero is great, too. So it's good news that developers Unknown Worlds, despite having been bought by PUBG's developers and working on something in a whole new genre, are also working on something new in the "Subnautica universe". This according to a job advert posted this week.
]]>Krafton, the South Korean company behind Plunkbat and Tera, today announced that they're buying Unknown Worlds, the studio splendid subaquatic survival sim series Subnautica and the fantastic FPS-RTS hybrid Natural Selection. Huh! The professed plan is for them to keep on as usual, still working on the Subnauticae as well as a mystery game debuting next year.
]]>Subnautica was a game I spent a lot of time just living in. It was a rare combination of survival and relaxation. I loved the base building, crafting what amounted to a reverse aquarium clinging to an underwater sea cliff. It grew from a small bulb of oxygen into a proper little sanctuary. When I picked it up, it was fairly late into its life, and a number of mods were already waiting to be installed. I quickly dialed down the game’s frustrations and made my time under the sea all the more enjoyable, so here are our picks for the best Subnautica mods available today.
]]>If you've been waiting patiently for Subnautica: Below Zero to leave its early access adventure, then I have some good news for you: the icy explore-a-thon launched in full today. Set two years after the events of the first Subnautica, Below Zero plunges you into a frostbitten new region with new creatures to discover - such as terrifying penguins with beaks atop their heads.
]]>Well, spit in my goggles and give me the bends, they've done it again. The first Subnautica remains one of the best survival games you can shake a stick at. It stranded you on a planet whose surface was an endless vista of tranquil water and peaceful moons. In Subnautica: Below Zero breaching the surface is more likely to see you taking gulps of air in a hideous blizzard. There are hailstones, sharp winds, thick whiteouts. In the first game you learned to suppress your desire to live close to an inviting surface. In this wintry follow-up, the surface hates you and the water is your refuge right from the start.
]]>Subnautica: Below Zero has been in early access for over two years, and the underwater survival sim follow-up is approaching its final release date next month on May 14th. To mark that looming date, developers Unknown Worlds have released a cinematic trailer which gives a brief introduction to some of the creatures that will terrify you in the murky deep.
]]>With the first signs of spring now blooming, it feels weird to be suddenly excited about the prospect of going somewhere proper cold, yet here I am. The makers of Subnautica: Below Zero just announced that their frozen follow-up to 2018's wonderful undersea survival adventure will leave early access and launch in full on the 14th of May. I'm so ready to meet more weird sealife on an alien planet, then eat some and be eaten by others.
]]>Jingle that pointless metal money over here, little human. You need a place to put all that ridiculous cash, and I know just the thing. Vending machines. They are like regular shops except imagine your Mars bar didn't leave the shop assistant's hand and you had to slap their arm to loosen it free and afterwards they just smiled at you as if nothing was amiss with vacant eyes like two pilot lights and a tin voice like someone speaking through an office intercom which suddenly erupts with high decibel hatred: "WELCOME TO THE CIRCUS OF VALUE".
Here are the 9 best vending machines in PC games. Have a good day.
]]>Ultrawide gaming monitors can seem excessive compared to regular 16:9 gaming screens, especially when their demanding resolutions often require powerful and expensive graphics cards to make the most of them. Once you try one, though, there's no going back. I've been a big fan of ultrawide gaming monitors for years now, as their extra screen space not only makes them great for juggling multiple desktop windows, but supported PC games also look uttery fantastic on them - and to prove it, I've put together this list of the best ultrawide games on PC.
]]>There's never been a better time to get into survival games on PC, as the recent revival of the genre means Steam is now awash in some truly great games, both in early access and in full release. There are more arriving every year, too, which is why we've done the hard work for you and ranked the very best survival games to dive into today. Fair warning - there are some early access games on this list, which mean they might be a little janky early on. Give them the time they deserve, though, and you'll find they often blossom into some truly great games over subsequent updates. We've only included the very best and most complete-feeling survival games on this list, though, so you can rest assured that every game here will leave you hungry for more. It's by no means exhaustive, but it should give you a nice selection of wolf-taming, base-building, carrot-picking action to choose from.
]]>As the fuzzy denizens of earth pivot to non-existence, we will soon be left with an unclear memory of the animal kingdom's bizarre court. The elephant, for instance, what even is it? I cannot help with that question, I’m not a marine biologist. But what I can offer is a tour of endangered videogame wildlife. Otherworldly creatures you can’t find beneath the rocks of reality or swimming in the ponds of tangibility. It is the least I can do. So, here you go. A safari of the 9 weirdest animals in PC games.
]]>There it is, the trans-planetary pipeline. One long tube of metal scarring a rural alien planet. It brings coal and water to my power stations, and electricity to my factories. It has taken a day of planning, construction and pumping. Now, the pipeline stands before me, a snaking behemoth of energy consumption. Suddenly, a thought comes. Why didn't I just build coal stations next to the vein? I could have stretched a cheap wire across the planet, instead of a kilometre-long death pipe.
This is Satisfactory, a cracking first-person factory-builder that's been in early access on Epic for a while. It's coming to Steam today, so RPS management dispatched me to inspect the game's machinery and ruin the extraterrestrial idyll with smog and incompetence. They sent the right person.
]]>Wow. Look at that summer sun slapping the face of the planet, like a big 12-hour camera flash. So hot, so clear-skied. A blessed day of walks in the park, trips to the beach, picnics by the litter bins. What a glorious day for wasps it is out there. Let’s all go to the...
Oh right. Forget I said anything. Go back inside, lock the doors, and consider some of these perfect virtual holiday destinations. Please, trust us with your fake vacation. After all, what is a games journalist but a sort of really dodgy travel agent?
]]>Listen, never mind that sharks are not the mindlessly violent animals we’ve been trained to fear, and simply additional victims of mankind’s global vertebrate binge. Dismiss, please, the ongoing cultural rehabilitation of this toothy swimmer, who is statistically quite poor at killing humans. Ignore also their adorable habit of falling asleep when you hold them upside-down. Forget it, forget it all. No more lovey-dovey thoughts for these wondrous aquatic beings, more maligned than malignant. This is a list about videogame sharks. And videogame sharks are the baddies. Here are the 9 deadliest sharks in PC games.
]]>May day! May day! It’s May Day, get it? I constructed this list of the 7 best distress calls in videogames so I could make this joke, and I refuse to back down now. Even if the 1st of May is associated with pagan spring festivities, and nothing at all to do with things going badly wrong in space or at sea. Even if the piece of radio lingo “mayday” has more to do with the French term “m’aider” than the one day per annum on which Morris dancers are allowed out of their cages. I refuse to acknowledge the longwindedness of this joke, and invite you to read this list article with a similar bullheaded attitude. You’ll enjoy it more that way.
(Warning: some spoilers for the games mentioned.)
]]>When the historians of the future cast their cyber-eyes over the deluge of stupidity we encrusted upon the primitive internet, they will see that our fables, our moral storytelling, was mostly conducted with flashing colours and double-jumps. Yes, videogames have adopted the moralistic finger-wagging of fairytales and Victorian novels, for better or for worse. They have taught us a lot about ourselves and our place in the world. Here are 13 of the "best" moral lessons from PC games. Yes, you may take notes.
]]>Mech love, not war. That is the lesson we must learn from the futuristic prophecies of the MechWarrior games. Yes, it is very noble to slam your big steel shoes upon a separatist’s bedroom, and to laser him in the head. But would it not bring greater valour, greater unity, greater enlightenment, if those same 65-ton brogues were used … to dance!
No. Here is a list of the 9 stompiest mechs in PC games. The heaviest, most murderous machines we know and trust with our frail human bods. But are they are all good at squashing?
]]>I was homeless when I discovered Minecraft -- not homeless in the street-sleeping sense, thankfully. Only in the sofa-surfing sense. I had a bed, even. The creaking cabin bed of two friends who took pity on me and let me crash for a few months in their house, while I sullied my fingertips with sambuca in a dank Yorkshire nightclub for part-time pound coins. My chin-scratching uni days had just ended, but I stubbornly refused to go back to my family house in Northern Ireland. I could do this, I reasoned, I just needed time.
Then my friend showed me how to punch a tree, and I found a new home.
]]>In the apparently endless battle-rap between developers and key reseller marketplace G2A, the shop has lobbed a lyrical bomb back at Unknown Worlds. As we reported yesterday, Subnautica and Natural Selection 2 developer Charlie Cleveland alleged: “We paid $30,000 to deal with credit card chargebacks because of G2A.”
G2A’s fascinating response: “Selling keys on a marketplace which was yet to come into existence seems unreasonable at best.”
]]>Subnautica developer Unknown Worlds has asked grey market key reseller G2A to pay them $300,000 in restitution. The developer claims the amount represents the $30,000 it had to spend to cover chargebacks from fraudulent credit card purchases of Natural Selection 2. G2A had previously promised to pay 10x the amount of any costs lost via fraudulent purchases on their site, as long as there’s proof such a thing occurred.
]]>What’s that on the horizon? It’s glowing, and it’s emanating a faint noise. Like three people talking about videogames on some sort of audio record. Hoist the sails, listeners, we’re going over there on a voyage of discovery. And if this turns out to be another damn Electronic Wireless Show about sport you are entirely at liberty to mutiny. Heave!
]]>The first big update for Subnautica: Below Zero is out now. Unknown Worlds have added new areas, new sea-life, and a big modular submarine truck to build in their early access survival adventure. The Seatruck update introduces your un-glamorous flagship vessel of this new game, an upgradable hauler that starts out with just a front cab, but you can add extra holds with new functions. There's two new biomes inhabited by new creatures, such as the massive, toothsome Squidshark. It may not be creatively named, but it can still kill you. See it and more in motion below.
]]>I worry about Geralt. The Witcher series may be over for now, but this hasn't stopped Geralt from taking odd jobs here and there, slaying beasts in Monster Hunter: World, or stabbing folks in Soul Calibur VI. Is Geralt getting adequate retirement benefits? Have witchers unionized yet? I hope he can get some rest, or at least find more contract work that doesn't involve exterminating monsters all the time. Freelancing is tiring.
Here are seven games that need to be blessed by Geralt’s presence.
]]>It worked! Everyone, it worked! The sacrifices we all made, they were all worth it. Some said we were fools to ritually slaughter those Fortnite players and smear our naked bodies with their blood and entrails, but look! No GTA V in the Steam Charts! And no Monster Hunter World! Sure, there's still flipping Clancy Siege, and obviously nothing short of sacrificing a god could take out Plunkbat, but it's a chart filled with fresh, new and even lovely games!
]]>Subnautica is one of the great early access success stories. Not just because of its financial achievements - still dwarfed by some of the bigger names - but because of how it used the process to build and refine an exquisitely good game. Co-created with its players, but confident enough to maintain its creative direction, the result is one of the best games of the last few years. So perhaps it's not ultimately that surprising that Unknown Worlds would repeat the practice for their follow-up, Subnautica: Below Zero.
Once again we're under the sea, albeit in frostier conditions, with the first few hours and earliest biomes of a whole new adventure.
The following inevitably contains mild spoilers for the original Subnautica
]]>Those who have plumbed the depths of Subnautica's oceans will have some chilly new waters to explore very soon. Standalone expansion Subnautica: Below Zero launches on Steam, Discord and the Epic Store on January 30th, albeit in early access. There's frosty new biomes to survive, strange new alien flora and fauna to eat (or be eaten by) and more to do on the surface. There's even going to be alien penguins (called Pengwings - yes, really), which would be adorable if a quarter of their body wasn't an enormous, vertical spike-lined clam shell.
]]>The doors have been opened, the games inside have been devoured, and now it's time to recycle the cardboard. Below you'll find all of our favourite games from 2018, gathered together in a single post for easy reading.
]]>If my 2018 was the year “of” anything, it was surely the year of knowing your place. The games I've picked out in hindsight are united by the idea of understanding how you fit into a complex world - appreciating the intricacy of the variables and relationships that surround every given moment, whether your overall aim be to subdue them or just survive them. That and a fondness for long words and creative sci-fantasy concepts, anyway. Read on, adventurer, for much talk of gods, spiders and spaceships.
]]>There's a dire force abroad in the open world of Subnautica, an irresistible entity hell-bent on warping or destroying everything that world contains, and just for once, it isn't the fucking player.
(Beware: moderate plot spoilers follow.)
]]>Subnautica - Unknown Worlds Entertainment's excellent aquatic survival adventure - is currently free to grab and keep forever on the Epic store, making it probably the most tempting reason to look at the shop after exclusives like Hades and Ashen. Released less than a year ago after a lengthy ride through early access, Subnautica is a gem. As someone who doesn't ordinarily like survival craft 'em ups, I still got into it, exploring its thoughtfully designed cavern networks and alien ruins as I delved deeper underwater. The game is free for the next two weeks, so swoop on down and grab it for free before it goes back up to £19.49/€20.99/$24.99.
]]>Whoa whoa, calm down, breeeathe. Now, explain it to me slowly. The RPS podcast did what? They talked about the games that make them panic? Hm. That does sound like something those scoundrels of the Electronic Wireless Show would do. They’d probably talk about Subnautica and Duskers and SpyParty. Okay, well stay calm. That’s right. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. There’s no need to –
[The podcast appears from the shadows]
AAAGGGHHHHHHHHH.
]]>Splendid sopping survival sim Subnautica is off to an icy ocean in a standalone expansion named Below Zero, developers Unknown Worlds Entertainment announced today. This was once talked about as DLC but naw it'll now be its own separate thing, entering early access "in the coming months". UWE are keeping relatively quiet for now, showing a few concepts for new alien oceanlife while muttering "We're still in early stages and nothing is set in ice". That said, folks who don't mind spoilers or potential disappointment can follow their public dev board to see all the wonders and horrors that may make it in. I've had a peek and ooooh!
]]>We're just about halfway through 2018 (which has somehow taken both too long and no time at all). As is tradition, we've shaken our our brains around to see which games from the last six months still make our neurons fizzle with delight. Then we wrote about them here, in this big list feature that you're reading right now this second.
And what games they are! 2018 has been a great year so far, and our top picks run the whole range, from hand drawn oddities made by one person, to big mega-studio blockbusters that took the work of hundreds. And each of them is special to us in some way. Just like you are too. Click through the arrows to see the full spread of our faves so far. Better luck next year to the games that didn't make the cut this time.
]]>We've just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It's a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you'll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.
2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets.
]]>"Miss, Miss, it's so sunny, can we have Steam Charts on the field?"
"NO. Sit down and write about popular PC games in this oppressively hot room until the DAY YOU DIE."
]]>The dadification of games continues. So we’re going full Dad this week on the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, as we’ve been asked to talk about the games we play with our children.
Alec’s daughter is excited by the unlockable characters in Rayman Legends (and she’s also strangely fascinated by Battletech). John’s son is a bit younger and likes to watch his dad diving in Abzu and Subnautica (but also manages to sneak glimpses of God of War’s quiet moments on the TV – naughty!). Brendan doesn’t have children, only a cat. She can’t stand games and thinks they are a waste of time.
]]>As the charting games on Steam once more congeal into a single amorphous lump, quickly dive in to catch the last appearance of Subnautica, and probably Slay The Spire too. Next week it'll just be GTA: Counter-Strike - Witcher Battlegrounds.
]]>Some websites will fob you off with scant details about your favourite best-selling games, but not RPS. Here you will find gaming's most insightful commentary on the leading games of the modern age.
]]>Underwater survival game Subnautica has a feature I neglected to mention in my review – time capsules! These titanium pods are player-made containers. They can hold a message, a screenshot and a few small items. At a certain point in the game you get to make one of these capsules. It’s then put through a voting process, vetted by the developers and - if it's good enough - finally plopped into the ocean for other divers to find. Some of these gifts have been useful, others sentimental. One is even an easter egg from the game’s technical artist. Here's the best ones we found when we went trawling (through Reddit).
]]>Where oh where is #9 this week, you ask, uncertain that it is possible to have a top ten without it. A mystery! Of course there are the usual suspects, the increasingly usual new suspects, and even a couple of new entries, but when it comes to slot nine, there's a gap. The URL for the entry is this, the number seemingly unattached to anything on the store, and not the since deleted entry for the idiotic CS:GO championship sticker collection, as I'd first assumed. Go solve the mystery, mystery solvers!
]]>Subnautica is remarkable for a great many reasons, and one of them is a particular creature discovered at about 300m deep, stomping their way in long processions across a well worn path of the seabed. The Sea Treaders. These titanic crustaceans(?) are a herd of complete joy.
]]>I've long been absorbed by the pleasure of games as safe places. Those oases that allow you to be entirely distracted from the outside, encased in a fantastic world that let you find calm. As someone who lives with the incessant turmoil that is generalised anxiety disorder, such games can offer extraordinary respite. And none has ever done this more for me than Subnautica.
]]>Aw MAN! Just when I'd started up a great new running gag for the appearance of GTA V in the charts, this week it's fallen out! And Divinity: Original Sin 2 has finally failed to make the grade for the first time this year. However, you'll be relieved to learn CS:GO and Plunkles don't let us down and wearily continue their infinite reigns.
Meantime, there's quite a nice mixture of fresh and more recently popular scattered within.
]]>Subnautica is an underwater survival game about crash landing on an alien planet and becoming best mates with its fish. It surfaced from early access this week and John and Brendan have both been for a dip. Here they share their thoughts on leaky bases, scary whales and the urgency of an alien flu. Note: Spoilers to follow.
John: Here’s a thing. I think it’s impossible to discuss Subnautica - the Official Best Survival Game Ever Made - without spoiling it. Like, if we say anything beyond, “You crash on a watery planet, and there are some fishies nearby,” then we take away from the reader the experience we both had approaching it. So what I say is: if you haven’t played Subnautica but want to, bloody well go play it and stop reading this nonsense. For everyone else who has, or needs convincing, we’ll say some other stuff.
Brendan: I agree with all of the things this man is saying. If you don't care about spoilers, read on.
]]>No. Let's not be ridiculous. But there are so many examples of bad survival games that it’s important to remember the good ones. So that’s what we are doing on the latest RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. We're breaking stones over the heads of rubbish survival games, but cooking, salting and eating the delicious ones. Adam wraps himself up in The Long Dark but reluctantly sets Project Zomboid on fire to stay warm. Matt gets sea sickness from Subnautica but wants to swim again anyway. And Brendan freedives into Subnautica too, in an attempt to escape from all the mediocre survival games set on red planets.
]]>“Darling it’s better, down where it’s wetter, take it from me” - a Subnautica player.
Underwater survival game Subnautica is finally out and we like it. So we spoke to director Charlie Cleveland about the terror of the deep and safety of the shallows. Earlier this week we heard that they intend to make a paid expansion and an Arctic biome (even if those plans are not finalised). But we talked about much more, so here’s a special podcast of the full interview and some of Cleveland's thoughts scribbled out, old-school. For example, why does he thinks it’s a ‘terror’ game rather than a ‘horror’ one? And why are there no guns?
]]>The best survival games are about conquering fear. Last year, when I first splashed about in Subnautica’s alien ocean, I was wary of leaving the shallow reef in which you first crash land. I eyed the hazy green water of the nearby kelp forests with fear, knowing it was full of Stalkers, an aggressive fish whose body is mostly one long croc-like jaw. Today, I swim among these beasts, collecting vines and seed pods as they impotently pursue me through the weeds. I’ve become a proficient scavenger, making the journey from trouserless idiot to Tom Hanks in Castaway’s third act. But even now there are places I do not like to go.
]]>Subnautica, the underwater survival game about being a space castaway, is crawling out of its early access shell and into a shinier full release shell tomorrow. It’s been in development for four years and it is “pretty close to done”, says Charlie Cleveland, director of Unknown Worlds Entertainment. But there are plans for post-release additions, including the possibility of an icy biome with new creatures and frosty hazards. These plans aren’t final, said Cleveland in an interview with us, but he also says they are “80-90 percent sure” they’re going to make a paid expansion of some kind or another. Read on for more details and essential context that I, a dastardly journalist, cannot communicate in an intro.
]]>Well sound the klaxons, unfurl the flags, hoist your main-braces and petards whatever they may be, 2018 is proving far more interesting for charting Steam games. Of course we can't escape the three usual suspects, but beyond those this is quite the collection of interesting, independent, and novel games.
]]>The alien undersea explore-o-survival sandbox Subnautica will properly launch on January 23rd, after three years in early access. I enjoyed a dip way back when, splashing about in the shallows, but since then have been waiting for a full launch. Seeing the sea sights over the past few years, from Pip's volcano base to ghost rays flocking around a tree in an undersea river of brine, have made it difficult to stay away. I'm glad to have managed that, as an alien ocean I barely know is waiting for me and I'll get to be delighted and terrified for the first time by the full experience.
]]>Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol' breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months.
Below is the full, hundred-strong roster, complete with links to our coverage if you want to find out more about any of the games, or simply to marvel at how much seemed to happen in the space of 52 short weeks.
]]>I've been meaning to sink some proper time and energy into Subnautica, Unknown Worlds' game of submarine exploration and underwater survival, but looking at the latest update suggests I might be best waiting until I get my shiny new PC. That's because the Eye Candy update makes the game (visually) better, down where it's wetter. Rub your eyeballs all over the update trailer within or take a peek at the full update notes here.
]]>A reader sent me some links to really well-done Subnautica Lego pitches on the Lego Ideas forum so I wanted to share them! Here's Survivors of the Degasi and Exploring the Safe Shallows. The Lego Ideas forum lets people pitch ideas for sets that they want Lego to convert into real products. You need 10,000 supporters for a set to qualify for review and these are nowhere near. They're also based on a third-party IP - from the T&Cs I don't think it immediately precludes a set from eligibility but it would complicate matters. ANYWAY! I just really liked how well the projects seemed to get the sense of Subnautica (look at the peeper fish!) PLUS because the submissions can use only existing Lego pieces you could build them/bits of them anyway. The shallows terrain segment gave me some ideas for building my own reef - not Subnautica-themed - using my young relatives' Lego collection!
]]>Hello! It's your unofficial underwater correspondent, Pip! I'm here to discuss the latest dance music fish trailer and update info for Subnautica [official site]. There's a thing called a Cuddle Fish and you can feed it snacks!
Also, do you have any idea how many notification systems I have for news about this game? And if any of them fail I have also apparently trained friends to alert me to news as well.
]]>When I get emails with the subject "Ghost Update" it is usually Alice pointing out something important from the latest issue of our favourite ghost magazine - the angel who was also potentially a surfer dude or the couple who kept having little arguments with each other and past life regression revealed that they had been a trapeze act where one had dropped the other one to their death meaning this life was a bit socially awkward for them.
Confusingly, Ghost Update is also the name of the latest Subnautica [official site] update - no passive-aggressive dead trapeze artists BUT there's a spot of new content (POTENTIAL SPOILER WARNING), more final plant art (!!!), a new biome called the Mesas, and... detailed models of poop?
]]>What's that unsettling white noise coming from the other room? Oh no, it's the 10th episode of the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. This week, the gang are talking about horror in games (but not necessarily "horror games"). Adam and Brendan are terrified by the depths of Subnautica, which doesn't frighten Pip in the slightest.
But we also like playing non-scary things. Brendan has been competing in the purgatorial fantasy sport of Pyre, and Adam has been catching fish and watching tranquil sunsets in Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles. Meanwhile, Pip has been dating dads in the gay suburban utopia of Dream Daddy. There's also reader questions, in which we return to the subject of horror, and experience the shrill scream of a truly terrifying beast...
]]>The Steam summer sale is in full blaze. For a while it even blazed so hot that the servers went on fire and all the price stickers peeled off the games. Either that or the store just got swamped with cheapskates looking for the best bargains. Cheapskates like you! Well, don’t worry. We’ve rounded up some recommendations - both general tips and some newly added staff choices.
Here are the things you should consider owning in your endless consumeristic lust for a happiness which always seems beyond reach. You're welcome.
]]>Subnautica's [official site] Voice of the Deep update might be the thing that tips me over into playing that game for hours again and properly exploring the narrative/lore side of things. I'd set the game aside to come back to after early access BUT! Tom Jubert (who did narrative work on The Talos Principle and The Swapper and now Subnautica) noted on Twitter: "Today is the day that Subnautic gets its endgame! Finally, something awaits you at the bottom of the ocean."
THAT SOMETHING HAS ENORMOUS TENTACLES. I'm so into this.
]]>Ooooh! A Subnautica [official site] update! This one is called Silent Running and yet the trailer is VERY LOUD. I think the silent bit only applies to the Cyclops (a big underwater craft) which you can now run silently if you want to sneak around. Sneaking is now important because of the underwater jerks trying to munch on your Cyclops. That sounded wrong. Let's move on and watch the video:
]]>We have a GIFbot in the RPS staff chatroom. GIFbot is a treacherous and unreliable creature, often offering wildly irrelevant or breathtakingly banal results when we type '/gif whateverphrase' and then cope with whatever it randomly pulls from whatever reprobate corner of the internet it's plugged into it. However, often enough its results are so irrelevant as to be perfection itself. And so we shall keep it around for an eternity, and reach for it in our darkest hours.
For instance, in the absence of a better conceit for the latest Steam Charts. For these, once again, are the ten games with the most accumulated sales on Steam over the past week. Take it away, GIFbot.
]]>If you've spoken to me for more than five minutes, chances are I've mentioned Subnautica [official site]. It's an open world survival game set largely underwater on an alien planet. You explore biomes, collect resources and, as updates to the early access project add more content, start to piece together the story of the planet. I played huge amounts of the game before more significant story elements were added and my big project was my volcano lair's garden. I collected all the weird and wonderful plants I could and cultivated them in little plant beds outside my underwater home. That's why, when I had a chance to speak with art director Cory Strader, I immediately wanted to talk about the game's flora.
Read on to find out how The Abyss, microscopy and a real fish with a transparent head and a visible brain all played their part! P.S. You can click on images to see larger version of the concept artwork or, if they're game screenshots, to just see them in isolation.
]]>Subnautica [official site] seems like a nautical holiday wrapped inside a survival game. Swim around a gentle ocean and meet lots of colourful fish, chill out in an underwater forest, sunbathe on top of a little escape pod – it all sounds very relaxing. Don’t be fooled. Subnautica is, in fact, absolutely terrifying.
I can’t quite remember when I realised that the sea was actually a vast world of horrors. Whenever it was, this realisation was undoubtedly confirmed when I was snorkeling off the coast of Australia in my early teens. I broke the surface of the water to be greeted by blood. So much blood. Not mine, thankfully. It belonged to a man who had bumped into some coral, which proceeded to rip open his leg.
Coral! Nobody expects this of all things to tear chunks out of them, but that’s what you get when you decide to visit the utterly alien sea. In Subnautica, this is even more pronounced because it’s a literal alien sea, an entirely new world, that you’re exploring. You’re not meant to be there and you’re definitely not welcome.
]]>I was wondering which games might make the "Things To Play Over The Christmas Break" list this year when the Subnautica [official site] Precursor update got released. I went through a really big Subnautica love affair earlier in the year, but decided to step away for a few patches as the game is still in early access and I didn't want to lose the magic by mining out each update in turn. Then Precursor arrived and is tempting me back not only with alien tech and more in the way of narrative but NEW CAVES!
]]>If Pip were around, she'd focus on how the latest Subnautica [official site] update added a lovely big undersea tree and new glowing Ghost Rays to swim around it. She's a peaceful one, our Pip, probably hoping to build another wonderful seabase near that tree. However, Pip is at EGX today, so Pip can't write this. Instead, you get me telling you about the awful new hostile sealife in the aquatic explore-o-build-a-surviver's 'Dangerous Creatures' update. How do you fancy meeting a humanoid cuttlefish with knives for hands? Or what appears to be an aquatic Tyranid Hive Tyrant?
]]>I go away for two days and PRAWNS! arrive in Subnautica [official site]. I'm not actually talking crustaceans here, but a special suit with that acronym which arrived in the PRAWN update (Pressure Re-Active Waterproof Nano Suit). It has a claw arm and you can add a whole bunch more useful nonsense as well. This is my kind of augmentation tech. Deus Ex: Fishkind Explored.
]]>We already chose 13 of our favourite games in the current Summer Steam sale, but more games have been discounted since. So, based on the entirely correct hypothesis that you all have completed every single one of our first round games and are now thirsting for more, here are 18 more to throw your spare change at. Everyone on the RPS team has picked three stone-cold personal favourites, making for a grand old set of excellent PC games: here's what we chose and why.
]]>A fair few people said they wanted a little tour of my Subnautica [official site] Volcano Base so I've made a quick video to show it off - especially the garden which is packed with bioluminescent plantlife!
]]>Dark days for the world. Maybe videogames can save us? Haha yes of course they can haha.
Here are some really good videogames, though. They'll take you to a better place for a while. These are the RPS team's 13 personal favourites from the current Steam Summer Sale: we believe in these games, and we believe that you should play them too.
]]>This post was originally published as part of the RPS Supporter program
I'm playing a lot of Subnautica [official site] at the moment, spending hours beneath the waves, doing the floaty equivalent of pottering and gardening.
I think the reason I'm having so much fun, despite being historically infuriated by survival games, is that one mode allows you to ditch the hunger and thirst constraints. I'm still surviving in that I worry about my oxygen and my health and I like how that guides and paces my exploration. There are constraints to navigate but not the constant irritant of hunger and thirst as it tends to manifest in this tranch of gaming.
]]>Over the last three days I seem to have racked up 18 hours in Subnautica [official site] and several more than 2,000 screenshots. I'm playing in Freedom mode so I can ignore food and drink requirements and spend a lot of my time building little bases to act as viewing platforms for kelp forests. BUT! I also discovered the freecam command in debug mode so here is a whole gallery of undersea loveliness to try to communicate why I'm spending so much time under the sea!
Fans Of Things Not Staying Exactly The Same All The Time will be glad to hear that the latest weekly Steam top ten is quite a changed one from the previous week. A new number one, surprise re-entries and a loosening of Ubisoft's chokehold on the charts.
]]>The most important things in the world, we all know, are swimming in the great outdoors, admiring flora and fauna, and caring for plants. Subnautica [official site] already had most of those covered as it dunked players onto an ocean-covered alien world to explore, build bases, and survive, and now it's expanded flora-fancying too. Along the journey through Early Access, the Farming Update has added horticulture for scientific, nutritional, and decorative purposes in growbeds and pots. Subnautica's plants are gorgeous, so I'll be delighted to plant my own alien garden.
]]>I've had Subnautica [official site] for a while now, but only got around to installing it this weekend. As it continues to ascend out of Steam Early Access, the undersea explore 'em up has spat out a big update with a few things that made me want to dive in. For starters, undersea bases can now have all the cool glass corridors and viewing domes that really set off a seahome look. On top of that, it's got an eerie new reef biome hundreds of metres down, and I do dig unearthly dark waters.
Best of all: you can put a little fish tank in your base to keep pet fish.
]]>Explore-o-survive 'em up Subnautica [official site] might not have yet left Early Access, but it has now entered my cool books. Docking ships in video games is pretty great in general, a small moment hinting at the grand scale of a world, and even better is docking inside a larger vessel you can also control. Subnautica has that now. An update yesterday added a big new multi-level submarine you can dock smaller subs with and clamber around inside of.
]]>Each week Marsh Davies dips a toe into the unknown waters of Early Access and returns with any stories he can find and/or decompression sickness. This week he slaps on a snorkel and dives into alien aquatic survival game Subnautica. Snorkel is a great word. Snork snork!
2014 was the year of the indie survival game. 2015 looks very much like it might be the year of the indie survival game as well. 2016 is the year that the secret cabal of indie survival game developers finally steps from the shadows to unleash its terrible global coup. Within minutes of the first shot, indie game genres fall, devoured by the unstoppable tide of survival mechanics. Early Access devs planning coherent end-games are forced to fight each other to the death in a bleak, under-resourced wilderness with guns improvised from baked-bean tins. In sick mimicry of the cabal’s evil creed, games can now only conclude with the player’s own expiration from starvation or hypothermia. “To play is to die! To play is to die!” the regime’s fanatical adherents shriek from loudhailers as the speedrunners, twin-stick shootists and visual-novelists are forced into the re-education pens. No one misses the Dota players. It’s only the devastating invasion of the Sokobeasts, a hyperintelligent alien race fixated on abstruse block-pushing puzzles, that forces the regime to see its terrible error. Only then does it regret marooning Jon Blow and Stephen Lavelle on a spit of sand in the Pacific with only a snooker cue and a single sausage-roll between them. How the regime had laughed at that. Well, they’re not laughing now. Because they’re dead.
]]>Much like the above "screenshot" the first of Subnautica's released builds are not going to be representative. The second project from Natural Selection devs Unknown Worlds will enter what they're calling "Earliest Access" on October 31st. It's called that because they feel the game "isn't ready" for Early Access - far too much unfinished and in flux. They're leaving it up to you whether you're desperate enough for underwater survivalising to support development. Those who go for it will also be given code for a few of the team's prototype builds, released over the next few days. More details below.
]]>No-one in their right mind would have put down money on 'sandbox submarine adventure' being the next project from the creators of human vs alien FPS/RTS crossbreed Natural Selection. I did, however, and as a result I became a billionaire. Unfortunately I then put down a billion quid on Destiny turning out to be Frog Fractions 2 in disguise, and now I am poor again. Swings, roundabouts.
Devs Unknown Worlds have been teasing bits and bobs of Subnautica - for that is the submarine game's name - for a while, but now they have video footage of how badly wrong being full fathom five can be. Here is a fact: a video is like a picture, but it moves and sometimes there is sound too. I hear it's the future.
]]>I'll tell you what's in space: a big load of nothing. Oh I'm sure it's very pretty and makes you think and all that, but I'll find my abyssal mirror in the ocean thank you very much. You know what's down there? Iron snails, radiant deathworms, giant woodlice, immortal jellyfish, and colossal creatures we discover by finding bits of them in other monsters' stomachs. So naturally I'm pretty jazzed for Unknown Worlds to plumb watery depths in Subnautica.
The Natural Selection 2 devs over the weekend pulled a virtual gold tasselled rope to open digital red velvet curtains and reveal the open-world oceanic build-o-explorer, and it looks quite pleasant.
]]>Unknown Worlds, the studio behind Natural Selection 2, have announced a new game in a genre that they "do not believe has yet been invented". Popping players in a customisable submarine, Subnautica will "combine elements of role playing, sandbox, exploration and cinematic games to create a unique experience". There aren't many details yet but there's a superficial (at least) resemblance to Hello Games' recently announced No Man's Sky, particularly when it comes to close encounters of the weird kind: "Interaction with impossibly diverse and fascinating creatures. Some of these creatures will be truly enormous, all of them will be unique." I've embedded a video below and Unknown Worlds promise open development, with early access some time next year, and frequent updates at their site.
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