I would suggest trying a new game without the food & water need. It really lets you focus on the plot. I also needed to look through a few YouTube videos at various points, because some things aren’t obvious or are easy to miss.
Your comparison to Satisfactory makes me think you’re approaching the game with a completely wrong mindset. It’s not supposed to be a chill sandbox playground with no difficulty where you rapidly conquer the planet and build cool stuff. It’s intended to be an engaging survival game with a horror aspect of diving into dark depths and hoping that whatever lurks there doesn’t notice you. It’s meant to be atmospheric, with the threat of starvation, predators and later on some story aspects pushing you to explore further and deeper for materials and tech.
I hope you give the game anoher chance at some point because it really is a one of a kind experience. There’s two things you should be aware of: First, in regards to another comment: there’s no events for you to miss, IDK what that person is saying. There’s two big plot points that happen in a playthrough regardless of your presence. Both of them give you a timer well in advance so you can show up to / observe the place when it happens. Everything else, like all the distress signals or abandoned bases? They’re empty from the start of the game, even if you go there immediatelly nothing will change. You aren’t missing out on anything.
Second, don’t feel bad about missing out on upgrades or whatver. The vast majority of them are sidegrades. The important stuff that you need to progress both spawns much more often than the sidegrades, and you will often find it at the distress signal locations.
You’re absolutely correct, I am approaching it from the wrong mindset. The thing is, I like my crafting games to be chill sandbox games. I have ADHD and am easily distracted, so being dumped into a world where I’m struggling just to survive, and then finding threats everywhere while I’m trying to progress on a build or something… I find myself stressed and unable to focus on progression. So I prefer games that let me go at my own pace, without distractions from the task I’m focusing on.
With Subnautica, I don’t know where to go to progress without spending time exploring and getting distracted along the way. So it will take me hundreds of hours to actually complete the game; time that I rarely dedicate to any single game. And too much time if I’m not having fun along the way.
I’m the same way (also have ADHD). I love Subnautica*'s underwater gameplay and alien moon aesthetic, but I can only really play it in Creative Mode since I really like building bases and exploring without worrying about resources and dying.
(* I have Below Zero instead because I like the snowy aesthetic and playing as a girl 😅)
The crazy part is them giving you the “legend of” in the question. Without it, I could see it being a toss-up for most people. At least they didn’t pick Sonic.
This is ironically what I loved about Subnautica. The game does not hold your hand throughout. You don’t have a map, you don’t mindlessly follow waypoints, you are not being given a guided tour through the story like some ride at Disneyland. You have to learn to navigate the area yourself, memorize landmarks, and figure out what you have to do yourself with the clues around you. It is a bit of a whiplash at first when you are so used to being babysitted and guided throughout a game but I’ve found it to be the unbelievably rewarding once the “click” happens. You can absolutely miss important (and dope AF) events if you miss the timings that the game gives you. You are treated like an adult by the game. You really get the feeling of being a lone explorer, planning and going on expeditions to gather what you need whether it is resources or blueprints and it will all be you.
The risk-reward situation of exploring increasingly complex and disorienting ship fragments, slowly cutting through blocked doors with a laser while seeing your oxygen levels dwindle and hoping you can find your way back out in time were absolutely fantastic to me. The way the gameplay and the way you travel through the world entirely changes the moment you unlock the PRAWN suit, and one again with the Cyclops are absolutely amazing.
I wish this game clicked with everyone the way it did for me. It is easily my top 5 best single player experiences ever and I only wish I could forget it so I could discover everything again. But The Outer Wilds never clicked for me like that so I can understand why some people might not like it.
For me, games are strictly a form of entertainment. I play to escape reality and do something fun for a while. So when a game “treats you like an adult,” I feel like the fun is gone and now I’m stuck working just to gain a little bit of progress. I don’t get a sense of reward from that, I just get frustrated.
Especially if there are important events that you can miss. I used to be a completionist with my games (I still am, to a degree) and I wanted to explore every nook and cranny of a game to really enjoy every bit of effort the developers put into creating this world. But finding out a game takes 50+ hours to beat, and then realizing that I may have missed important details and that I’ll need to replay that lengthy game to find them again… no way. That’s too much effort. I mentally check out really quick.
I agree with you about The Outer Wilds. I think I’ve played about an hour of that game and I had no idea what I was doing or what the plot was about. Everyone kept saying it’s better if you go into it blind, so I didn’t read anything before playing and, well… I don’t know what I was playing. That’s another game on my list to give a second chance before I give up on it completely.
I agree with you. The pace of crafting to progress is slow. The story forces you to uncover it by exploring further and deeper. The distress calls nudge you in the right directions.
My last playthrough I was determined to beat the game. It took 50 hours and at the end I got frustrated because just when I thought I was at the end, they wanted me to grind even more for some hard to craft materials which would require me to dive far and deep and look for things while things were dangerous.
Exhausted, I used a single console command to give myself the thing I didn’t want to grind for and bam. Completed. The games a marathon. It’s entertaining, scary, interesting, and tedious. I’m not interested in any sequels.
If you feel like you need more guidance, don’t hesitate to look up a guide or for tips on how to get the most out of the game. If you’re willing, of course.
Subnautica is one of those games where it needs to “click”, and this moment is different for a lot of people. For some it never happens. I will say there is a scanner room you can get to scan for resources, but that will probably not sway you.
I’m not gonna tell you to keep playing because it will get better or something, but I want to address one thing: Subnautica is a game about exploration and discovery. If you do not enjoy these elements in a game, or get motivated by it, then you will probably miss the complex lore hidden in the logs or you will not value it as much as you could have.
Satisfactory is less of a crafting game and more of a factory automation game, so this might be another reason.
Might I suggest trying out Techtonica? It’s like a mix of Factorio and Satisfactory in the sense that you build factories, but it’s more on a grid and stuff is a lot smaller than in Satisfactory. I mention this game because some elements reminded me of Subnautica (like distress signals to find) but it doesn’t have the survival element to it.
Speaking of survival: you can turn that off in Subnautica. You could try that. But again, if discovery and exploration isn’t your thing, it would just put more focus on the feeling of aimlessly wandering.
I’ve been meaning to give Techtonica another chance. I was enjoying it, but I tried to play it with a friend and he checked out early because the build menus and crafting mechanics were too complicated for him. Because of that, we switched to another game to play regularly and I never really got back to Techtonica. I agree with my friend that it was a bit complex at first, but I was enjoying figuring it out.
Congrats! I’ve been stuck in Black Ops 6 lately, but I’ll need to get around to finishing the final draft soon. I look forward to reading your full thoughts then.
As a side note, there isn’t a community for Alan Wake and remedy games, is there? I feel like they have enough to discuss that it could merit one.
I’m kind of surprised Remedy doesn’t have a community too. Ik they usually space things out so they don’t have many releases but they really fill their games to the brim with discussion material that the community rarely runs out of stuff to talk about I feel like.
Did you get the scare that can happen in the Mind Place?
There’s one point in the story, where after interacting with the clue board and exiting out, turning around, a cultist will appear in the room.
If you got used to just switching between the different things in the mind place using the buttons, though, instead of walking around, it never happens.
That one scared me every time, even though i knew it was coming. With the final draft i had my hands on the pause button just to try and capture a screenshot of it. It was really clever, especially with how they keep the Mind Place setup as the safe spot in the game up until that second
Love this game. Ever since trying the VR mod though I’ve been dying for official support. Imagine using the proper VR controls to pop handbrake and steer the car, would be the most immersive thing!
Still, even with that said if you like the game and have access to a VR headset It’s still worth giving it a go, it really fits the game I think.
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