Subnautica Review

It certainly is a bit strange to write a review about a game that isn't finished yet. Subnautica is an early access game which is relative close to be released as complete game (if nothing goes wrong in May 2017).
And while I played it a few months ago I really enjoyed what was in the game.

Subnautica is a survival adventure game.
You are a crew member of the Aurora which is on a deep space construction mission and also a secret mission to investigate the loss of another ship that crash landed on a water planet.
Just about when the Aurora arrives at that planet everything goes wrong. The ship gets hit by a massive energy beam and crashes on the planet aswell. Prior that multiple escape pods were launched which land in the middle of the ocean.

Your own escape pod is damaged but manage to repair it and after that you start exploring the underwater world while your pod is your first home in this new world.

Very soon you notice that the underwater environment is full of life and very beautiful (the game really looks very good).

Equiped with a basic scanner you start to explore this new world.
The other life pods are all damaged either due to the crash landing or damaged by some hostile creatures. You are the only surviror.

As you progress with the game you find wrecks of the first ship that crashed on the planet and fragments of technology in it.
You also find out that the crew of that ship survived and has build mulitple (meanwhile abbandoned) bases above and below the surface of the ocean.
The new technology helps you to create your own base, to fill it with Oxigen, to produce water, energy and food.

The base building in Subnautica is very motivating as you can freely build really cool underwater bases in environments that look extremely awesome. You decide how your base looks like... if you want to build long corridors with armored walls (to counter the pressure) or if you want structures with large windows that reveal the beauty of the ocean.
You can more advanced rooms as you make progress with the game, build strong reactors, scanner rooms or even large fish tanks where you can breed fish eggs or release captured fishes. You will construct tools that help you to make progress in the game, you will decorate your new home so it will feel like a very comfortable place and you will start constructing vehicles.

There is a small fast submarine, a exosuit and a very large submarine which allow you to explore deeper regions of the world.

In the end you get the chance to explore the world of subnautica and the very cool storyline of this game.
You will find out what happend to the Crew of the crash landed ship (the Degasi), you will be able to explore the crashed Aurora and stop that the reactor core pollutes the environment and you discover abbandoned bases and the relicts of an alien species.
You will discover that this is a dying world, infected by an illness that meanwhile also infected you.

Is there a cure? Is there a way to leave this planet?
You will find out.

There are many beautiful places in this game and also extreme dangers like 20m big predators.
At times this game can be very scary

Like I already mentioned, Subnautica is an early access game. That means it is still in development.
Once a month there is a big update of the game. But if you want wait you can also activate the Beta function on steam and you will get daily updates (at the risk that these updates are not stable).
The December 2016 update messed up the gameplay a bit. There are some major bugs in it that need to get fixed.
Also is it very noticable that the game is absolutely not optimized yet.
After playing some time the pretty good frame rates at the start of the game get lower and lower until the game is nearly unplayable.
Thats clearly something the developers have to fix in the next few months until the official release.
Multiple changes are already announced which are supposed to improve the performance of the game (e.g. the removal of terraforming and the optimization of loading orders).

Overall, I am really looking forward to the final release of the game where I finally can play through the entire story.

The game will have multiple modes (already has them).
One free mode where you can construct your base without any resource costs.
A normal story mode that allows you to explore everything but requires you to take care of the survival aspects (oxigen, food, water, etc).
And a hardcore mode where the player death is final -> no respawns.

there is a floating island (floating because of living creatures which are attached to it) and an underwater mountain which forms an island with vegatation and many caves

oh and there are underwater islands

On the landmasses you can collect plants and grow them in your base (so you dont have to hunt fish all the time -> you have to eat something)
You also need different kinds of food or you get ill.
And there are recipees (usually for fish).

Generally the game is full of very different biomes.
The player starts in the save shallows where you can find many small fishes, corrals and rock formations.
Not far from there is one of the Kelp zones where you can find these green plants and some stalkers hunting there.
Then there is a mushroom forrest, the dunes, the crash site, the grand reef, the inactive lava zones, the active lava zone, the koosh zones, the floating island, the unterwater mountain, the sea treader path, the pretty scary blood kelp zones, the jelly shroom cave, the underwater river, the tree cove zone, the grassy plateaus and the Aurora

Every zone has a different look, different creatures, different wrecks and resources.
Some areas is pretty dangerous, some are just beautiful.