Subnautica
Descend into the depths of an alien underwater world filled with wonder and peril. Craft equipment, pilot submarines and out-smart wildlife to explore lush coral reefs, volcanoes, cave systems, and more - all while trying to survive.
Action AdventureHorrorOpen WorldSandboxSurvival
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- Released
- 2014
- Developer
- Unknown Worlds Entertainment
- Platforms
- 10 systems
- Critics
- 87
- Steam Deck
- verified
- Download
- 20 GB
What is Subnautica?
Descend into the depths of an alien underwater world filled with wonder and peril. Craft equipment, pilot submarines and out-smart wildlife to explore lush coral reefs, volcanoes, cave systems, and more - all while trying to survive.
Description as published by the developer on its own store page, read 30 August 2026. It is marketing copy, not our assessment.
The record
| First released | 16 December 2014 |
|---|---|
| Developer | Unknown Worlds Entertainment |
| Publisher | Unknown Worlds Entertainment |
| Platforms | iOS, Android, iPad, Android Tablet, PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck |
| Genres | Action Adventure, Horror, Open World, Sandbox, Survival |
| Languages | 27 supported |
Source. Catalogue facts from Wikidata Q21039915, seeded 30 August 2026. Store data from Steam, read 30 August 2026.
How was Subnautica received?
Method. Player figures are Steam's own totals for the PC version, read 30 August 2026. The Metacritic score is the one Steam publishes on its store page and can lag the site itself. Metacritic page. Neither is our opinion. We have not published a review of this game.
Accessibility
Seeing
None declared
Hearing
None declared
Input
- Full controller support
Difficulty
None declared
Method. Features the publisher declared on its own store page. A declaration is a floor, not a review.
What does it support?
| Capability | Support |
|---|---|
| Controller | full support |
| Cloud saves | Yes |
| Cross-platform play | No |
| Mod support | No official workshop |
| Online play | Single-player only |
| In-game purchases | No |
| Steam Deck | verified |
| Download size | 20 GB |
| Add-on content | 1 DLC listed |
| Age gate | None |
Method. Read from the publisher's Steam listing on 30 August 2026. Describes the PC version. Console versions differ.
What does it cost?
Steam price in US dollars, read 30 August 2026. Prices move hourly and vary by region. Check the current price.
Is Subnautica worth it?
97% of 379,053 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Overwhelmingly Positive. It costs $29.99 on Steam, and critics score it 87/100.
That is the data, not a verdict for sale: whether it is worth it depends on the price you pay and what you want. Players do report problems — see the reported-problems section below before buying. We have not published our own review of this game.
How long is Subnautica? How long to beat it
Total play time for Subnautica is about 51.7 hours to do everything, and around 29.6 hours to reach the end of the main story. These are player-submitted times from HowLongToBeat, not our own, shown with the number of players behind each.
| How you play | Hours | Players logged |
|---|---|---|
| Just the main story: straight through the critical path | 29.6h | 690 |
| Main + the extras: story plus the side content most people do | 42.2h | 909 |
| Completionist: everything: 100% the game | 51.7h | 924 |
At its current price of $29.99, beating the main story works out to about $1.01 per hour. That is the price divided by the hours, a value read and not a verdict: a longer game costs less per hour, which is not the same as being the better game.
Source: HowLongToBeat community submissions, read 2026-10-19.
Subnautica system requirements
The minimum requirements from Subnautica's Steam page. These are what it takes to launch and be playable, not to run at high settings.
| Memory | 4 GB RAM (other games at this level) |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Haswell 2 cores / 4 threads @ 2.5Ghz |
| Graphics | Intel HD 4600 · runs on a low-end GPU |
| Storage | 20 GB (more games this size) |
| System | 64-bit OS required |
Can your PC run it? Check Subnautica against your exact GPU, CPU and RAM.
Where Subnautica sits on the grid
Compare the whole catalogueSubnautica plotted on the axes the GamingPickz Score is built from, on the full 0 to 100 scale so its position is its real one. Change either axis to see where it lands.
1 games have both
Players. The share of Steam reviews marked positive, pulled toward the catalogue average in proportion to how few reviews stand behind it. A game with 200 reviews moves a long way toward the average; one with 200,000 barely moves at all. Without this a title sitting at 100 percent on nine reviews outranks Half-Life 2 at 98 percent on 278,000.
Popularity. A blend of two things that are not the same. Audience is how many people wrote a Steam review, which is a floor on how many played it. Reach is how many language editions of Wikipedia document the game, which is cultural footprint rather than sales. A game can score high on one and low on the other: a huge free-to-play title has audience without reach, and a landmark console exclusive has reach without a Steam audience at all. Where both exist they are averaged; where only one does, that one carries it.
- Mobile
Every point links to that game's entry. The value map and the reception map are fixed views of the same data.
How positions are decided
No paid placement, no favouritism, live third-party data
- Placed by the published method, not by us. Every coordinate is computed from the axis definitions and weights printed on this site. Nobody moves a point. See the axes.
- Nothing here is paid for. No sponsored placements, no promoted slots, no arrangement of any kind affects a position. If that ever changes it will be labelled and sit outside the ranking.
- No favouritism, including our own. The 16 games we have written full reviews of are scored by exactly the same formula as the other 1,510, from the same third-party inputs, and they land where it puts them. Our own opinion of a game does not enter its coordinates.
- A position is not an endorsement. It says how a game was received and what it costs, not that we recommend it. Where we do recommend something, it carries a written review with a name on it.
- Fetched from live third-party data. Player sentiment from Steam, critic aggregates as published on store pages, prices checked hourly, attention from Wikipedia. Each figure carries its source and the date it was read, and we do not adjust any of them.
Estimated sales for Subnautica
These are estimates, not reported figures. Unknown Worlds Entertainment has not published unit sales for Subnautica, and nobody outside the company can measure them. What follows is arithmetic on the review count, with the method printed below so you can check it or reject it.
How this was calculated
Steam sales track review counts closely enough that dividing one by the other across games with published figures gives a usable multiplier. This is the standard method for estimating sales from outside a publisher.
| Reviews on Steam | 379,053 |
|---|---|
| Sales per review | 30 to 60 |
| List price | $29.99 |
| Assumed average selling price | 33% to 66% of list |
What this cannot tell you
Steam only. Console, Epic, GOG and retail sales are not in here. For a game that sold heavily on PlayStation this is a fraction of the real number.
The band is wide because the method is imprecise. Review rates vary with price, genre, launch era and how insistently a game asks. Published analyses put the ratio between 30 and 60 for paid games, and we show the whole range rather than picking a point in it.
The owner estimate above measures something else. SteamSpy counts accounts that have the game, which includes free weekends, bundles, giveaways and gifts. It sits higher than a sales figure for that reason, and the two are not alternative answers to the same question.
Revenue is the shakiest line. It assumes an average selling price well below list because most copies move in sales, and it ignores regional pricing, refunds, key resellers and whatever deal the publisher actually has with Valve. Treat it as an order of magnitude, not a figure.
If Unknown Worlds Entertainment publishes a real number we will use that instead and say where it came from. Our editorial policy covers how we handle figures we cannot verify.
Subnautica price & deals: is it on sale?
We have one reading so far: $29.99 on 30 August 2026. Prices are checked daily from here, and this becomes a chart once there is more than one point to join. A single observation is a price, not a history.
Latest Subnautica updates & patch notes
Pulled from Subnautica's own Steam feed on 5 September 2026. Posts marked as from the studio were written by the developer; the rest are articles Steam syndicated from elsewhere. Every one links to its source.
- Steam Global Top Sellers for week of 19 May — 26 May 2026
- Subnautica peaks at 51k players
- Steam Global Top Sellers for week of 12 May — 19 May 2026
- Subnautica is free to play this weekend, and the subaquatic survival all-timer has a hefty discount to boot
- Subnautica Free Weekend & Series Sale
- Subnautica Security Hotfix
What readers say about Subnautica
Reviews written by people who have played it. These are separate from the GamingPickz Score and are never averaged into it: that score comes from thousands of Steam reviews with a sample-size correction, and a handful of unverified ratings would distort it rather than improve it.
Loading reviews…
Problems players report
We read the 299 most recent negative Steam reviews of Subnautica on 30 August 2026 and counted what they mention. These are complaints, not confirmed defects: we have not reproduced any of them, and a review describes one person's machine. What the counts tell you is which problems more than one person ran into.
- Crashes and freezes12 of 299 (4%)
However, I'm leaving a negative review because for some reason, after the first hour or so of gameplay, it suddenly hard crashed my entire PC.
Steam review, 27 June 2026 · 1 hours played · 4 readers marked it helpfulGame crashes any time I try to acquire it, even when using cheat commands to spawn it in.
Steam review, 22 May 2026 · 44 hours played · 2 readers marked it helpful
A further 6 reviews call the game buggy or broken without saying how, which is why they are counted separately rather than assigned to a theme. Counted by keyword across review text, so a review discussing two problems is counted under both. Read the reviews yourself.
Did it run on your PC?
Tell other players how it ran on your machine. One tap, from your saved PC if you have one.
Where Subnautica appears
The ranked lists and finder pages Subnautica qualifies for, from its own genre and platform to what it takes to run.
- Best action adventure games
- Best horror games
- Best open world games
- Best sandbox games
- Best survival games
- Best iOS games
- Best Android games
- Best iPad games
- Best Android Tablet games
- Best PC games
- Best PlayStation 5 games
- Best Xbox One games
- Best Xbox Series X and Series S games
- Best Nintendo Switch games
- Best Steam Deck games
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Games like Subnautica
24 games overlap with Subnautica on the tags Steam players applied to it, on genre, and on theme. The closest are Subnautica: Below Zero, Breathedge and The Forest.
Part of the Subnautica series
Subnautica is one of 2 Subnautica games we track. See the whole series ranked by the GamingPickz Score, plotted on the grid, and listed in release order:
Subnautica head to head
See Subnautica compared side by side, on score, price, specs and more:
More Subnautica comparisons: vs Fallout: New Vegas, vs Grand Theft Auto IV: The Complete Edition, vs Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead, vs Just Cause 2, vs Saints Row: The Third, vs Car Mechanic Simulator 2021, vs Dead Island Definitive Edition, vs Mafia II (Classic), vs Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, vs Red Faction Guerrilla Steam Edition, vs State of Decay, vs Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box, vs Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle, vs Jurassic World Evolution 2, vs Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, vs Postal 2, vs Prototype, vs The Evil Within 2, vs Thief Gold (1999), vs Transport Fever 2, vs Universe Sandbox, vs Zombie Army Trilogy
Common questions about Subnautica
What platforms is Subnautica on?
Subnautica is available on iOS, Android, iPad, Android Tablet, PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck. It first released in 2014.
How much does Subnautica cost?
$29.99 on Steam in the United States, read on 30 August 2026. Prices move often and vary by region, so check the store before buying.
Do players recommend Subnautica?
97% of 379,053 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Overwhelmingly Positive. That is players rating it, not our review. We have not published a review of this game.
What is the Metacritic score for Subnautica?
87 out of 100 for the PC version, as published on the game's own Steam store page. Steam can lag Metacritic by a few points.
Does Subnautica work on Steam Deck?
Valve rates Subnautica as verified on the Steam Deck, from its own testing. That means it works out of the box with no configuration.
How big is the Subnautica download?
20 GB on PC, from the storage requirement on its Steam listing. Console versions differ.
Who made Subnautica?
Subnautica was developed by Unknown Worlds Entertainment and published by Unknown Worlds Entertainment.
Is Subnautica worth it in 2026?
97% of 379,053 Steam reviews are positive (Overwhelmingly Positive), and it is $29.99 on steam. That is the strongest signal we hold; "worth it" depends on the price you pay and what you want, so weigh the sentiment against the current price above.
Is Subnautica on sale?
Not at the moment. Subnautica is at its $29.99 list price on Steam, read on 30 August 2026. It has been cheaper before; the price history above shows when.
What are the system requirements for Subnautica?
At minimum, Subnautica needs 4 GB RAM, a Intel Haswell 2 cores / 4 threads @ 2.5Ghz, a Intel HD 4600, 20 GB of storage, from its Steam listing. That is what it takes to launch and be playable, not to run at high settings. Check it against your own PC on the can-I-run page.