Below Zero can’t repeat this exact trick because the audience expects it. The randomness is repeatable based on that 'random seed'. Then our expectations were upended violently and suddenly. Not randomly generated mind you, but procedural, in the sense that it will always generate the same map from the same 'seed' for all players and sessions. In the game, players explore a randomly generated world filled with dangerous creatures and valuable resources. Terraria is a 2D action-adventure game with survival and crafting elements. Up to that point Subnautica appeared to be a chill, scuba-diving survival game. While Subnautica is a 3D underwater survival game, there are some 2D games that offer similar gameplay experiences. The first time we ran into Steve the Reaper was a frightening thrill. This comes back to the point I made about the terror not being as potent in Below Zero: we’ve seen most of the tricks already. I’m familiar with the formula now, and although Unknown Worlds does experiment with it in Below Zero the game can’t escape from its predecessor’s shadow. I would love nothing more than to scrub Subnautica from my memory only to reexperience it for the first time all over again, but I can’t. There are even a number of polar biomes above sea-level in Below Zero than feature more to do than the islands from the first game.Īs for the exploration, it is nearly as entrancing in Below Zero as it was in the first Subnautica, but as I mentioned earlier in this review the sequel does suffer from diminished returns. An even older game than Sub Culture with more ties to the scary aspects of Subnautica, Aquanox: Deep Descent holds a place in the hearts of many older players of the genre. It is a much denser and deeper map, with more caves to get lost within. The trade-off is Sector Zero feels better to traverse (mostly) the the Crater. Once again the world is hand-crafted, but it’s smaller. In many ways Subnautica: Below Zero further refines these idea.

Players still needed to craft food and water to stay alive, and free-form exploration remained a key tenet, but Subnautica made it simple for players to grasp the basics of survival. Rather than rely solely on the will to survive to push engagement, the team decided to tell an engaging story with a definitive ending. :) Subnautica also used to be voxel based with completely deformable terrain but this was changed for balance reasons. Instead of using a procedurally generated map, Unknown Worlds opted to meticulously shape their underwater world. Now dont get me wrong, i would love to see a Subnautica game with procedurally generated worlds but probably with a different name because it would be something completely different from the other games. The first Subnautica was a bit of an outlier within the survival genre when it debuted in Early Access back in 2014. Subnautica: Below Zero is equal parts refinement and experiment.

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