BENGALURU: Survival games are annoying because they allow room for a lot of self-reflection. These games are supposed to virtually simulate raw nature, but then it’s actually a simulation of loneliness. Like you could be stranded on an island — your only job then is to forage for food and other resources. You have the occasional skirmish with other living creatures, but there’s nothing else to do, no interactions — no one else to talk to. This was the base of The Long Dark’s gameplay when it released a few years back.
Although in The Long Dark, it was the cold Canadian snow instead of an island, and intense fights against wolves and elks. The idea of a Quiet Apocalypse is scarier than one packed with zombies. A meditative, introspective experience is not exactly what I’m looking for when I play a videogame.
But I can compromise on the introspective side-effects as long as the view is lit. Late January, Subnautica, an underwater survival adventure, quickly became cool because of just that. Your spaceship, the Aurora — crashes into an unknown aquatic planet. The game is terrifying as it is — the first-person gameplay experience of swimming through the murky darkness, maintaining oxygen and pressure levels, and dodging alien sharks is quite atmospheric and realistic. Just to make things a little more extreme, the developers have eliminated the long-held tradition of having maps in videogames. This might seem like an insignificant detail, except when you’re trying to escape a huge sea monster in the dark ocean floor and can’t find your way back to the ship.
Subnautica isn’t about luck, quick reflexes and remembering combat combos. It’s less of conflict, and more of survival strategising — the muted tones of the underwater, the eerie silence and alerts of nearby dangerous creatures forces you to take a stealthier route in the different biomes. The underlying sci-fi storyline is haunting, and keeps you hooked to the game. Subnautica has been long in development — the early access version came out in 2014, and the consistent revisions of the game finally brought in a perfected full version in January 2018 — one of the reasons why this is a fair contender for Game of the Year.