Subnautica

Subnautica is a game in development by Unknown Worlds Entertainment. Subnautica allows the player to explore an uncharted alien planet by scuba diving and traveling in submarines. The planet is almost all water, meaning the player must scuba dive for almost all resources such as metal and upgrades.

Summary
Descend into the depths of an alien underwater world filled with resources, creatures, wonder and threats. Craft equipment and submarines to explore lush coral reefs, volcanoes, cave systems, and more – All while trying to survive.

Story
The game takes place in the late 22nd century, when humanity begins to colonize planets around space. During colonization, various vessels were sent to the said planets, each one with a specific mission. One of the vessels, the Aurora, was sent to the ocean planet 4546B to create a phase gate. It also had a second, secret mission, which was to find any survivors of the mining vessel Degasi, which went missing about ten years before the Aurora mission began.

However, during its descent, It was struck by an energy pulse of unknown origin that critically damaged the hull, making it crash-land onto the planet's ocean floor. During the crash-landing sequence, several lifepods were launched. One of these lifepods (more specifically, Lifepod 5) contained the player. During the lifepod's impact with the water, a Fire Extinguisher and a panel came loose and bounced inside. The panel manages to strike the player's head, rendering the player unconscious for 3 hours, who then wakes up only to see a huge fire inside the lifepod. The player rushes to pick up the fire extinguisher and puts the flames out. There are at least 16 other lifepods, most of which landed successfully. One landed too close to the Aurora, and another plummeted into the water. However, during the 3 hours the player was unconscious in their own lifepod, the other lifepods experienced fatal situations, wrecking them and killing the personnel inside, marking the player as the only Aurora survivor. The player can find the lifepods, and collect the occupants' PDAS, detailing their own fate.

After about 5 in-game days, a radio message comes to the lifepod, which explains that a passing Cargo ship, called the Sunbeam, has picked up their distress signal, and are coming to help, telling the player that they are going to land on a nearby island to rescue them. When the player arrives, the Sunbeam's captain, Avery Quinn, tells them that they are in orbit, however, mid sentence, an alien superweapon, dubbed the "Precursor Ground To-Air Weapon System", fires at the Sunbeam, destroying it. While progressing through the game, the Aurora explodes due to instability on one of the drive cores and opens several passages to the ship's reactor room, which the player can access with a radiation suit and fix the reactors, causing the radiation around the Aurora's crash site to dissipate within 3 in-game days. The Aurora also contains several Data Terminals, which can be loaded into the player's PDA and read to reveal a part of the story, and point to new locations on the map. The player also finds a large exosuit, called the P.R.A.W.N. Exosuit, and a small submarine, called the Seamoth, which makes exploring otherwise dangerous areas significantly easier. Through the Data Terminals found in the Aurora, the secondary mission of the Aurora is revealed to the player.

Later during the game, the player discovers information about the planet's native intelligent species (known as the Precursors) and the lethal bacteria, the Carar, by following the blast origin coordinates from the Aurora Blackbox Data. The Precursors put a massive energy cannon in place to prevent any alien life from entering the planet and potentionally spread the Carar to other planets, which could have untold consequences. The Precursors are revealed to have constructed four bases on the planet over one thousand years ago, the "Precursor Ground-To-Air Weapon System", the large energy cannon that shot down the Aurora, Degasi, and the Sunbeam. The "Secondary Bio-Research Facility", which was a testing facility for creatures infected with the Carar, however, this base was destroyed by an escaped creature, and event that also unleashed the Carar onto the planet. The "Precursor Thermal Power Generator", which powers the other bases aswell as the Warpers, a bio-mechanical life form developed by the Precursors in order to stop the spread of the Carar. The Primary Research Facility, which is located in the planet's deepest biome, which currently houses the largest creature in the game, the Sea Emperor, which is the last of it's kind due to the Carar.

Due to the severity of the Carar, the Precursors made the Warpers, an intelligent hunter that is not native to the planet, the Warpers are meant to kill any creature infected with the bacteria, as a means of destroying it. It is later revealed that the player is also infected, and Warpers will hunt the player aswell, going to extreme means of doing so, such as teaming up, warping in other creatures as help, or warping behind the player as a means of confusing them.

Developers
The crew of Subnautica

Directors & Producer
Charlie Cleveland=

Website: http://www.charliecleveland.com

Charlie attended Case Western Reserve University and received a B.S. in Computer Engineering. He worked as a software engineer at IBM, Papyrus, CogniToy and Stainless Steel Studios, on Grand Prix Legends, MindRover and Empire Earth. In May of 2001, he left Stainless Steel to start writing Natural Selection.

Charlie has contributed writings to Game Developer Magazine and Game Design Perspectives and spoke at Casuality (2006). He also spoke at the Game Developer’s Conference in:


 * 2011 (The 1 Hour Video Game MBA)
 * 2013 (The Velveteen Marine).

Max McGuire=

While still in high school Max worked as the assistant to Dr. Benoit Mandelbrot at IBM Research. After graduating from Carnegie Mellon University in 2001 with a B.S. in Mathematics and a double major in Computer Science, Max joined Iron Lore Entertainment (Game Developer Choice Best New Studio) as the first employee.

While at Iron Lore Entertainment, Max served as the Lead Engine Programmer and held a key role in developing the technology and tools behind their first two titles, Titan Quest and Titan Quest: Immortal Throne.

Cory Strader=

Cory attended the Massachusetts College of Art, majoring in Illustration. He worked at Stainless Steel Studios as a digital artist for over five years doing 3D modeling, texturing and concept work on Empire Earth, Empires: Dawn of the Modern World and Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War. He then worked as Senior Texture Artist and Concept Art on Lair and several unannounced titles at Factor Five.

He and Charlie started working on Natural Selection together in August of 2000 and his artwork has been featured several times in Spectrum and Expose.

Hugh Jeremy=

Hugh is Australian, but we try not to hold it against him. He invaded our San Francisco office and we have worked to teach him to speak English ever since.

Hugh holds a BCom in Finance and Accounting, thinks only in spreadsheets, and likes making movies all day.

Animators
Colin Knueppel=

He is a nerdy farm kid who turned into an animator / tech. He has worked on Mass Effect 1 cinematics, Bioshock Infinite in-game sequences, most of the Natural Selection 2 rigging and currently animation lead on Subnautica. He enjoys walks in the park and long-shot FPS melee kills.

Louis Karim= As soon as he graduated from Engineering school, Louis decided to go down a more artistic path. He started by learning character modelling on his first job, but realized that animation was his true calling soon enough. He attended Animation Mentor, and since graduating has worked as an animator on movies, tv series and commercials, in countries including Singapore, Russia, Lebanon and Bahrain. He is currently an animator and rigger on Subnautica.

Brandt Wojak= Brandt graduated from Madison College, with an associates degree in Animation and Concept development. He joined the offsite team in the summer of 2012 working on animations for Natural Selection 2.

Check out some of his works at:
 * https://www.youtube.com/user/Bwojakification

Scott MacDonald=

Scott hails originally from Carlisle UK, close to the Scottish border. Having worked in Film & TV, he now works in Games remotely from the South Wales, UK. He can be often found frequenting shops late at night in his daily pursuit of yet more coffee, to fuel his typical animator caffeine habit.

Brian Cummings=

Brian (Alpha) joined the team in late 2009 after graduating from the Art Institute of California San Francisco. Before moving here, he worked as a contract 3D Artist on two published PC titles in Birmingham, Alabama.

Initially hired to help with managing the art pipeline, Brian now fills the gap between artists and engine. He has also worked as the editor for several Natural Selection 2 cinematics including the Fade Reveal, Lerk Reveal and Gorge Belly Slide video.

Software Engineers
Jonas Grohmann=

Website: http://lumpn.de

After almost dropping out of university twice to make computer games instead of learning about skolemization and formal verification, Jonas now holds a master’s degree in Computer Science and makes computer games. Hah!

Unbeknownst to Charlie Jonas’ career at Unknown Worlds started as a mapper for Natural Selection 1 where he managed to finish one single room. Encouraged by this huge success he ran the fastest NS1 servers in Europe on launch day and still remembers sneaking into the university’s data center to pull this off like it was yesterday.

Jonas fixes the bugs, optimizes performance, causes a mess, and wears the “I broke the build” T-shirt with great pride. He enjoys traveling and sometimes does a decent Count von Count impersonation including bats and lightning.

Scott Thunelius= Scott is a coder and 3D artist. He’s spent most of his career working on MMORPGs and now happily resides deep in the underwater landscape of Subnautica’s codebase. When not making games he’s playing music and systematically attempting put every BBQ joint to be found in Texas out of business with his insatiable love of brisket.

Andreas Urwalek= Software Engineer

Game programming (Austria)

World Designers
Michael Schouten=

Michael was originally a Natural Selection 1 map contributor. In 2007 he graduated from Glasgow University, and worked as a functionality tester before joining the off-site team in 2010. He was hired as a level designer and has contributed towards several Natural Selection 2 maps. Currently he is developing environments for Subnautica.

Oliver Hobbs= Oli joined the offsite team in June 2009 as a mapper for Natural Selection 2. He spends his time complaining, being cynical and drinking tea.

Andrew Jones= Andrew attended Oxford Brookes University and received a BA in Architecture. He contributed to NS1 back in the day, and joined the UWE team in 2009, initially to help maintain the website. He soon moved on to art and level design, and nobody had the heart to tell him to pack it in.

When not making or playing games, Andrew’s many hobbies include brick-spotting, desperation and breathing. He lives in London.

Jake Smith= Jake is an artist with an associates degree in Computer Animation, and a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of Utah. He began working on a custom map for NS2, which caught the attention of Charlie and Cory, and eventually led to a position working to further develop this level, and to work on future level design projects. He continues to work in level design for NS2 and future projects.

Kiel McDonald= World Designer

FX Artist
Sylvain Hel= Sylvain joined Ubisoft Paris as a 3d environment artist on GRAW 2 before enjoying particles and visual effects on Redsteel 2, Raving Rabbids TV Party and Ghost Recon Future Soldier. Looking for new experiences with indie studios he started to work on Natural Selection 2 late 2011.

Media
Simon Chylinski= [Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_hqM171kpuwmOjnDxNrhJw] Simon is our sound and music guy. After flying bombers in WWII (not really) Simon decided to be a hippy (really). It soon became apparent that being a hippy was not nearly as lucrative as described in the brochure, so he made the tactical decision to fail high school and drop out of university in an attempt to gain our attention.

It worked! and we decided to hire him as sound designer on Natural Selection 2 as we felt our company would benefit from some fail on the team for a change. Simon soon began to take over the music production on NS2 from David John… and is now eyeing Cory’s jobs as well.

Check out some of his works at:


 * https://soundcloud.com/kamakazi
 * https://www.youtube.com/user/simonkamakazi

Lukas Nowaczek= Lukas is another employee with his roots in the community. Since he joined us in October 2012 he works on all kinds of web applications and websites that improve workflow in UWE or serve our players. He spends most of his free time learning new stuff, playing too many games or reading books. He also enjoys his journey to find the perfect craft beer.

Jessica Damerst=

Website Updater

Voice Actors
Tony= Voice of Avery Quinn

Affiliates
FOX 3D Entertainment=

Fox3D has successfully cooperated with game developers of all sizes and world-class publishers from North America, Europe and Asia. Our aim is to create high-quality projects on a global scale.


 * Igor Popov - Software Engineer


 * Vyacheslav Sedovich
 * Prior: Indie developer (Unity Engine), Technical Artist at Unigine, Alien Shooter/Zombie Shooter game series developer at Sigma Team.


 * Sergey Solovyev - Lead Artist


 * Maxim Vigovsky - Technical Artist

Models

 * Fox3D on Sketchfab

Pat Presley= Freelance Concept Artist

Tom Jubert= Freelance Narrative Designer

Soundtrack

 * Main article: Soundtrack

Merchandise
If you want to buy Subnautica merch, please visit the official UnknownWorlds merchandise redbubble store.

Future
While Subnautica can currently only be played on PC, Mac, and Xbox One, a PS4 version may follow if the Xbox One version is successful in terms of sales.

Reception
Ian Birnbaum of PC Gamer described Subnautica as an "underwater Minecraft", remarking that "with an experienced developer at the helm and a limitless variety of the oceans to play with, it’s going to take a lot for Subnautica to go badly wrong. As the toolbox gets deeper and the shape of the end-game gets set, Subnautica will be a unique example of the ways survival can be tense, rewarding, and fun." Marsh Davies of Rock, Paper, Shotgun praised the rewarding nature of exploring the world of Subnautica, but criticized the "arbitrariness" and lack of intuition in some of the in-game recipes.

Subnautica is heavily praised by many Youtubers for being very original.

Concept Arts

 * Main article: Concept Art

Videos

 * Visit official Subnautica Youtube for more videos.

System Requirements
Windows= Minimum OS: Windows Vista SP2 or newer, 64-bit

Processor: Intel Haswell 2 cores / 4 threads @ 2.5Ghz or equivalent

Memory: 4 GB RAM

Graphics: Intel HD 4600 or equivalent - This includes most GPUs scoring greater than 950pts in the 3DMark Fire Strike benchmark

Storage: 6 GB available space Recommended OS: Windows Vista SP2 or newer, 64-bit

Processor: Intel Haswell 4 cores / 4 threads @ 3.2Ghz or equivalent

Memory: 8 GB RAM

Graphics: Nvidia GTX 550 ti or equivalent

Storage: 6 GB available space

Mac OS X= Minimum OS: OS X 10.9 Mavericks

Processor: Intel Haswell 2 cores / 4 threads @ 2.5Ghz or equivalent

Graphics: Intel HD 4600 or equivalent

Storage: 6 GB available space Recommended OS: OS X 10.9 Mavericks

Processor: Intel Haswell 4 cores / 4 threads @ 3.2Ghz or equivalent

Graphics: Nvidia GTX 550 ti

Storage: 6 GB available space

Trivia

 * Subnautica shares the same universe as the Natural Selection series.
 * This is further supported, as the company Alterra is a manufacturer of various supplies in all games by Unknown Worlds.