Best Survival Games if You Love Subnautica

Key Takeaways

• Vivid environments, immersive exploration, and chilling monsters make these games thrilling to play.
• The Long Dark
  ,
  Minecraft
  , and
  Valheim
  offer exploration, challenges, and unique environments similar to
  Subnautica
  .
• From
  Grounded’s
  unexpected thrills to
  Don’t Starve’s
  horror undertones, these games provide immersive and eerie survival experiences akin to
  Subnautica
  .

Subnautica is a survival exploration game with heavy horror undertones. Released in 2018 and developed by Unknown Worlds Entertainment, players find themselves stranded on an oceanic alien planet following a spaceship crash. To escape this strange planet, players must delve into its darkest depths to pursue knowledge and crafting materials. Be warned, giant monsters lurk in the gloom, and many of this planet’s inhabitants are deadly.

From its beautifully varied environments to the isolating terror of its seabeds, there’s a lot to love about Subnautica. The following games have been selected because they share such characteristics, whether in their features or atmospheres, and the emotions they evoke in players.

1 The Long Dark

Beauty, Isolation, Terror

The Long Dark is a realistic survival exploration game. In it, players find themselves trapped in the Canadian wilderness, where they must learn to live alongside Mother Nature or die trying.

Players who enjoyed journeying through the beautiful depths of Subnautica will find a lot to enjoy in this game. The Long Dark is teeming with breathtaking environments to explore, all with their own unique designs and chilling dangers. Death lurks around every corner, making exploration equal parts exhilarating and terrifying. Like Subnautica, The Long Dark is a game of isolation where players are left to explore an unfamiliar world.

2 Minecraft

Freedom & Variety

Needing no introduction for many, Minecraft is a blocky survival crafting game. With few concrete goals, players are given unprecedented freedom to find meaning and fun in this game, whether through building, mining, or fighting.

Like Subnautica, Minecraft presents players with a vast array of biomes to explore, each with unique resources, structures, and creatures. With enormous underground caverns, sprawling jungles, and fiery hellscapes, Minecraft will surely satisfy players who loved Subnautica for its environmental exploration. Minecraft also provides players with significant gameplay flexibility. Players are free to do whatever they want, whether that be exploration, base building, or boss hunting.

3 Valheim

Base Building & Linear Progression

Valheim is a survival exploration game inspired by Viking mythos. In it, players undertake the role of a dead warrior tasked with taming the fantastical realm of Valheim. Players must explore, craft, and build if they hope to be strong enough to slay the mythical beasts of this land.

With detailed and satisfying base building, players can build sprawling Viking strongholds and epic mead halls. Similar to Subnautica, Valheim also presents players with an array of biomes, all with unique challenges to overcome and materials to be rewarded with. Players must master one biome and use the resources gained from it to increase their power before taking on the next boss.

4 Terraria

Exploration & Threat

Terraria is a survival crafting game in which players find themselves in a fantastical world filled with a variety of monsters and environments. Players must dig deep, collect resources, and grow stronger so they can slay increasingly more challenging bosses.

Terraria presents a similar gameplay loop to that of Subnautica, where players explore and conquer new environments and are rewarded with new and more powerful materials. In an instant, exploration of these environs can go from peaceful to a battle for life and death; doubly so if a boss spawns unexpectedly.

5 Fallout 4

The Freedom to Explore a Familiar Land Ravished by Time and War

Fallout 4 is a post-apocalyptic open-world RPG where players take on the role of a vault dweller, a person sheltered for hundreds of years from the nuclear fallout that has ravaged the world. Explore a wasteland whose people, politics, and wildlife have been mutated by hundreds of years of radiation exposure.

Like Subnautica, Fallout 4 allows players to explore an eerily familiar alien world through the eyes of a character just as poorly adjusted as themselves. The wastelands of Fallout 4 are also filled with alien creatures with unique appearances, behaviors, and environments. Some of them are even human, or at least used to be.

6 Grounded

Linear Progression & Unexpected Thrills

Grounded is a survival crafting game where players play as a child who has been shrunk to the size of an ant as they struggle to live in a garden. Like all gardens, this one is teeming with insects, from giant spiders to blood-sucking mosquitoes. Players must explore, craft, and build to conquer the trials of this game.

Grounded shares a similar gameplay loop with Subnautica, where players explore new environs, collect materials, and become stronger, enabling them to take on more deadly opponents. Grounded is also a peaceful and wonder-filled game until it isn’t. The game can change instantly, from thrilling exploration to terror-filled panic, as players are the prey of many bugs.

7 Don’t Starve

Wonder, Fear, Horror

Don’t Starve is a survival crafting game with distinct horror undertones and an unsettling atmosphere. Players must fight for survival in a semi-fantastical land devoid of human life. No matter how much players explore, collect resources, and build in this harsh world, death is inevitable.

Players who love Subnautica will thoroughly enjoy exploring the world of Don’t Starve, a world that is equally wonderful and whimsical as it is terrifying and unsettling. In Don’t Starve, exploration can go from calm to chilling in seconds. Whether it be monsters, sanity, or the darkness of caverns, players caught unprepared will quickly succumb to the dangers of the wilderness.

8 The Forest

Hostility & Claustrophobia

The Forest is a realistic survival horror game. The sole survivors of a plane crash, players must explore, craft, and fight their way to survival on a remote island filled with cannibals and humanoid mutants, all the while searching for a means to escape.

As in Subnautics, The Forest’s story forces players to delve deep into claustrophobic depths. Death could be hiding around every twist of the cave, and the darkness hides some truly grotesque horrors, both living and dead. Exploration above ground sees players encounter beautiful and highly realistic environments. Peace and curiosity are, however, inevitably replaced by fear upon encountering cannibals or, even worse, mutants.