Open-World Games With The Most Dangerous Seas

Key Takeaways

• Open-world games feature expansive oceans with immersive gameplay.
• Different games offer unique ocean-based challenges and dangers.
• From naval combat to survival, the open seas offer a wide range of thrilling experiences.

Getting to explore huge, open worlds is undoubtedly one of the best things about modern gaming. More than ever, open-world games have become popular, getting closer to becoming the norm for major releases. While exploring massive wastelands or huge generated cities can be fun, sometimes players yearn to get out onto a large expanse of water and explore what lies on varied islands or even what hides beneath the waves.

Water in open-world games is tricky, and often simply marks the boundaries of what the players can explore. Other times, though, this is a large part of the world to be explored, no matter what the cost might be of venturing into these watery regions. As graphical upgrades allow more immersive seas, it is likely dangerous oceans will continue to become more popular in gaming.

8 Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag

A Memorable Entry Filled With Medieval Piracy & Danger On The Caribbean

The Assassin’s Creed franchise isn’t known for incredible naval combat or open oceans ready for adventure, but the amazing creation of these aspects specifically for Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag made for an amazing adventure with a very different style. It also led to dangers across the high seas, as many enemy ships, dangerous sunken shipwrecks, and other threats are a large part of the game.

While there are also sea creatures that can be fought and hunted, they aren’t as much a part of the game as some other ocean-based adventures. This doesn’t stop the game from feeling like the player could be in danger at any moment as they step onto the Jackdaw and head out across the beautiful open world of the West Indies.

7 Maneater

You Are The Danger In This Open-World Shark Game

Though it never took off to the level it definitely could have with such a unique concept, Maneater is a fresh take on both a revenge story, Jaws, and open-world RPGs. Players control a female bullshark attempting to grow powerful enough to take the vengeance she desperately seeks against a fisherman that killed her mother.

A traditional story in a surprisingly changed format, Maneater is from the perspective of a water-based danger, but the open waters of this game feature many other dangers. Players start as a baby and have to be careful about when they choose to take on certain enemies, although environmental factors can be used as an advantage. A great example is using a swordfish as a spear. The most important rule of Maneater is also one of the golden rules of life: there’s always a bigger fish.

6 Atlas

Sail The High Seas And Square Off Against Enemy Fleets

• System: Xbox, PC
• Released: December 22nd, 2018
• Developers: Grapeshot Games, Instinct Games
• Genres: MMO, Adventure

There is no telling what you’ll run into when playing Atlas. This open-world game allows players to travel on the ocean between a variety of islands, experiencing everything the life of a pirate has to offer. While similar games about ocean travel are more focused on creature fights and treasure hunts, Atlas is all about naval combat between enemy ships.

Players can choose a PvE server, but the PvP ones are where the most fascinating ship combat occurs. There are many aspects of Atlas that never quite took off, but the wild fantastical elements and the fascinating naval combat are definitely worth exploring if players are brave enough to face down these dangerous seas.

5 Raft

Can You Craft Faster Than They Can Destroy?

Although there are plenty of survival games great to play together with friends, something about Raft manages to endure. This game, where players attempt to move across an ocean, building and maintaining a raft they have to live on with their friends, is chaotic and challenging due to creatures like sharks, which will continually bother and tear at either the raft or the players themselves.

Erosion and upkeep is a constantly swinging battle in Raft. The islands have their dangers, but the terror of being trapped on a tiny boat out in the ocean, where players can easily fall off and be left behind, makes for a unique challenge that hasn’t found a match in any other survival game yet, making this one of the most frantic and hilarious co-op experiences on the market.

4 Skull & Bones

A Pirate Game With Single & Multi-Player Dangers

Though Ubisoft’s attempt at a pirate game, following up perhaps on the success of their Assassin’s Creed games which ventured in this direction, hasn’t managed to give them massive success, it is a fun open-world pirate game where players can take to the open oceans on a ship of their own. Skull & Bones features several modes, including treasure hunting multiplayer contests, and a single-player campaign featuring all sorts of deadly creatures and enemies on the ocean.

Although Skull & Bones has interactive PvP contests, only NPCs from your ship can swing across and board the enemy ships. This makes the battles a little more extended than some similar games, and with the wide range of game modes available, there will be some fun to be found for everyone with a pirate shanty in their heart and a thirst for danger on the open seas.

3 Subnautica

The Original Ocean Survival Game With Terrifying Hidden Depths

Though there are now other oceanic survival games, Subnautica was very much the first in line for this idea when it hit early access in 2014. The player crash lands on a planet almost entirely covered in water and can adventure freely beneath the waves as long as they don’t venture into the open waters, where huge ghost leviathans will pick them off.

But this isn’t the only danger in these waters: from oxygen and food deficiency to tiny exploding fish and the other, larger dangers, Subnautica is full of fright. The open waters contain reaper leviathans, warpers looking specifically to hunt the player down, and even the deadly sea dragons in the lava zone. Players must go deeper in the waters in order to find a cure for a deadly disease, and hopefully escape the planet with their life.

2 Sea Of Thieves

The Most Deadly Pirate Adventures In Hostile Waters

There is no end to what can hit a player out of nowhere in Sea Of Thieves. A stray cannonball from another player’s ship, a barrel of explosives going off on board your own vessel or a Kraken rising unceremoniously from the depths to tear your entire world apart. Skeleton fleets, enemy players looking to create chaos and board your ship sneakily, or simply a shark coming at you while simply attempting to get back on board.

Everything from realistic dangers such as lightning strikes to siren creatures and cursed mermaid statues can bring death on these high seas. Sea Of Thieves is an infamously fun multiplayer game, but it is best to have a larger crew of friends aboard whenever they’re available to handle the shockingly long list of dangers that can strike on, or beneath, the waves.

1 Death In The Water 2

An Army Of Creatures Constantly Hunting You

• Systems: PC
• Released: January 26th, 2023
• Developers: Lighthouse Games Studio
• Genres: Shooter, Adventure

There are few water-based games with as much terror involved as Death In The Water 2. This indie open-world adventure sees players take control of a diver trying to dodge their way through a vast number of aquatic creatures on their way to taking on a giant, mind-controlling kraken named Death. It sounds bad, but it is somehow even worse than it sounds. The reality of Death In The Water 2 is just one big oceanic danger sign.

Players have to not only fight off creatures to survive but also prepare themselves for worse dangers simultaneously. This involves scavenging treasures and trying to create more deadly weapons to handle the constant onslaught. Death In The Water 2 surely has the most deadly waters in gaming, particularly since it comes with an endless horde mode where there is literally no escape from water-based terrors.