back to article Subnautica and Below Zero: Nurture your inner MacGyver and Kevin Costner on an ocean-planet holiday

Greetings, traveller, and welcome back to The Register Plays Games, our monthly gaming column. It was tricky deciding what to look at for this edition, what with the doozy of Cyberpunk 2077 in our tail lights. As for the New Year, we've been left with the usual dearth of releases so it was time to check out something that's been …

  1. Robert Moore

    Looks like fun.

    Too bad Subnautica doesn't do a Linux version. I do all my gaming on Linux these days, and am not putting up with Windows for one game.

    1. Boothy

      Re: Looks like fun.

      Not tried it myself, but I've seen posts that it works fine through Proton (i.e. Valves fork of Wine).

      A quick look on protondb and both Subnautica and Below Zero are classed as Platinum, i.e. Runs out of the box direct from Linux Steam, by using Proton.

      1. Robert Moore

        Re: Looks like fun.

        @Boothy

        I had forgotten about proton. Thanks for the reminder.

    2. danbishop

      Re: Looks like fun.

      I've only played it on Linux, clocked up about 40 hours between my partner and I using Proton and it's been absolutely flawless. When I first read your comment I was actually confused, thinking you were mistaken, then I remembered that it's using Proton and isn't native. It's so seamless you actually forget!

  2. MOV r0,r0

    Loved Subnautica! It was one of the early freebies on Epic store, I played it to death and immediately bought Below Zero.

    On the subject of death, depending on settings you can go fetch what you dropped when you died - if you can locate where. As vehicles don't reset position when you die, at least expiring at the door leaves it as a handy marker of where to swim down.

    Both games are more-ish with shopping lists of goals although on the first one I sometimes needed to look up what to do next which might feel like cheating if you're old school but is kind of expected by developers these days.

    Awesome environments and some serious jump-scares.

  3. Getmo

    moved up the list in my backlog

    Purchased this gem during Black Friday sale on Steam, thanks to all the good reviews. I just skimmed this review because I don't want any spoilers yet.

    I also have a somewhat moderate case of submechanophobia - fear of mechanical things underwater - so the entire premise of the game (at least the first one) being on a water world with no land, and the goal being to investigate underwater wreckages and construct underwater bases, promises to be especially terrifying for me!

    Good to know there's a sequel out there, I'll definitely have to grab that too when/if I finish the original. Wish me luck!

    1. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: moved up the list in my backlog

      It is a remarkably scary game, even if you don't have any phobias of depths/fish/drowning/open spaces/claustrophobia.

      When you're diving deep, and you catch a glimpse of something huge, moving in the dark....well, I bolted for the surface more than once.

      1. Getmo
        Happy

        Re: moved up the list in my backlog

        Hahaha LMAO, sounds great. I'll make sure to play it at night in the dark, only when all the roommates are out of the house, alone. At least I'm still a smoker.

  4. Korgonzolla

    Subnautica is a great game, but, for me, The Long Dark is the very pinnacle of survival games. No zombies, no aliens, just the Canadian winter as your enemy. The sandbox mode can be brutally unforgiving - when you die you're dead. No save files, and back to the start. And you will die eventually. There is no happy ending.

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