Subnautica: Below Zero Review

This week we are talking about Subnautica: Below Zero, which is the 2021 follow-up game to Subnautica, also from developer Unknown Worlds Entertainment. Similar to the prior title, this is a first-person survival game, primarily underwater, where you are exploring, building, and crafting. You play as Robin Ayou, who crash lands on an alien planet in an effort to find out more about what happened to her sister. We chat about zen gaming, map frustrations, survival bunkers, alien voices in your head, fancy fruit salad, and being trapped on 4546B forever.

Time Stamps:
00:14 Introductions
00:55 Main Topic – Subnautica: Below Zero
34:20 Subnautica: Below Zero – contains spoilers!
44:57 Subnautica: Below Zero final thoughts
49:50 What we’re playing next (Dragon Age: Inquisition)
51:05 Ending Spiel (What we’re loving this week)

From the show:

Games featured in our Ending Spiel: Dragon Age: Inquisition (what we’re playing next). Our next minisode contains a bunch of other games we played this summer, coming soon.

In addition to the game modes mentioned (normal survival, creative mode, etc), there is also a hardcore mode that is like survival mode but the player is unable to respawn if they die.

Penglings are the baby birds we mentioned, the adult form is called a Pengwing.

The fancy fruit salad was called “Spicy Fruit Salad” and it provides +100 heat, +85 food, and +30 water.

There is no map, from what I can find, but it looks like you might be able to implement cheats that give you coordinates. With the coordinates and the help of internet, you can probably find almost anything, but it’s also sort of a hassle.

The voice actor who plays Robin Ayou is Kimberly Brooks, who did indeed play Ashley in Mass Effect.

After some poking around on the internet, it looks like the questline about Robin’s sister Sam is possible to miss without completing the game.

Lastly, Subnautica does has an accessibility mode that highlights things that you can interact with in the environment. I imagine turning this on would make it much harder to miss items that can be scaned, etc. 

It looks like Doki Doki is 14.99 USD in the Microsoft store, and contains some DLC items also.

The book Emma mentioned is called Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas.

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Musical credit: "Into the Game" by SilentCrafter/ "Pixel Pig" by Di Young