Procedurally generated puzzler Subaeria brings its stealth hacking to Steam

Subaeria is a puzzle-platformer built around roguelike elements like permadeath and procedural generation, and it's finally officially out on Steam. I say finally because we first wrote about Subaeria in October 2014 and I say officially because it entered Early Access nearly a year later in September 2015. Suffice it to say, Subaeria's been a long time coming. To celebrate its full launch, it's $11 (15 percent off) through Wednesday, May 16.

You play as Styx, a young redhead girl living in the underwater dystopia of Subaeria. Styx sets out on a quest for revenge after her parents are murdered by Subaeria's overlord, her only company her trusty drone, which she can use to manipulate Subaeria's largely robotic populous. It's an undersea mix of platforming and puzzle solving that's centrally about fighting indirectly.

With your drone's help, you "pit your enemies against one another and the environment to defeat them," the game's Steam page reads. That can play out as simply tricking one robot into shooting you and then luring another robot into its line of fire, but other puzzles may be as involved as hacking into a problem robot, distracting another robot with a hologram, and narrowly avoiding rogue death machines as you platform over a freeway. I especially like the look of Subaeria's bosses, which seem to have inventive non-violent solutions.

"Each play-through is procedurally generated and gradually increases the puzzle solving difficulty," Illogika says, "unlocking power-ups and demanding strategic thinking in order to manipulate the surroundings and character’s skills." Different playthroughs can also yield different endings.

Austin freelanced for PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and has been a full-time writer at PC Gamer's sister publication GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a staff writer is just a cover-up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news, the occasional feature, and as much Genshin Impact as he can get away with.