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I've barely aimed my repair gun at the sub when there is an almighty crunch and it vanishes. Turning, I glimpse the vessel's headlights spinning wildly through the blackness, and in the glare from those headlights, a corkscrew motion and the flash of dense, milky-white flesh. Whatever it is, it's so big that I can't see all of it. There's another horrible metallic screech and the Seamoth is released, to dangle sadly in a halo of debris and spurting gas a hundred metres off. Swimming over to it takes approximately ten seconds and thirty million years. Scrambling inside with my heart in my teeth, I hastily switch off the lights and check the sub's hull strength. Five per cent. The water around me is utterly still. All the same, I decide to head back to the shallows before attempting further repairs.
Terror, wonder, and a generous whack of underwater DIY. This is Subnautica in a nutshell. Available in feature-complete form this week after three years on Steam Early Access, Unknown Worlds' impressive survival sim casts you as a lowly but very able crewman aboard the starship Aurora, sometime in the late 23rd century. As it begins the Aurora crash-lands on a remote waterworld following a mysterious explosion. Regaining consciousness, you find yourself adrift in a damaged escape pod, the Aurora's enormous, burning carcass the only thing visible on a balmy blue horizon.
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