It's been a while since I played Rust but I always look forward to its monthly updates because—what even is Rust these days? The latest feature sounds like the least likely thing you'd find in a hardcore PvP sandbox: apartments for rent.

"The apartment complex is a new monument that allows players getting started with a wipe to find a place to call home," says Facepunch Studios. "Simply talk to the receptionist in the lobby to get started and rent a room. There are options for every budget, from the basement to the penthouse. Different room types come with different perks, like more storage, furnaces and more."

OK, you can rent apartments in Rust now. That might as well be a thing. At any rate, the cutthroat traditions of Rust still endure even in the temporary housing market:

"Once you've rented a room you'll need to insert scrap into the slot next to your door, otherwise you'll be evicted and all of your possessions will be seized," Facepunch says. "There is a master key available somewhere on the island - find it and you can unlock access to any occupied room in the apartments for 5 minutes. Need a hint as to what room to burgle? There might be a guard in the basement who has more information."

Ah, that's more like it. If you're a second late with your rent you'll lose everything, plus someone might find a key and ransack your flat based on information spilled by a slimy basement stoolie.

Apartments aren't the only things you can occupy in the new update: there are commercial opportunities as well as residential ones:

"The new apartment complex monument features a small marketplace of shops. Each shop can be purchased and run by players, allowing you to sell your wares to the residents of the apartment building," says Facepunch.

Sounds sweet except for all the peril: someone may buy your shop right out from under you simply by paying more for it in scrap. And that master key that lets you pilfer from apartments? It also works on stores, so you're probably gonna get robbed by some jerk player, too. Hey, it's not personal. It's only business.

The update also brings changes to Rust's "softcore" mode, like 2x multipliers to resource gathering and raid windows that only allow base raids to occur between the hours of 6:00 and 9:00 pm local server time. There's also a new clan system, improved animations, Twitch drops, and more. Check out all the details of the new update here.

As a survival game, Windrose is an extremely forgiving one. Your weapons and gear never degrade. If your pirate ship sinks you can rebuild it with a mere 20 pieces of wood. You can't die of hunger or thirst, and your NPC pirate crew, well… they can't die at all.

It's such a streamlined survival experience that when you're sailing your ship across the sea, you can go in any direction you want at top speed at all times. That's because despite the title of the game, there is no actual wind in Windrose.

That might change in the future, says Kraken Express. In a devlog posted today, the studio outlined the first major update to the early access pirate survival game that includes a new biome, new pirate ship classes, more of the main story and sidequests, and yep, wind. Maybe.

First, the studio gave players a look at the next biome, the Ashlands, a region that "suffered from volcanic eruptions long ago, leaving its mark on the settlers who lived here, and on those who came after." There, players can expect "a variety of new islands with new enemies, items, resources, recipes, points of interest, and, of course, a new challenging boss."

Also on the roster for the update are new building pieces and decorations, plus new ship classes and variants. There are also plans for NPC ships to behave more "naturally," meaning they'll actually sail in formations instead of simply steering back and forth in circles as they do now.

And also: wind, perhaps.

"We are also aware of the popular request to add wind influence on sailing to the game," Kraken Express said on Steam. "We’ll definitely be exploring this idea as well, and we originally intended to."

I expect a bit of resistance from some players at the idea of a wind system. One of the selling points of Windrose is that you can just jump in your ship and speed off to combat and adventure without a bunch of speedbumps (or whatever the equivalent of a speedbump is in the ocean) getting in the way. Sailing isn't meant to be challenging, it's meant to be fun, and it is.

One of the games Windrose is heavily inspired by, Valheim, has a wind system that means sailing directly into the wind can only be done at very slow speeds with the sails unfurled. I personally think that helps Valheim feel more like a real adventure where the ocean is a treacherous place, but at the same time, sometimes you just want to get from Point A to Point B without a bunch of drama. Valheim's wind system can sometimes turn a quick ocean voyage into a real slog.

Kraken Express is keeping that in mind as it experiments with its own wind system.

"But let us be crystal clear: we want it to be fun and simple," the studio said. "Windrose aims to be an adventure, without some of the more hardcore simulation aspects."

There's still no word when this first major update will arrive: "As always, we'll be sharing more details, including an estimated release window, as development progresses."

Ever play a game set in a world so intriguing and enjoyable you wish there were other games, even of a different genre, that took place in the same setting?

Eremite Games, the studio that created roguelike city builder Against the Storm, has announced just that. "There’s something we’ve been dying to tell you," the studio said on Steam: it's been working on a new game that is "slowly taking shape as a survival game set in the Against the Storm universe."

Even better, it looks like it might be co-op. As part of a dev diary, the studio released a short in-engine clip of the new game, though asked that fans "please keep your expectations very modest. The project is still in its earliest phase, full of placeholders, and nearly everything you see is subject (and likely) to change."

There's not a lot to see in the clip: a robed figure carrying a rifle strides through a gloomy, rainy night, and stops outside a small dwelling that looks for all the world like a building you'd see in Against the Storm. A moment later, a second figure steps into frame, which could suggest a co-op experience. See for yourself:

That's it. There's nothing else to see at the moment, and no further details about the new game including when it might come out or even what it's called.

"There’s a chance we’re showing this way too early," the studio said. "We hope you won’t hold it against us if the project evolves into something very different. But keeping this under wraps has been torture. We’re still just a small, 6-person indie team, and this kind of openness feels more natural to us."

Against the Storm was an unusual, contrarian sort of city builder: instead of building a city that lasts the whole game, the city you build gets wiped out every year thanks to a cataclysmic cycle of destructive magic—the storm of the title. But each time you begin again, you bring with you the experience and upgrades of your previous runs. It was our favorite city builder of 2023, and our reviewer Leana Hafer called it "one of the most clever, engaging, and endearing strategy games I've played in years."

Speaking of which, Eremite Games also addressed a topic I'm sure it gets asked about a lot: Against the Storm 2?

"The idea of a sequel is something we think about often," the studio said. "But this time, we wanted to experiment with the survival genre and explore new facets of the Against the Storm universe."

Palworld just keeps moving. It's postured to more or less shrug off its prominent legal battle with Nintendo, and it's reaching that glorious threshold any survival-craft game hopes to eventually cross: actually being done. Or if not done, complete enough to call it version 1.0 when it finally releases July 10.

It seems like it will be much more than a formality, too, according to a post from Pocketpair's communications and publishing head, John "Bucky" Buckley. "Losing my mind trying to make nice patch notes for Palworld 1.0," he wrote. "Who'd have thought that, *checks notes*, 27 pdf pages of changes and additions would be hard to make neat?"

Assuming these are standard pages and not index cards or something, that tease makes the patch sound gargantuan. We already know some of the bigger additions coming to the game, like the flight-enabling wing pack and the expected grab bag of new items and pals, but 27 pages is a lot of pages. I'm sure some of that extra space has to do with the World Tree, which trailers have teased as a big narrative component of what's to come.

It's not clear where Palworld is headed after this, but it's certainly doing well for itself. It's got over 35,000 concurrent players as I write this according to SteamDB, and with an official card game on the docket and a bunch of Steam awards under its belt, it seems all that noise about it aping Pokémon's shtick worked out for Pocketpair in the end.

If you're keen to dive in and see all the new stuff once 1.0 hits the scene, you won't have to start from scratch—but Buckley reckons you might want to anyway, just to get a fresh start.

Blood West is one of the better indie shooters to emerge in recent years, a dark Western spin on Stalker in which you roam dusty Badlands fighting eldritch horrors. The game's been well supported since its release in 2023, too, with developer Hyperstrange releasing a bunch of expansions, including the recent roguelike themed Scavengers DLC.

Yet while Hyperstrange continued to support Blood West, the game's director has been busy working on a new project. That was revealed earlier this week as Bloodwoven, and it looks to be something of a spiritual successor to Blood West, albeit much, much weirder.

At a glance, Bloodwoven looks like it takes place in a polar region, but the land you see is in fact the decaying body of a long-dead god. You play as tribesmen native to this world who are birthed into existence via giant blood-pods (ew). But something has gone wrong with those pods, and they've started spewing out unholy horrors instead of your mates and cousins.

Bloodwoven's key hook is its fully simulated ecosystem. With various animals roaming the world—such as toothy uniwalruses (I don't know if that's what they're called, but it's sure as hell what I would name them)—preying on each other as well as yourself. There are also various tribes in the world who have their own customs and motivations, and they'll react differently to you depending on your actions in the game world.

As you'd expect in a survival game, you'll also need to tend to your basic needs. Alongside food, temperature is a major factor in Bloodwoven, and you'll need to ensure you keep warm by wearing warm clothing, building campfires, brewing hot drinks, and avoiding falling into icy-cold water.

You're also free to explore wherever you dare in Bloodwoven. The game features a Peak-style climbing system that lets you climb any mountain provided you have the stamina to do so. Just ensure that you prepare adequately, both for the climb and whatever may be lurking on the mountain's summit.

There's a trailer you can watch above. Bloodwoven sounds horribly rad, and rad-ly horrible. There's no release date yet, but I reckon we'll see Bloodwoven emerge from its igloo sometime next year.

I remember when Klei's self-explanatory classic Don't Starve came out, survival-crafting games as we know them now felt new and novel. "Surely this is a passing fad," I must have thought. Well, my adolescent hot takes aged about as well as a Beefalo steak in the hot sun—Don't Starve Together is bigger than ever, having just hit a new all-time concurrent player count peak on Steam, according to SteamDB.

The last time this happened was in 2023, when a steep discount caused the game to go from around 50,000 players to around 100,000. It's a similar story this time, as right now the game is available for less than $2, and peaked earlier today at 122,662 players all not starving simultaneously.

As I write this, it's settled down to around 68,000 players, which is still absurd for a game of its tenure—DST originally released in 2016. Its singleplayer counterpart is still on our list of the best survival games on PC, and its hand-drawn art style has probably helped it along; the game hasn't visibly aged a day in all that time.

If you're unfamiliar with Don't Starve, the title could serve as a full instruction manual. I think the kids these days might think of it as "wikislop," given how deep the rabbit hole goes on its various crafting systems and secrets, but that's half the fun.

Unlike some other survival-crafts, which quickly bloom into creative sandboxes, Don't Starve is more about adding as many years as possible onto your best time, trying to stave off hunger, monsters, and insanity for as long as you can. You can get to a point where it's possible to explore at your leisure, but you've got to fight for it.

Given that the original, solo-only Don't Starve only has a few thousand people playing it on Steam right now, it makes sense that the upcoming Don't Starve Elsewhere is focusing on co-op as well—the series' transition to multiplayer has clearly been a huge hit. Here's hoping that new game lives up to the hype that ferments in a decade.

If you ask me to name what genre of games I tend to gravitate towards the most, I'll tell you it's a good ol' fashioned, narrative-driven RPG. But if you were to look at my Steam history, I can see how you would assume it's anything and everything under the survival crafting tag.

Still, I maintain that I value story above all else; I just can't resist a good crafting loop and endless base building. There aren't many survival crafting games out there that satisfy with a good plot hook, but they're great little adventures when you've got a friend or two to tag along. I love setting up a server, clearing my weekend schedule, and using survival games as a sort of social campfire for the Discord gang to huddle around—even if I spend most of that time organizing chests.

That ritual is how I've wound up with hundreds of hours across several of the genre's staples. So, as a tribute to all of my time spent in the (often literal) mines, I've thrown together a survival crafting quiz for all of you sandbox sickos. Whether you're the building friend, the guy that's always fishing, or that person perpetually lagging behind the group, this one should be a breeze.

You've got 12 minutes to identify 20 survival crafting games by a pixelated screenshot. Good luck, and when you're finished, let me know how you did in the comments.

Normally a game leaving early access would be cause for celebration, but I daresay that's not the case for Prologue: Go Wayback! It left early access on Steam today, but it's also doing so in an unfinished state with no plans for further development.

The open world survival game from PlayerUnknown Productions launched into early access in 2025, but less than a year later announced it was halting development as the studio, founded by PUBG creator Brendan Greene, laid off staff.

"Today brings the final update to Prologue: Go Wayback! that our studio's game team has been working on," the studio said on Steam. "We announced recently that we unfortunately have had to make some hard decisions for the studio's future, and this included halting development on the game."

As for leaving early access, the decision was made "because it felt inappropriate to leave it in Early Access when we are not able to continue developing it," the studio said. "This wasn't the plan we had for a full release when we started with Early Access, but we felt this would be the best way to leave the game available on Steam without setting the wrong expectations from future store page visitors and players."

Prologue: Go Wayback! is also now free on Steam, so if you want to own it forever, all you have to do is download it.

As for players who spent $20 to buy the game in early access, they can get their money back, no matter when they bought it or how much they played:

"We will be offering self-refunds, without restrictions on playtime or how long ago you bought the game, for a period of 60 days until August 17, 2026," the studio said. "If you refund the game, it will be removed from your Library. If you want to keep playing but also want to request a refund, you are able to add it to your Library again at no cost now that it is available for free."

So if you bought it, you can request a refund through Steam—then go ahead and re-add the new version to your Steam library for free.

It's a shame it's coming to such an abrupt end: I played Prologue in early access and even though it clearly had a long development road ahead of it before it would feel complete, I enjoyed the harshness of the world and how it made simple tasks like building a campfire feel like a real accomplishment.

Prologue was also meant to be more than just a survival game: it was a test of PlayerUnknown Productions' game engine, Melba, which the studio is developing to generate earth-scale procedural worlds. You can still get a taste of that in PlayerUnknown's tech demo (also free and in early access), called Preface: Undiscovered World, and work on Melba will continue, albeit "with a smaller team."

There are some new additions in this final version of Prologue, like paths and trails, items like mobile weather monitors, and improvements to cooking, lighting, clouds, fog, and other systems. You can read the full patch notes and announcement here.

Survival RPG Outward 2 has been delayed from a July 2026 release into next year. Developer Nine Dots Studio delivered the news on Steam today, with Nine Dots CEO and Outward 2 creative director Guillaume Boucher-Vidal saying "I apologize that we couldn’t give you the game you guys deserve on time."

There's no specific revised release date for Outward 2: at the moment, the release date on Steam simply says "2027."

That's disappointing for sure! I had a fine time in a build of Outward 2 not long ago and the RPG has been in open beta since June 7, so it looked to be on track for an early access release this summer. Alas.

"I know that this might seem sudden as not that long ago we released a trailer inviting people to explore Aurai during summer, but the truth is that if we just stick to the plan stubbornly, we’re delivering a product that might not satisfy your expectations," Boucher-Vidal said on Steam.

"The last thing we want to do is disappoint fans of Outward and there has been a lot of comments stating that they wish for the game to spend more time in development before the launch. The point of a beta is to listen to feedback, and so we will."

Boucher-Vidal's post did not say specifically what the feedback was from players that convinced the studio to delay.

"It’s hard to gauge what is the appropriate degree of stability expected for early access. The best we can do is take a hard, honest look at the game, and at our team, and ask: in a few weeks, will this be good enough to charge money for?" Boucher-Vidal said.

I definitely ran into some rough edges in my time in the beta, but nothing that seemed like it couldn't be addressed with patches—and besides, Outward 2 was going to be an early access game, so issues are expected. However, I only spent a couple of hours in the build, so players who dove in a bit more deeply may have seen other, more serious problems with the RPG.

"Dropping this news is especially painful knowing that some of our most dedicated players actually planned their summer break around the release date. It sucks for you and I personally apologize to everyone affected this way," Boucher-Vidal said.

"However, it would be even worse if you ended up playing something over your vacation that you were not even happy with."

Palworld's irreverent 'Pokémon with guns' conceit won it all sorts of buzz, but also attention from Nintendo's infamous lawyers—Palworld developer Pocketpair was sued by the big 'tendo back in 2024 over a few Pokémon patents for around $66,000 in damages—a small payout for such a big company, but with an apparent aim to bleed Pocketpair for millions more just fighting the suit.

It's been nearly two years since then, and while Palworld remains one of the most played games on Steam, Nintendo is poised to get less than half what it initially wanted. That's if it even wins, which it very well may not, according to IP expert and former Blizzard employee Florian Mueller via games fray (thanks, IGN).

"This litigation is no longer about anything serious in commercial terms," Mueller wrote. In the article, Mueller explains that much of Palworld's commercial success came from before the relevant patents were approved, and damages couldn't be awarded for any sales that came after any potentially patent-infringing mechanics were patched out. "So it’s only a short window, with a limited sales volume (and territorially limited to Japan), for which Nintendo can seek damages."

Of course, it's also possible that Pocketpair's "numerous invalidity challenges and non-infringement arguments" pay off and Nintendo gets nothing. Either way, the court will express an opinion on Nov. 9 later this year, and whatever is decided, Mueller said the most Nintendo can get is 5 million yen, or around $30,000—"chump change for either party, and just a rounding error compared to Nintendo’s litigation expenses."

Nintendo's action against Palworld and its broader patent strategy around the popular monster-collecting RPG have both proven controversial. Last year, videogame patent lawyer Kirk Sigmon called Nintendo's newest Pokémon-related patents "an embarrassing failure of the US patent system" that "should not have happened." Pocketpair hasn't shied away from all this chaos, going so far as to announce a familiar-sounding card game even as it fought the lawsuit.

It's refreshing and perhaps surprising to hear that Pocketpair will make it out of this largely unscathed. Regardless of whether the suit was reasonable in the first place, the threat of litigation and its associated costs can often be too daunting for non-Nintendo-sized companies to face.

As announced at this year's Summer Games Fest, Palworld 1.0 arrives in less than a month. The launch version looks like it'll introduce a lot of new stuff to Pocketpair's Pokémon-inspired survival-crafting game, and with all those additions comes a question: will Palworld 1.0 require players to start again from scratch, or will you be able to carry on your adventure as normal?

Fortunately, Pocketpair's head of publishing and communications John Buckley has the answer: "You do NOT need to wipe your data for Palworld 1.0", Buckley announced on Palworld's Discord. "But you should."

Buckley explained his reasoning. "Players can continue their existing saves if they wish, as we want to respect the time and effort you have put in. However, due to the large number of changes to the game, including overhauls to mechanics and new content, we believe that starting a new character will give you the best experience of Palworld!"

Pocketpair hasn't yet specified what changes will be coming to Palworld with its 1.0 update. Thus far we just have the broad strokes. The Steam page for the announcement points to certain things depicted in its cinematic trailer, such as "new Pals, new areas, an ominous new threat, and the long-awaited World Tree".

That latter feature is perhaps the most significant. The World Tree, which looms over the northwest corner of the map, has long been tied to its ending scenario, and players have long wondered what exactly will go down once players arrive at Palworld's biggest landmark. Whatever happens, Pocketpair has already stressed that while players' arrival at the World Tree will be a conclusion of sorts, it doesn't necessarily represent the end of Palworld as a going concern.

A few other details have emerged since the announcement. Over on X, Buckley was asked how many new Pals would be added to the update, to which he responded "More than we've ever added before in any one update". One of those Pals, the jester-like critter Dupin, was also shown off by Buckley in a separate post.

Palworld's 1.0 update arrives on July 10. No doubt further specifics will emerge over the next few weeks.

I didn't really like Palworld all that much—granted, survival and crafting games are hit-or-miss subjects with me, but I also just couldn't quite get past the whole 'isn't it funny how your little critters get depressed if you put them on the assembly line for too long' thing. Witchspire solves those problems, then, by being altogether charming and lovely with much the same gameplay loop.

Released into early access this week, Witchspire's core loop is as follows: You are a witch who has arrived into a mysterious land, there are familiars there, you have a wand. You are tasked with tracking down your fellow arcane alumni, building a base, and chopping trees—just, a whole lot of trees.

You're also able to capture and tame familiars, too. This happens mostly at random, with slain familiars dropping orbs that'll sometimes let you attune to them—though you can find or make items that increase the odds of this happening.

Familiars serve as either combat pets, or you can assign them static positions around your hearth—your base of operations. For example, I have a little rock guy sat on my workbench that makes all of my crafting faster.

The real advantage Witchspire has going for it, though, is the magic theming of it all. Instead of finding various gats lying around, you find wands, swords, and magic spells—each with their own unique properties and cast spells, bound to your left and right mouse button. Combat with these things feels nice and fluid, thanks to a nippy dodge and just a whole bunch of double-jumps the game outfits you with.

This extends to the tools, too. It's just a reskin, sure, but there's something imminently more satisfying about flicking a wand and firing a bunch of specialised wind blades to cut a tree into chunks, rather than doing the same-old axe whacking I'm used to in every survival crafter ever.

The building elements aren't half-bad, either. You're able to gridlessly clip things to your heart's content for the most part, with a snapping option to make getting the foundations of your witch hut actually feasible.

This is buoyed mostly by the exploration, which rewards you with lots of little chests, mini-puzzles, and experience points to funnel into your Luminaries skill tree—a somewhat linear progression path that nonetheless makes poking your head around the world feel rewarding.

Early access is as early access does, however—there are some quality of life features that are clearly absent. For instance, there's no way to look at recipes once you're out and about in the world, or bookmark things you might want to craft. Hot-swapping to consumables mid-combat also feels a little clunky, though that can be somewhat jury-rigged with keybinds.

But for its first debut? Witchspire's a deeply warming and welcoming bath to sink into if you like to collect little critters, pick up lots of crafting materials, find little chests, so on and so forth. I can very much see the scope of the game widening as developer Envar games layers more systems on top of its comfortable foundation.

Stepping into a new world in Valheim is an exhilarating feeling: a massive realm surrounds you, wild and untamed in all directions, just waiting for you to grab your hammer and start shaping it.

But—and hear me out on this—what if the world was already shaped, just for you? What if a couple of modders had spent years carving out an adventure filled with quests and characters and hand-crafted locations, and all you had to do was dive in and start playing?

That's the idea behind Adventure Map for Valheim, a huge RPG-like world created by Ninebyte and Dhakhar over the past couple of years. Step into that world and you'll find yourself in a small town with an inn, an arena, and a shop. Speak to the locals (well, read what the locals have to say by clicking the exclamation points hovering next to them) and receive advice and helpful items. Meet a friendly skeleton guide named Bjorn and he'll point you down the road toward adventure. (The road also has a sign with the word "Adventure" on it, with an arrow, so you can't miss it.)

It's Valheim, but it's also something different, more along the lines of a traditional RPG. I've played for a few hours, and it's definitely an adjustment. This is a Valheim where you don't build a base or even do much in the way of crafting: that's all taken care of for you already. It's odd to set foot in a world that's already been manicured for you, but the more time I spent in Adventure Map, the more I enjoyed it.

There are quests and objectives, some big and some small. One early location contained a keep that had been taken over by greylings, and it took me quite a while to clear them out: instead of just charging at me like they do in vanilla Valheim, many had taken up defensive positions in the rafters and on rooftops, pelting me with stones until I could figure out how to reach them.

I had to find a key in one part of the castle to unlock a passageway in another part, find an axe I could use to clear obstructions, and even defeat a troll guarding the rear of the castle. It felt quite different to the procedural dungeons of Valheim because it was: it had been hand-designed.

The world is filled with little villages where you can find beds and chests for storage. A long, winding stone road leads you through the world so you'll never get lost in the wilds, and there are all sorts of little diversions along the path. And once I'd defeated the first boss, it opened a portal that took me back to my starting town to get some rest and collect some rewards that would help me tackle the next chapter. Pretty cool.

Here's a video from the creator of the map that'll explain it a lot better than I am:

Don't get me wrong: I still prefer the original Valheim with its procedural untamed wilderness, but playing a curated and manicured adventure has been a lot of fun, too. If you're interested in trying Adventure Map for yourself, head to the Discord to find the download link (it was made with mods but doesn't require any to run) and installation instructions.

It's been five years since Valheim launched in early access, and it's held on strong as one of my most-played games on Steam ever since. I wasn't the only one smitten with the viking-themed survival crafting game from Iron Gate either, as the studio says it's sold over 17 million copies to date.

That's a big ol' number for a game still in early access, but that's changing soon. During today's PC Gaming Show, Iron Gate announced that Valheim will launch its version 1.0 update on September 9.

As part of its big jump into 1.0, Valheim is getting a brand new biome, Deep North, and other quality-of-life upgrades. It's exactly what it sounds like, too. The Deep North is a deathly cold, winter wonderland where vikings will trudge through neck-deep snow and slip and slide across frozen lakes. I speak from experience. I played a bit of the 1.0 update as part of a guided tour with developers from Iron Gate, and it's got me excited about Valheim all over again.

Deep North is Valheim's final biome, and it's not just an extension of the snowy Mountain biome already in the game. It's more like the Meadows or Black Forest, so you'll find a lot of Deep North generated in your 1.0 worlds. And like those other biomes, it's meant to be accessible early on, but with a few more environmental hazards and new resources.

I like the approach, especially since it's a real pain to build in the only snowy landscape Valheim has for now. Even though I've explored as far as the Mistlands in my own adventures, I always wind up right back in the Meadows or Black Forest to build. But I don't want your takeaway to be that it's some walk in the park, because it's not.

I died meandering through the snow more than I ever died in the Black Forest—sometimes to the cold, and sometimes to gigantic beasts I was not prepared for. The Deep North seems like it's home to a mix of difficulties, and the further we pushed through the snow, the more I seemed to struggle with each new icy threat.

What I noticed while exploring Valheim's Deep North

A lot was going on in just that brief hour I spent in the Deep North, so allow me to quickly list some of the highlights:

• The group I was with saw a seal scooting through the snow, and none of us were willing to kill it—it's that cute. They're friendly, just like the deer in the Meadows.
• Valheim still isn't adding horses, but you can tame and mount a moose. When I asked where they were, one came bolting out of the woods and mowed us down.
• The snow gets quite deep, but Iron Gate doesn't think it's very fun if they make it slow you down, so it doesn't.
• Yes, there's ice. And yes, it's very slippery.
• Met a giant lanky guy called Barka. It's what a Greydwarf becomes just before it morphs into an elder.
• There were a few loose story elements too, including a new animated intro and ghostly vikings that walked around villages talking (but they ignored me).
• We didn't see it in action, but Iron Gate also mentioned some spirits will "gift you stuff"
• The build menu is getting some much-needed QoL with options to search, favorite, and browse recent crafts.

We also stopped by the Winding Tunnels, one of the new dungeons in Deep North. The name is exactly how it sounds, and had I not been surrounded by people on all sides, I know I would've gotten lost immediately. From what I saw, it's not too different from most Valheim dungeons, just a few more tight turns and spaces than normal.

Another neat idea I was happy to see return was Valheim's living mining nodes. Like the Leviathans you see floating out in the ocean, Deep North has its own creature you'll harvest a hefty supply of raw materials from. They're called Gammeltrolls, and they're way more hostile than Leviathans. We wound up tossing explosives at one to blow its legs off and harvest the delicious ore that dropped, and just when I thought I'd lived through the fight with the giant troll, that damn moose came back and landed the killing blow on me. God, I forgot how much I loved Valheim.

My speedrun through the tundra felt like more than enough to pull me back in, but I only had a small sample of the new biome. The tour ended just as we reached a second door, mysteriously gated off by golden chains. I was told this big gate leads to Deep North's second dungeon, and part of the escalating challenge in the new biome. I don't know what waits for me beyond those doors, but I plan to find out as soon as I can.

Valheim 1.0 launches version 1.0 on September 9, but you can check it out now in early access on Steam.

It's finally here. After more than five years in early access, Valheim has a 1.0 release date: September 9, 2026.

The news was just revealed on the PC Gaming Show, where we also got a look at what that 1.0 update will bring, which you can watch in the video embedded above.

Get your fur coat ready, because the viking-inspired survival game is going into the Deep North. Frozen tunnels, decrepit castles, and oh so much snow await. You'll have to craft a shovel and move it all out of the way if you want to build a base.

This update has been coming for a long time, and developer Iron Gate has been sharing lots of progress reports, but now the release date is finally on the horizon.

It's been a long road for Valheim: It was first revealed during the PC Gaming Show back in 2020 and launched into early access February 2021—it even won PC Gamer's game of the year.

In the years since, Valheim has had a host of updates, from Hearth & Home overhauling the food system shortly after the early access launch, to new biomes in Mistlands and the Ashlands patches.

If you've not given the game a go yet, you can buy Valheim on Steam, or wishlist it to prepare for when the 1.0 version comes September 9.

Check out everything revealed at the PC Gaming Show.

We liked the original Outward, released in 2019, quite a lot—our own Christopher Livingston gave it a sterling 89% in his Outward review thanks to its emphasis on making difficult, interesting choices: "Most of all, it makes you approach each and every encounter as if your life depended on it—even though you never die." So we're equally pleased the sequel's almost here.

As revealed in the PC Gaming Show, Outward 2 will be dropping into open beta—well, immediately. While the full game's slated for a July 7 release (and will apparently run on potato settings while doing so), you'll be able to hop into the world of Aurai a little early if you'd like to help developer Nine Dots Studio clean up some bugs.

The central pitch of Outward is thus 2: While you can't die, there'll be no savescumming here. As the Steam page reads, "Constant auto-saving discourages reckless decisions and rewards careful planning. For those who crave even greater stakes, a Hardcore mode is available. In this mode, every defeat carries a 20% chance of ending your adventure permanently by deleting your save file."

Oh. Correction, then—you can die a little on the hardest difficulty.

It's a compelling hook, and one that means every playthrough of Outward 2 will, as our Christopher discovered with the first game, feel completely different. Throughout the course of the game you'll be finding trainers, defeating bosses, and assembling your character from up to three classes, mix-and-match style.

It's not just an RPG, though—like the first game, Outward 2 will have a bunch of survival mechanics underpinning it. Hunger, thirst, crafting, and inventory management. So much inventory management:

"Your bag is essential to your journey through Aurai. Pack it with provisions, potions, weapons, and camping gear … you'll need to manage its weight carefully, as not everything you find will be worth the space." Luckily you can do the time-honoured adventuring tradition of dropping your backpack when you're jumped so you can still move.

Outward 2 looks like it's shaping up to be an expansion on everything that made the first game special—and you can get stuck into the open beta right now.

Check out everything revealed at the PC Gaming Show.

Abiotic Factor has a special place among the hearts of survival enthusiasts here at PC Gamer. The Half-Life 1-styled survival game received a whopping 92 in our review because, in addition to just being a riot, it was brave enough to ask the question: Wouldn't the horrors of Black Mesa be better with your mates? The answer is a resounding yes. Also, you can wear a couch as armor.

Lucky for us, then, that there's soon to be more of it. Abiotic Factor, as displayed during the PC Gaming Show, is going on holiday with "Entropic Break", a DLC that'll be entering a test chamber near you later this year.

"Embark on a new tropical adventure," writes developer Deep Field Games in a press release sent to PC Gamer, "Roaming sun-drenched seas and forgotten islands. Investigate the warped GATE Leaf Test Facility and surrounding isles."

That all sounds relaxing, though the fine print says you and your fellow scientists'll still have to do some work "confronting a new breed of fanatics, digital disorder, far-flung anomalies, the Flesh Dimension, and much more." The Flesh Dimension. Right. Awesome. I don't suppose they have beaches there?

The trailer, shown above, seems like a nice refreshing break from routine, anyway. Sun-bleached paradisal islands! Beach parties with your mates! Paramilitary men with guns who are there to shoot you! Robots who are also there to shoot you! Did I mention The Flesh Dimension? Don't think about it. It's fine.

I'm particularly excited by the gravity-inverting walkways, which I'm sure are bound to let you and your mates die in a spectacularly confusing fashion.

Abiotic Factor's enjoyed a lot of support since its release last year, including a whole new chemistry system and another separate, concerningly violent holiday dimension, so I'm glad to see that trend continue. You'll be able to enjoy Abiotic Factor – Entropic Break sometime this autumn, with a specific release date to be announced. Wishlist it now on Steam.

Check out everything revealed at the PC Gaming Show.

I'm one of the main survival game fans here at PC Gamer, so when showcases come around in the summer and winter, I'm usually assigned to cover a couple.

For years now, I've had standing orders to cover any State of Decay 3 announcements, and for years now, there haven't been many to cover. It was first announced way back in 2020, but Undead Labs has been mostly silent since then.

In fact, I'd pretty much forgotten about it entirely until today, when State of Decay finally showed some signs of life with a new trailer at the Xbox Games Showcase. And as I watched, I crossed my fingers that we might finally get a release date. C'mon! Just give us the digits already!

Well, we got a few numbers at the end of the trailer, at least. State of Decay 3 is coming in 2027. No month. No day. Just the promise of a year.

Hey, I'll take it. In an industry where games are getting outright cancelled all the time, I'm just glad to see it's still twitching. Here's the trailer:

It's been a long, dry year since Satisfactory last received a major update. Version 1.1 of Coffee Stain's hugely popular factory sim launched almost exactly twelve months ago, bringing proper controller support, an improved photo mode, better resource transportation, and more. Yet outside of a few hotfixes, that's been it for fans of building enormously convoluted assembly lines.

Now though, Coffee Stain is back. Update 1.2 is even more substantial than 1.1, adding one major new feature, one major returning feature, and a massive overhaul to an existing system.

The headline addition is rain, which was already added to Satisfactory once with Update 6 during early access. However, Coffee Stain has folded in a new, more advanced rain system that will now give buildings and characters a proper wet look. According to Coffee Stain, rain will also be occluded by "most" buildings, meaning you should see effects clipping through your factory walls and ceilings far less often.

As for new stuff, 1.2 adds fluid stations and fluid trucks, giving players an alternative to pipes for transporting liquids across your factory. These come bundled with a vehicle pathing system that has been "completely remade from the ground up". This basically lets players build vehicle paths in the same way they'd build railways, plotting out the route and then plonking the vehicle on top of it.

Other additions include a selfie mode in photo mode, a buildable Portaloo that acts as spawn point, a T-junction piece for pipelines, and a crossbeam.

It's a sizeable update. But there's one thing to be wary of if you play Satisfactory on a Steam Deck: Other Steam Deck players have reported that the new weather effects cause significant slowdown on the device. Fortunately, the effects can be adjusted or switched off entirely.

If you're yet to check out Satisfactory—which you absolutely should as it's one of the best games on PC, as explained by Jonathan Bolding in PC Gamer's Satisfactory Review —it's currently on a 30% discount at $28 (£25.45). The discount ends tomorrow.

Another month goes by, another highly-anticipated survival game is poised for a big launch. But Solarpunk, which has over 1.2 million wishlists on Steam, has issued a warning to players before they buy it on June 8: make sure you know what you're actually getting.

"Is Solarpunk for you?" developer Cyberwave asked in a post on Steam. Because if you were expecting a massive, sprawling survival game like recent hits Windrose or Subnautica 2, this might not be the game for you.

"We've been developing the game as a two-person team for the most part, and with 1.2 million people on the wishlist, the pressure is incredibly high, we're worried that some people might be expecting a AAA title," Cyberwave said.

"We know that some players might look at the wishlist number and expect a huge survival game made by dozens or hundreds of developers. That is not what Solarpunk is. Solarpunk is not a giant studio production. It is not trying to compete with the biggest survival games in scope, content amount, or system depth.

"Solarpunk is a calm, cozy, focused survival craft sandbox made by a tiny team with a lot of love," the developer said. "So before release, we want to be very clear about what Solarpunk is, and what it is not."

The dev went on to set expectations for Solarpunk, promising "a calm survival craft experience focused on peace, creativity, and slow progression" and noting that "after around 20 hours, most of the main content is explored and the game then switches the focus to your home base, farm, decoration, and personal goals."

If you're looking for PvP, there is none. The game doesn't have a huge open world, but rather "a limited set of handcrafted islands and two biomes." And don't expect a story driven experience: "Solarpunk has no story campaign and no narrative quest progression."

There's more, lots more, the developers would like you to know before you start playing, and there's even a nearly 10-minute long video explaining what the game is and, just as importantly, what it isn't.

"We do not want anyone to buy Solarpunk for the wrong reasons," Cyberwave said. "We want you to buy it if you are excited about a peaceful survival craft game where you build a cozy home base, farm, decorate, explore handcrafted islands, and spend relaxed time alone or with friends.

"And if you expected PvP, a big story campaign, endless exploration, deep combat, huge public servers, or hundreds of hours of main progression, that is totally okay too. In that case, Solarpunk might simply not be the right game for you."

At the same time, the small studio is grateful to have gotten so many fans and followers. "Thank you for giving this tiny project so much attention," Cyberwave said. "Thank you for wishlisting, playing the demo, backing us, watching videos, sharing feedback, and believing in Solarpunk. It means more to us than we can properly put into words."

One of the most puzzling trailers from today's Summer Game Fest was the one for Haex, the debut game from developer Dead Astronauts. It opens with some pretty normal-looking guns pointed at some pretty normal-looking sci-fi monsters, but my mind keeps coming back to that cube. That damn cube.

It looks like a Rubik's cube adorned with glowing alien sigils, and in the trailer it's used to trigger sweeping changes in the environment—the player jams it into a socket on the forest floor, a huge wall of rectangular spikes swallows up all the surrounding nature, and then it disappears to reveal a strange, featureless structure.

I don't know how this makes the game meaningfully different from other shooters, but I do know most of 'em don't have cubes! The Steam page piqued my interest further by revealing that the cube is sentient, and that it can teach me how to double-jump.

As for the game itself, it's a 1-4 player co-op survival shooter that'll have you tracking temperature and starvation as you explore an open world. "Alien seeds" will let you open access to new areas and uncover new gadgets and crafting recipes, which you can then take into your friends' saves. It seems more narrative-driven than other survival games, but the Steam page teases some procedural generation and an emphasis on hopping from game to game: "Every world keeps its own story. Every character keeps its own progression."

No release date was announced and the trailer was light on raw gameplay footage, but the concept is intriguing. Abiotic Factor certainly proved that survival games with rich sci-fi mysteries have a ravenous audience, and while this game looks to be more shooter than survival-craft, it might be going for a similar vibe sans the Half-Life homage. I'm interested! Mostly because of that cube.

Cubes: they're really in right now.

Rust's character customization options have always been a bit unusual in that… well, you don't get any. Your character's looks are generated by a random seed and you don't have any say over them. Whatever you get, you get, from face to race to gender to the size of your dong or boobs.

But your character in Rust is going to look different as of the newest update.

"We’ve overhauled the player model from the ground up," Facepunch Studios said today. "This includes improved meshes and materials, more realistic proportions on a new rig, expanded head and hair seeds and a much needed pass over almost everything player-related."

Why now? Well, despite Rust getting updated with new features just about every month, it's been quite a while since the player models got some attention.

"The old player model has served us well for almost 10 years, but it’s lagged behind the rest of the game for some time," Facepunch said. "Visually, it was showing its age, but just as importantly it was holding us back from making bigger improvements to characters, animations and implementing future features."

So, get ready to log in and see the new you. Also be aware: your face is going to look different, but your body's features (those dongs and boobs I mentioned) won't.

"Your face will change, but race and gender seeds have been kept intact, so we’re hoping it won’t be too much of a shock for those of you who have grown attached to your random seed over the years," Facepunch said.

If you're still not a fan of randomly being assigned a character model in Rust, well, there may be some hope on the horizon, though the details are vague.

"End of the year, we hope to have implemented a player customizer. How exactly this will work is still being discussed internally, but we'll share details in future blogs."

In the meantime, hopefully you'll enjoy your new face. You can also look forward to other changes in the update:

• Expanded the number of heads in the game, with each head now having unique materials and additional details such as eyelashes and improved eye lighting.
• Reworked and expanded hairstyles and beards, using new anisotropic shaders to make hair feel more natural.
• Updated all clothing to work with the new rig and proportions, giving a lot of older assets a much-needed refresh and fixing some long-standing issues.
• Modernised the art pipeline behind the player model, making future fixes and improvements much easier to ship.

Here's a look at the new player models and animations in action, along with other additions like weapons, armor, and decor.

Subnautica 2 launched last month with both huge player numbers and widespread acclaim, but this is just the start of its early access journey. With a couple years of development still to come, design lead Anthony Gallegos outlined what players can expect to see coming to the undersea survival game in the weeks and months ahead.

There's good news for fans of the original: a beloved feature is going to resurface soon in Subnautica 2, but there's also a bit of bad news for the crowd who have been clamoring for a way to kill aggressive sea creatures.

"Our next region, the home of the Collector Leviathan, will add a new chassis that brings back one of the most requested player experiences. So, get ready to get stompy," Gallegos said.

That can only mean one thing: the prawn suit from the original Subnautica is coming to the sequel. The undersea mech suit, designed for extreme pressure environments, let players walk along the seafloor on mechanical legs, and attachments like a drill arm and grabber claw allow for mining and sample collection. It even had a grapple hook so you could swing around like Spider-Man—though those particular features haven't been confirmed for Subnautica 2 yet.

Also planned for the near future are updates to improve the multiplayer experience, especially when it comes to proximity chat. "No more two seconds worth of lag before you hear what someone says. We've heard the outcry for months and we're working hard to get that in as soon as possible," Gallegos said. Emotes are also planned for a future update.

But as far as the survival knife so many players have asked for so they can kill hostile sea creatures like hammerheads and nibblers? Still not coming, I'm afraid. On the plus side, the aggression of creatures has been tweaked and balanced in recent hotfixes that modify "predator attack frequency, damage, and avoidance when a player deters them."

You can watch the full Subnautica 2 dev vlog on YouTube. And hey, if you really want to kill fish, there are always Subnautica 2 mods for that.

Just over six months after its early access debut, PlayerUnknown's survival game Prologue: Go Wayback! has reached the end of the road, as PlayerUnknown Productions is halting work on the project and laying off staff. The studio said that it hopes to return to the game "at a future point in time," but for now, "we will be unable to complete our early access plans."

"We are currently working on an update that we plan to release soon, which will add new items as well as paths and trails to the game for enhanced exploration," the studio wrote on Steam. "With that update, we also intend to release the game out of early access and make it free for any players who want to check it out in the future. We are also investigating offering refunds to players who have purchased the game."

PlayerUnknown Productions founder Brendan Greene, who left Krafton to found the studio in 2021, went into more detail on the decision in a message posted on X.

"Our goal has been to develop technology that can break the boundaries of scale, which currently limit how large virtual worlds can be," Green wrote. "To achieve this, we built a research team to develop our Melba technology and a team to develop our first practical application of our terrain generation technology: Prologue: Go Wayback!

"Unfortunately I have reached the limits of how far I can continue to fund this journey in its current form. As a result, I have made the hard decision to restructure the studio. We will continue developing our Melba technology with a smaller team, while halting further development of Go Wayback."

PC Gamer's Elie Gould found Prologue to have interesting technological potential when they checked it out in 2025 ahead of the early access launch, but also said that it "isn't and likely never will be a genre-defining survival game." And it clearly didn't click with players: Its all-time peak concurrent player count on Steam was just 182 and it hadn't risen above double digits since a week after its November 2025 launch.

It's nice that Prologue will remain playable, as it provides an ongoing live platform (even with a very limited audience) for future development of Greene's ideas, and who knows? Maybe something interesting will ultimately come out of that and Prologue will make an unexpected grand comeback. But right now, that doesn't really matter: There's no upside to the fact of yet another studio laying off employees because somebody's big gamble didn't pay off.

PlayerUnknown Productions said more information on the possibility of refunds will be shared "over the coming weeks" on Steam and the studio's Discord.

We reported just a couple weeks ago that Dune: Awakening's director Joel Bylos didn't really consider the survival sandbox to be an MMO. And to double down on that, today we learned that Funcom is adding a new singleplayer mode in September.

Don't want to play with strangers, or even friends? Starting on September 22 you won't have to, and there are some pretty intriguing features thrown in that make it sound extra appealing. I haven't played Dune: Awakening much since it first launched, but this could finally bring me back again.

"Singleplayer is one of the most-requested features since launch," Funcom said today. "We’re also adding the final chapter of Dune: Awakening’s Book One story, so whether you want to play entirely by yourself, with friends on a private server, or with strangers on a larger multiplayer server, you will now be able to play the story from the start to its dramatic conclusion."

You can already play Dune: Awakening pretty much on your lonesome: from the start of the story to much of the Deep Desert, you'll regularly see other players without having to interact or team up with them if you don't want to. There are also private servers available if you only want to play with people you know.

But since players have found ways to grief each other even in non-PvP zones, I guess I'm not surprised people still regularly request an official way to play solo. This new mode sounds pretty appealing for a number of reasons:

"Singleplayer offers three preset difficulty levels for the survival experience, or full manual customization of individual settings," Funcom said. "Want faster experience gain, easier enemies, or quicker harvesting? All of that is adjustable."

Another huge change in singleplayer mode: you can build bases in the deep desert and they won't be completely wiped each week. The huge Coriolis storm will still hit the deep desert, but will be "less destructive," so while you may need to repair your DD base, you won't be at risk of losing it.

Um... yes, please! Speaking as someone who doesn't really love building, and especially hates rebuilding over and over again on a weekly damn basis, I'm psyched. I don't mind spending resources to fix busted bases, but starting from scratch every week is a bummer, so this alone has me intrigued.

As for the Landsraad, the weekly endgame competition found in multiplayer, there's still a version of that because singleplayer mode "simulates other players engaging with the faction conflict." Interesting.

Below is the list of what you can expect from singleplayer mode, and Funcom says it'll have more details as we get closer to the September 22 release date.

• All the NPCs are there, but no other players 
• The Deep Desert is fully available with all its content and challenges, but the map never resets and your buildings are never wiped. The Coriolis Storm remains as a weather event but is less destructive. 
• The Landsraad endgame simulates other players engaging with the faction conflict, keeping it competitive and engaging
• Singleplayer characters remain exclusive to the single-player mode 
• Private and self-hosted server characters can be played on any of these and can even go between private and self-hosted servers 
• Official server characters can be played on any official server and can even be moved to a private or self-hosted server (but not back again, to ensure the integrity of official servers) 
• Bases and vehicles you back up will come with you 

Subnautica, if you ask me, is a game about being incredibly wet and alarmingly hungry. It's an under-the-sea game (you can tell from the name) about hoovering up resources and using them to construct ever-more complex tools that you transcend the barriers placed before you by nature. That's what Subnautica was, and, though I've not played it yet, that's why I'm pretty sure Subnautica 2 is too.

But what if actually it was an ecosystem simulator, or a game where you were constantly bopping between different planets, not just trapped on one?

It's more likely, or at least possible, than you think. In a chat with MinnMax, Subnautica 2 game design lead Anthony Gallegos reflected on the numerous ideas Unknown Worlds dreamt up—and scrapped—for its immensely popular sequel.

"We even entertained ideas like, 'Should this be a direct sequel to Subnautica?'" recalled Gallegos. "Should this be about the same character again? Should we continue the story of [Below Zero]? All those things were explored before we ended up going in a different direction."

Also on the table: something Sea of Thieves-flavoured, centred around "endlessly replayable loops." The long wind-up on development for Subnautica 2 gave Unknown Worlds the space to iterate a lot on some pretty out-there stuff. "We spent like eight months just prototyping wild ideas. Wild ideas like: 'What if we made an ecosystem simulator?' And so some of our early prototypes were like—there's these things that eat clams and the clams breed at a rate of one every 90 seconds, and the clams will then—if you're not careful—eat the kelp forest.

"So what does the player have to do to achieve a balance between [eating] the urchins, the urchins eat the kelp, and left to its own devices, how could these things fall apart or not?"

Which, I must say, sounds like the exact kind of systemic weirdness I go bananas for, but Gallegos says it didn't quite work for Subnautica.

"The problem was, it's really hard to explain to the player without Maxis-level UI—you'd have to bring up a minimap with, like, population density of urchins... so you could understand the information you need to make meaningful change."

That didn't work in a game about being "immersed in the world."

Some other scrapped ideas sound a bit more in keeping with the Subnautica we know, though. "What if we made it closer to something like a No Man's Sky, and you actually went to a bunch of different planets, and every planet had titanium, but you had to figure out how to get it? So on one planet titanium might be rocks on the ground, but another planet it might be fish scales because the fish grow armor," said Gallegos. "Another version was like, 'What if it was a world with no land whatsoever, and your base was a completely mobile thing you built on the surface?' And so everything was diving off of a surface-based floating city that you brought everywhere with you."

Given how well Subnautica 2 is doing, I can't fault Unknown Worlds for leaving these ideas on the drawing board, but I'll admit I wouldn't mind seeing some of them make a return. Maybe in a spin-off? Gallegos sounds open to it. "There are so many spin-off Subnautica games I would love to make that would be wildly different. And I think that's where we could do wildly cool stuff with the franchise," he mused. Clam simulator DLC, coming right up.

Minecraft has revealed its third drop for 2026: a new forest biome and and abandoned camps you can find within. Mojang is still in the early days of development for the dappled forest update though, so there's a lot for us to learn before it releases later this year. After the Chaos Cubed update sent us underground, it's nice to have an upcoming update that shoots us back out to explore the overworld.

We don't actually know the official name of the update yet, so until then we're just calling it by its main feature: the Dappled Forest. Getting teases for features over the next couple of months is part of the fun, so here's everything there is to know about the dappled forest update so far.

When will the dappled forest update come out?

The dappled forest update will launch in fall 2026, but we don't know a more specific timeframe than that yet. The features we have seen haven't made it to testing yet, which implies there's quite a wait ahead of us too. Hopefully once the Chaos Cubed update releases in June, we'll start to see a little more information about the next drop.

If it's anything like last year's drop schedule, we could see the dappled forest update as soon as September. Given the autumnal vibes in the first reveal, it would be the perfect update to ship ahead of the season.

What's included in the dappled forest update?

The main thing in the update is the dappled forest biome. This new woodland area will have bright red, orange, and yellow poplar trees, basically shaking up the greens and greys we are used to seeing in the overworld. Don't get me wrong, I love stumbling across a birch or spruce forest, but I am incredibly excited to have such a colourful biome.

The ground will also be coated in orangey coloured grass, and covered in leaf litter, red shrubs, and brown mushrooms, kind of like the cherry grove biome which has pink petals all over the ground. Once again, an entirely new set of poplar wood blocks is coming, so builders are getting treated well. When broken down into planks and slabs, poplar wood has a warm greyish tone, making it one of the lighter shades available in the game.

Apart from the forest itself, a new structure will be added as part of the update: abandoned camps. They have a tent-like building made from wool steps, a campfire, a few chests or barrels to loot and you'll only find them in the dappled forests. No hints were given on whether items like maps can be looted here, so it could just be your bog-standard apples and armor loot, but at least it's some form of shelter if you need a quick base for the night.

What do we not know about the dappled forest yet? A new biome might mean a new passive mob too, but we've not seen one mentioned yet. With how significant the addition of the pale garden and the Creaking felt back in December 2024, it wouldn't be too surprising if the dappled forest was home to a more ominous mob. It would certainly disrupt the cosy atmosphere though.

Subnautica 2 got into a bit of hot water (get it?) recently over some Discord comments that bluntly stated it wasn't a "killing game". Now, I didn't exactly buy into the critique of the game centered around that—I think it's perfectly fine for videogames to be about different things—but I do appreciate that being hounded by a scary ocean creature with no means of defense probably doesn't feel great.

In a recent interview with MinnMax, design lead Anthony Gallegos explains that the choice wasn't made because "we're like 'we're a game about pacifism' or 'we're a non-violent studio'—the studio's founded by modders who made Half-Life mods and their first mods were all about shooting aliens."

Instead, he explains that "our intent, actually, was two things. One, it was that we wanted to not give people the attitude that they were this dominator over the world, because the message of the game was very much people learning to live in parallel with the world that they're in."

Now, if you're one of the people who think Subnautica 2's being a soft game for babies or something by not letting you make the ocean extinct, that argument might not be all that compelling. Again, I think it's totally fine for games to have different themes—but I think Gallegos' second point is actually far more persuasive even to people who want to go ham with a harpoon.

"We're really inspired by games like SOMA and Alien: Isolation," Gallegos explains, before referencing a blog that SOMA's developer put out discussing the role of combat in horror games: "If [SOMA] ever gave players the means to fight things, no matter how intentionally miserable they made the experience, players would always be like 'it's always better to master the crappy combat than it is to deal with the constant threat intention of a thing'."

In other words, if Subnautica 2 had a combat system—and de-prioritised it to be in keeping with the themes of exploration, rather than subjugation, players would still feel incentivised to learn the combat rather than deal with the deep-sea critters: "They'll be mad at you, and they'll sit there and take the time to learn it … By removing the option to deal with combat, it means that the omnipresent tension and stuff like that gets to be there."

That doesn't mean there won't be more mitigation systems coming, though. After all, Subnautica 2's more episodic release cadence leaves plenty of room for more options when wrassling with the alien ocean.

Minecraft has shared the first features of its third game drop of 2026 at TwitchCon, and while we still have a lot to learn, we do know it'll feature an entirely new forest biome: the dappled forest. After the Chaos Cubed update focused on bringing a new and exciting biome to the underground, I for one am excited to have somewhere new to explore in the overworld, especially given the autumnal aesthetic the biome will take on.

As shown in the reveal during Minecraft Live at TwitchCon, the dappled forest will consist of poplar trees with orange, yellow, and red leaves, as well as dirt blocks covered with leaf litter, new red shrubs, and brown mushrooms. You know, all those classic, cosy, fall features. The addition of poplar trees also brings a new wood set, which is a warm grey colour when broken down into planks and slabs.

However, between the trees you'll also find abandoned camps, which are an exciting new structure. It looks like these camps will consist of a tent-like building made from wool stairs, another entirely new block Minecraft is adding, as well a few chests or barrels to loot. If anything though, they might just be a nice place to rest your head if you're out at night and don't want to dig a 3x2 hole in the ground to hide in while you wait for sunrise.

It's just nice to have a brand new forest biome which doesn't contain a threatening mob to explore. I did love the addition of the pale garden and the Creaking in 2024, but sometimes you just want a cosier adventure in Minecraft, and it looks like dappled forest aims to add just that. You never know though, a horrid monster could be added before the drop is officially released and make me eat my words, but at least for now it feels a little more laid back.

The bad news is that the dappled forest is still in very early stages of development, so it's not available to test just yet. With that said, this biome will come to testing "in summer", which hopefully means we'll get some more information on the other features sooner than we think too. If you need any ideas though, Minecraft, a raccoon would be a really cool and suitable addition for this biome. Just saying.

Back in January, Terraria finally received its gargantuan 1.4.5 patch. Three years in the making, 1.4.5 was supposed to be the final update for the long-running, massively successful survival-crafting game. But it turns out that developer Re-Logic is terrible at making final updates, having committed to at least one further major patch in the future while leaving the door open for more.

On top of this, Re-Logic is already working on what was supposed to be a minor balance patch. But it appears Re-Logic is as bad at making small updates as it is final updates, as patch 1.4.5.7 is shaping up to do far more than tweak some numbers.

Re-Logic explained the situation in its most recent State of the Game blog. "Sometimes, addressing balance means rethinking some core aspects around how things function—or expanding upon what is already there in new ways," the studio wrote. As such, what was intended as a straightforward numbers adjustment is now a more substantial patch that will add several new features to the experience.

Re-Logic teased a couple of these new gizmos in the blog post, namely a portable sentry that blasts enemies with fire, and some kind of ammo randomiser. The developer said that these features are a "nice representation of this dynamic". Re-Logic didn't elaborate on that, but did say these items also indicate the "scope of the changes being made around the balancing goals" adding "this is not just about adjusting a few numbers here and there."

These aren't the only new features coming to 1.4.5.7 either. Last month, Re-Logic promised various new tools for handling "frustrations" in combat, such as invisible hitboxes, issues with boss attacks and so forth, as well as glowing-up some less popular toys and teasing a new minion that resembles a walking turnip. That's a lot of new stuff for a balance patch.

There's plenty to come beyond this update too. As mentioned, Re-Logic has committed to supporting Terraria beyond 1.4.6—meaning the game will get at least one more major update plus subsequent smaller patches. What 1.4.6 will include is still yet to be confirmed. Separately, though, crossplay is coming to Terraria, which in itself will add a whole new lease of life to this stubbornly successful survive 'em up.

I regret to say that I haven't actually played Subnautica 2 yet. Something about a part of the world we've only managed to explore a miniscule percentage of is inherently terrifying to me, so I tend to stay clear of anything that involves oceans or other generic bodies of water where I can't stand on my tippy-toes. Don't even get me started on the deep end of the pool, y'all.

Thankfully, many of my colleagues at PC Gamer are significantly less cowardly than I am. Some might argue more stupid than I am—it's the freakin' OCEAN, people—but I am opting to be lovely and professional and polite. For a change.

Either way, they've been having a great time with the game. Our senior guides writer Sean Martin is loving the episodic format and how it's giving him more breathing room to explore the vast ocean, Tyler Wilde waded through the drama that has plagued the game (and continues to do so) to declare that, yeah, it's pretty good actually. Fraser Brown would like the game a helluva lot more if it shut up a bit, but what's some PC Gamer coverage without a little contrarianism?

And of course, a game about uncovering the horrors of the deep blue sea wouldn't be complete without some freaky little sea critters milling around down there. There are plenty of goofy guys and scary scalies, so last week we put a poll to you all asking which of the little weirdos you vibed with the most.

And I gotta say, having looked at your results and the critters in question? I gotta agree with the one most of you voted for as being the best.

33% of you decided that the Periscopic Clowncrab reigned supreme, and oh my goodness. Those crazy elongated Mr. Krabs-ass eyes. Those teeny-tiny little pincers. That adorable, gormless expression. I have no idea how dangerous or docile it is in the confines of Subnautica 2, but I'm going to headcanon that it's about as dangerous as an adorable kitten.

I'm very happy that you all gave the Periscopic Clowncrab first place, because I thoroughly jumpscared myself looking up what our second-prize winner was. The Coral Crab sounds like it's going to be an equally adorable being. It is not. Terrifying legs, intimidating stance, something I would absolutely freak out about if I woke up in the middle of the night to find one in my vicinity. I said freaky, not downright scary! I cannot believe 22% of you voted for this thing.

The Great Jaw and BFJ don't quite give me the same level of the heebie-jeebies, but I am surprised to find them in third and fourth place with 14% and 12% of the votes respectively. I am a little sad to see the critters trailing behind in last place. I understand the Foureye only getting 10% of the votes—it's a little bland, not very freaky.

But the Waxmoon, y'all? That might be one of the coolest critters I've seen. Alright, so it's not downright freaky (which again, was the criteria here) but I absolutely love how gothic the darn thing is. It looks like the kind of war axe you could find in an MMO or something. Or at the very least, something rad I would get tattooed on me.

Was there a particularly freaky Subnautica 2 critter we missed that you want to shout out? (Our own Elie Gould says: "JUSTICE FOR WATER SLUG!!") Be sure to let us know in the comments below. And if you've grown fond of voting on these polls (as I have) then here's another one for you to lend your thoughts to, which you can find just above.

One of the biggest questions surrounding Subnautica 2 isn't about the game at all, but rather the typically dull, staid business side of its development: When is Krafton going to eat that whopper of a bonus it promised Unknown World principals Ted Gill, Max McGuire, and Charlie Cleveland when it acquired the studio in 2021? And the answer, according to a Korea Economic Daily report (via IGN), is, soon.

Citing industry sources, the report says Krafton agreed to pay the trio $3.12 for every $1 (presumably in revenue generated, although that point isn't made precisely clear) whenever Unknown Worlds' revenues exceeded $69.8 million in a single month—to a maximum of $250 million. The problem for Krafton is that Subnautica 2 came out of the gate like a horny rabbit, selling four million copies in less than a week.

Do some simple math—four million copies at 30 bucks each, minus Valve's 30% (we're just gonna slice that off the top of the whole thing to keep it simple) and you end up $84 million—in less than a week.

That figure is way over the reported chicken dinner threshold, and it's no doubt still going up: Subnautica 2 was, until it launched, the most wishlisted game on Steam, and the bulk of those listings remain unconverted. And unlike some early access releases, Subnautica 2 is really good even in its technically pre-release state, boasting a "very positive" rating across more than 94,000 user reviews on Steam.

The strength of the Subnautica 2 launch—the fastest-selling game of 2026 so far, according to Alinea Analytics, outpacing Slay the Spire 2, Resident Evil Requiem, and Crimson Desert—made the big payout seem more or less inevitable, but the KED report nails it down in a way I haven't seen before. If accurate, it also shines a very bright light on a very pointed question: What the hell was Krafton thinking?

You'll recall that getting out of this deal was, in the opinion of the courts, the real reason for Krafton's very sudden and unexpected removal of Gill, McGuire, and Cleveland in 2025. Krafton initially claimed the studio's leaders were trying to rush the game out before it was ready in order to cash in, and then shifted gears to claim they'd "abandoned" their jobs and absconded with confidential company data.

But it came up during the trial that Krafton was well aware of what the Unknown Worlds bosses were doing prior to their termination, and approved of it; worse, it was revealed that Krafton CEO Changhan Kim had consulted with AI on how to get out of the contract because, in the words of Delaware judge Lori Will, he was afraid "he had agreed to a 'pushover' contract" in the Unknown Worlds acquisition, and was about to get rinsed.

Which, y'know, he absolutely is: Krafton reported operating profit of 1.1 trillion Korean won in its 2025 fiscal year, which converts to about $736 million—meaning that the bonus on the Krafton deal alone, if paid out in full, is going to suck up more than a third of the company's annual profits all by itself. Ouch.

I've reached out to Krafton for comment and will update if I receive a reply.

Who says you need a mouth-breathing psychopath in black armor and a gross, pale old ghoul in a hood to have a Death Star? No Man's Sky continues its seemingly endless parade of free updates today with The Swarm, which introduces a new threat to the universe: a massive space station called the Hive of Glass that controls an army of angry drones.

And yeah, like the Death Star, the Hive's got a really big laser, too. Here, I'll let Sean Murray tell you about it:

"The Hive of Glass protects itself by releasing swarms of robotic drones, creating an awesome spectacle of battles with hundreds of ships," Murray says. "The Hive itself is a weapon too, with the iris opening to release the largest weapon we’ve ever seen in No Man's Sky. A laser capable of destroying freighter fleets and perhaps even something as large as a space station…"

Don't expect to take on the Hive all by yourself like some kind of friendless Luke Skywalker: travellers will have to work together to neutralize the threat.

"Players are going to need a combined community effort to figure out what is going on," Murray says. "A war effort is being launched from the Nexus, with defenses rapidly being constructed, and a new bulletin page tracking progress. Your contribution to the face-off with the Hive is being logged for all to see in both the Anomaly and the Galactic Atlas. Travellers will want to keep a constant eye on which squad is contributing the most to the war effort."

If huge space battles aren't your thang, no problem. There's plenty to do on the ground too, like salvaging and researching the drones that have been shot down—and the gravity gun Hello Games added to No Man's Sky a few updates ago will come in handy there.

"There are miniature planetary swarms to defeat, and research efforts to sabotage the swarm's network. The secrets of the Hive's origins and weaknesses can be uncovered and shared with your fellow rebels," Murray says. "We can't wait to see how this plays out."

There's a whole lot more in the free update, like a new armor set, a fancy new jetpack, a sick-looking rifle, a bunch of bugfixes, and some stability and optimization improvements. The update is live now.

In the opening moments of Outward 2, I receive what sounds like a simple quest: to find a flower with medicinal properties in the wilds to the west of the city, and deliver it to a doctor.

But I'm no dummy. (Note: I will soon prove myself to be a dummy.) I've played the original Outward, and I know just how dangerous the world can be outside the safety of a city, because unlike most survival games, your punishment for dying isn't respawning safely back at home. No. It's much, much worse.

As I set out to locate that flower, I don't have much: a knife, a shield, some food and water, a tent, and a tiny backpack loaded with a few other supplies. I also don't really know where the flower might be: there are no quest markers or helpful arrows or radar pips to guide me. Outward 2 doesn't do that sort of thing. I'll just need to explore and keep my eyes open.

Thankfully, there's a touch of emergent behavior an untested adventurer can take advantage of, like when I spot two city soldiers marching up a hill near a large angry bird and a larger, angrier boar. They take turns fighting each other while I watch from a distance, until only the guards are left, at which point I scuttle over and loot the animal corpses. Free stuff! Someday I'll be confident enough to kill things on my own, but for now, this is the safest option.

As I search for the quest flower and occasionally pilfer from animal corpses others have left behind, I meet a wandering trader. We chat, I sell him a couple things I've collected, and I briefly consider attacking him so I can have his cool, huge backpack. Then I remember that I probably suck at fighting, and I continue scurrying around fearfully.

But even I, Chris the Coward, eventually get careless. I spot a guy on the road fighting one of those birds, and I lurk nearby, ready to get my loot on when he's finished. But when he finishes with the bird, he makes a beeline for me, brandishing a pike. He's no friendly soldier—he's a bandit.

I'm not really ready for actual combat. I forget to drop my backpack, which is important to do before a fight so you can dodge-roll quickly. I wait for him to attack so I can block and counter, but he's no idiot: he waits too. Eventually, I do the dumb thing: I impatiently swing at him with my sword. He swiftly rolls right under my blow and jabs at me. Despite doing everything wrong thus far, I surprise myself by blocking his pike, and I swing at him three more times. He blocks each of my attacks and stabs me.

It's pretty clear I'm going to lose this fight, but I don't do as badly as I expect. I do get in a few slams with my shield, which I can use as an offhand weapon in addition to blocking, but I simply cannot connect with my sword. He rolls, he dodges, he blocks, he's so blindingly fast that I might as well be swinging around a feather boa. I block and dodge him a bit, too, but he finally downs me with a double jab. The world goes black.

In Outward 2, as in the original survival RPG, your defeat doesn't mean death. You simply don't die in this game. I know immortality makes it sound like the easiest game ever, but it's weirdly the opposite. Being respawned back at your comfy home at full health is easy. In Outward 2, you wake up somewhere else entirely.

Often, you don't know where it is that you've respawned. I wake up in the dark, outside, with no real idea where I am or what direction the city is. Even if I had a map, which I don't, it probably wouldn't even be helpful because it wouldn't show my position on it. It would just be a map.

I stumble around in the dark, looking for my backpack, which is lying some distance away. A little too late I spot someone else walking in the dark, and it's another brigand. I flee. My stamina runs out, I get stabbed a few times, and once again the darkness overtakes me. At least I have a bit of good fortune: this time some thoughtful soul finds me and drags me back to the city, and I wake up in relative safety.

After selling some odds and ends and buying a hat that will at least partially protect my head, I continue my streak of being a foolhardy idiot and rush out of the city to find that bandit for a rematch. I find him, or his clone, but the bad news is that he's got a friend nearby, and the worse news is that friend also has a friend. I couldn't defeat one creep, and three at once is way too much. Defeat yet again.

This time I wake up in a quarry, having been carried there by some kindly miners. I also wake up with something new: an injury. Getting your clock cleaned repeatedly in Outward 2 doesn't just move you around the map against your will, it has consequences for your character's constitution. My left wrist is now sprained, which means I can't hold my shield (or anything else) in my offhand until it's healed.

Injuries can't be healed by simply glugging a potion or applying a bandage, either. I'd bought a splint before venturing out, which will help, but what I mostly need is time. I set down my tent and sleep until morning, but even after an entire night of rest my wrist is only about 40% healed. If I ever want to get back to the city, wherever it is, I'm going to need to look into alternate combat options.

Finally, I have some proper luck. While greedily looting the buildings those thoughtful miners dragged my unconscious body to, I find a flintlock pistol and a handful of bullets. I don't need an offhand to shoot a gun, right? I leave the quarry and eventually find the bandit again (or at least a bandit). I shoot him once, and he stabs me a few times as I realize reloading an old-timey gun takes a good long while. I get off a second shot and the fight is over. It's been days of pain and misery, but I've finally had my revenge.

Great, but… this wasn't a quest for revenge, was it? I was supposed to be finding a friggin' flower. Well, first I need to fully heal and regroup and come up with some sort of plan that doesn't involve me getting stabbed unconscious quite so many times.

But I love this. I've re-learned an important lesson: defeat has real consequences so be careful picking fights. In the first game I would plan for ages before getting in a scrap: I'd set traps, I'd drop my backpack so I'd be more agile, I'd be as prepared as possible for an encounter instead of just blundering in. I need to practice that level of caution again or I'm never going to get anywhere.

As I head back to the city, I fall in behind another soldier on patrol, carefully looting all the dead animals he leaves in his wake. No more charging into combat for me, at least for a while. I'm gonna let other people do the fighting for me until I find that dang flower.

If you want to play Outward 2 ahead of its July 7 release date, there's a closed beta happening now: here's how to get in on it.

Kenshi's whole deal is best summed up with one of its game start conditions: "rock bottom." When you start at rock bottom, you begin the game stranded in the desert, surrounded on all sides by enemies, with a 1 in all stats. Oh, and you just lost your left arm, and you're malnourished in a territory where starving is illegal. This is a game that sold three million copies.

That sales figure was revealed today in a blog post from developer Lo-Fi Games. "To everyone who's ever pointed a friend toward Kenshi, posted a screenshot, or clocked more hours than they’d care to admit," the post reads. "Thank you."

Kenshi is coming up on a decade since its full release as it left early access in 2018, but it's remarkably active for a game of its tenure. It's got over 5,000 concurrent players online as I write this, according to SteamDB—that's around half of its all-time record on the platform, which it only just reached last year. I guess people just crave brutality—a mod that adds crucifixion has a 5-star rating on Kenshi's workshop page.

Players' continued enthusiasm has clearly been heard by the developers, who used the recent blog post to address the community's "most common question": what about Kenshi 2? Well, if you're sick of hearing anything about Kenshi that doesn't end in a sequel reveal, Lo-Fi has just the website for you—kenshi2when.com, which is like any other newsletter sign-up except for the fact that you can opt out of everything that isn't explicitly about Kenshi 2.

Kenshi had a long, five-year journey in early access before its 2018 release, so it's hard to guess at when a sequel reveal will actually happen. But it will almost certainly happen: While Kenshi is a little too cruel for my sensitive palate, fantasy sandboxes of its complexity and depth are few and far between, so it tracks that fans are so voracious. If you want to see what all the fuss is about, the original is on sale on Steam for $8.39 until June 1.

I've always thought the expression "Too much of a good thing" was a bit dumb. If a thing is good, why not have more of it? Why not cram good thing after good thing into yourself and revel in their goodness? Admittedly, this speaks volumes of my role as a professional game addict—a guide writer who regularly chows down on massive RPGs, and continues to play them for myself afterwards as a kind of dessert.

But for once, I'm feeling full. Subnautica 2 in its current early access state is such a satisfying little morsel: a wonderful episode of aquatic exploration that doesn't overstay its welcome and honestly has me salivating for the next course. Okay, enough food metaphors.

After a lengthy legal battle involving some questionable use of ChatGPT (honestly, I find any use of ChatGPT questionable), Subnautica 2 finally released in early access, selling a mere 2 million copies in twelve hours. Despite a few foibles, such as a EULA agreement so severe some (not me) might speculate it could have been Krafton's attempt to sabotage the game further, Subnautica 2 has been a stonking success.

Some are certainly bemoaning the limited content—only about 20 hours as it stands—but I think Subnautica 2's early access makes such a strong case for episodic survival-crafting games. It's a story structure I'd never even considered applicable for this genre, but it suits the unfolding sense of discovery that exploring an uncharted alien ocean should have.

Subnautica 2 is a game that revolves around depth. Where in other survival-crafting games, you're mastering stone, bronze, and iron like some ancient human, in Subnautica, you're delving deeper, building the tools that allow you to explore the abyss. It's a structure that lends itself well to gradual exposition, as you explore new biomes, encounter new (and often hungry) creatures, and slowly uncover the truth that lies at the bedrock of everything.

Seeing how deep the world goes and shedding our humanity along the way is a pretty timeless narrative—there's a reason Made in Abyss remains popular despite its grizzlier and often post-human elements. Here, it's the colonists who came before you, crash-landing into a mysterious ocean instead of arriving on the desert planet of Zezura, your original destination.

Most of Subnautica 2's story is a found narrative, told through your sus AI companion, NOA, and the black boxes of these mysteriously absent characters, as you hear them slowly change due to a mysterious condition called Masefield Syndrome. All of this is apparently thanks to the gigantic alien tree rising out of the ocean—your first sight as you emerge from the Lifepod.

This World Tree is really the centerpiece of the game and, in typical videogame-style, will presumably be our final destination at its end.

What really makes Subnautica 2 feel special to me, though, is that this structure of gradual exposition suits the survival-crafting genre so well. The game's first "episode", so to speak, concludes in the Alien Ruins with a really wonderful set piece moment and some important lore discoveries about the planet, which I obviously won't divulge. However, it perfectly teases future biomes, while also deepening the mystery surrounding the planet and its colonists.

It's got me super excited for future areas to explore as we draw closer to the tree, but also for the fancy new tools and gadgets which will be introduced, and all the more fun to play with when added alongside a context for their use. In this version, for example, you have to build a Tadpole mini-sub to safely close a stretch of open ocean.

I love that Subnautica 2's tools and gadgets have a context and a purpose. It's not like I'm unlocking fancy new tech just to play around with in a sandbox—there's a reason I need this new tool to progress, to go deeper, and to inch ever closer towards that eventual truth. It's no wonder Subnautica feels so unique in the survival-crafting genre.

Despite being someone with a mild case of thalassaphobia, who's made understandably nervous by vast abyssal expanses and what lurks therein, Subnautica 2 managed to transform my trepidation into wonder. The real moment for me came when I happened upon a group of friendly Deepwing leviathans just swimming on by.

It made me reflect on why people venture into scary unknown places: I guess a lot of the time they turn out to be really bloody beautiful as well. Kind of impressive for a $30 early access game, huh?

The original Subnautica was secretly a brilliant horror game, so I've been delighted to discover—as I splash around in the abyss—that Subnautica 2 makes the terrors of the deep a lot more overt, really leaning into the fear of the unknown. I apologise to anyone in Paisley (or elsewhere in the world) who has heard my shrieks over the last week.

Unfortunately, for every nightmarish encounter, harrowing near-death experience or existential crisis, there are frequent moments when the spell is broken. The culprit? Audio logs. So. Many. Audio logs.

I should note that I do not hate audio logs. For decades they have been a popular narrative device used by horror games to build tension and provide context even when there are no NPCs around. They allowed games like System Shock and BioShock to fill the void of their ghost towns and ghost ships, giving us windows into the final moments of their denizens while still maintaining a sense of isolation.

This a tightrope walk, though, and overreliance on them can actually shatter that sense of isolation that the developers were attempting to preserve. As is the case in Subnautica 2.

In Unknown Worlds' sodden misadventure, you appear to be the sole survivor of a failed expedition on an alien world. You come to after a disaster, alone and discombobulated. The sole survivor scenario is a compelling fantasy: with only your wits, you can keep yourself alive in even the most challenging of situations, and maybe even flourish in a place where you should be dead.

Subnautica 2 does not leave you alone on this aquatic world, however. Like the original game, you've got a PDA spitting out notifications that initially might seem helpful but soon become infuriating. On your lifepod, and dotted around ruined bases, you'll also find NoA, an AI helper who is also kinda your boss. It doles out hints and tips and objectives, and it really doesn't like being ignored.

As I dive deep into the planet's enigmatic depths, then, I am never alone. I'm constantly being reminded that I need oxygen, food, water and that NoA wants to chat to me. If I decide that, no, NoA can bloody wait, my PDA will just keep reminding me. For some unknown reason NoA is unable to actually talk to me unless I'm standing in front of it, despite the fact that it's clearly capable of interacting with my PDA at any distance.

In these cases I have two options: incessant alerts, or hoofing it back to the lifepod to talk to an AI that I despise. Both of these choices suck.

But these chatty AI companions are not the only things beckoning for me to sit and listen. Scattered throughout the ocean are black boxes and audio logs, offering insights into the now-dead human explorers who were attempting to chart the planet and dissect its mysteries. These were present in the original game, too, but now they are all interruptions, auto-playing as soon as you find them, which completely transforms the tone of the outings they force themselves into.

When I'm exploring an abandoned base while hiding from a huge predator patrolling outside, I do not want to spend two minutes listening to a scientist discussing an argument they'd had with a colleague. All that work Unknown Worlds put into building up the tense atmosphere is flung out the airlock.

Early on, when you can't stay underwater for long, the audio logs are even more frustrating. I'm not the sort of person who can juggle a bunch of tasks and follow a diary excerpt. If I'm exploring a ruin while managing a very limited oxygen supply, that's taking up all of my attention. The audio logs, then, just devolve into an annoying buzz in my ear. And if I stop to listen to them, I'll probably drown—with my PDA's alerts adding to the noise.

Any I ignore can be listened to later, but that's not really the point. The damage to the game's atmosphere has already been done.

Subnautica 2's set up is perfect for a horror game. Alien mind control, cults, an AI with the ability to simply reprint you with parts of your memory carved out to make you more compliant. This is great stuff. Unfortunately, the narrative is entirely reliant on these audio logs—spilling everything as you just float around listening.

While there is a fair amount of environmental storytelling, Unknown Worlds never lets the environment speak for itself. It's always got to be coupled with a voice note from some dead person you don't know. And it's all so explicit. You're not piecing things together on your own—to the point where NoA actively directs you towards specific black boxes to move the story forward.

It's such a shame, because you can make all sorts of incredible discoveries by just going out and exploring the world, but chances are you'll already have had these discoveries spoiled for you by the last words of some dead guy. It just feels like Unknown Worlds doesn't trust us to figure anything out on our own.

Early on, you'll start to occasionally hear a ghostly voice. Given the absence of living human beings on this alien world, that's pretty disconcerting. Discovering the source of the voice and what it means should have been an unnerving adventure, filling your mind with questions and concerns. Instead, you'll rapidly have all your questions answered in the most boring way possible.

It's not even that the audio logs are bad. They're mostly fine, occasionally funny, and sometimes pretty evocative and creepy. But it's the difference between hearing a ghost story and being chased by a ghost. I don't want to hear a story; I want to be part of the story.

The limit of my patience was reached when I visited the Hot Caves. This is an incredible biome filled with magma and the corpses of giant crabs. When you reach it, your PDA announces that there are a multitude of black boxes down there. Now that's some good storytelling, and a good use of the black box system. Without explicitly telling you much, it still lets you know how dangerous this place is. Countless people went in, but nobody came out.

The biome is also cleverly designed. A huge central area that intimidates with its scale, accompanied by labyrinthine tunnels where you'll risk drowning. You can only access this location with your tadpole, but it's so deep that you'll need to actually leave the safety of your vehicle to avoid it taking damage from the pressure. I found myself distressingly vulnerable, and I loved it.

But why are you in this dangerous place? That's right—you're looking for a specific black box. NoA's actually meant to mark where the box is, but in my game NoA bugged out and I had to find it myself. First, though, I managed to find every other black box in the whole area—which definitely wasn't my plan. In almost every case, they merely reiterated information I already knew—thanks to other audio logs.

I left the Hot Caves—a location that had initially impressed me so much—not stressed, anxious or with my heart pumping. I was just a bit bored. And my reward for this expedition was a long, meandering conversation with the digital ghost of a scientist. A 10-minute info dump where I just stood in a room and did nothing apart from occasionally selecting a dialogue option. I was so deflated that I called it for the day.

Initially, I was concerned that the over-reliance on audio logs would undermine the game's inherently horrifying set up. Which it absolutely does, refusing to really let you experience true isolation. But it's worse than that. It also undermines the sense of discovery that Subnautica 2 should be brimming with, the pace of the adventure, the feeling of agency that survival games really require, and all the while it's chipping away at this big mystery without your input.

Subnautica 2 is a brilliant game. Even in early access, it's so clear that this has the right stuff, the potential to become one of the truly great survival games. But all of its myriad promising qualities are held back by a trite narrative structure. If Unknown Worlds had the confidence to just let us experience its world and story on our own terms, without being dragged along by the ramblings of ghosts addicted to exposition, it would really shine.

It's so frustratingly close to being a perfect mystery-soaked horror game. It just needs to shut up.

Tymon Smektała spent 13 years as director for the iconic zombie parkour game Dying Light and after stepping away from said role earlier this month he's reflected on the franchise, its fans, and what listening to a playerbase can do for a game.

"I believe very strongly that this makes it your obligation to focus and listen to the players," Smektała says during a Digital Dragons Conference talk (via GamesRadar+). "As soon as you release the game, it stops being only your game. Suddenly, there are hundreds, thousands, hopefully millions of 'stakeholders,' players with opinions, expectations, memories, frustrations, theories, ideas, requests. Suddenly, the game starts belonging not only to you, the makers, the creators, but also to the people who play it."

While there's certainly some debate as to what extent fans own the games they play, I get what Smektała is saying. Games are seeing an increasing reliance on word of mouth, streamer, and community backing. While Steam player count numbers aren't the be-all and end-all, it's hard to argue that games like Arc Raiders' ridiculous numbers didn't go a long way to helping the game prosper.

"We are not just selling products to customers, we are building a leading relationship with our community," Smektała adds. But amid all of this Smektała does stress that listening to players isn't the same thing as taking their word as gospel: "This doesn't mean that you have to do what the loudest players are saying. Players are not always right about the solution… They're very often wrong."

Like in most cases the truth lies somewhere in between. Players are 'always right when it comes to the feeling' whether it be frustrating mechanics, bad narrative vibes, or just a general dislike of the direction the game is going in. "If something excites them, scares them, or makes them feel somehow special—you should pay attention."

It's sound advice. Usually when players are complaining about games they're doing it from a place of love. I, for one, can be really grumpy about some of my favourite games, but that's only because I enjoy them so much I want them to be the best version possible. Although, I have to say, some things are best left up to the devs. They usually know what's up.

I've been writing for over half of my entire life, and about videogames in a professional capacity for over three years now—so I mean it when I say that there is nothing I resent more about the English language than the need to define something. It's a bloody headache, especially when it comes to something so ephemeral as genre.

It's still important, mind—the difference between a Strategy game and an RPG is still useful—but the headaches I get when arguing over whether something like Deadlock is more of a MOBA than a hero shooter (psst, it's a MOBA) are almost not worth the effort.

These kinds of problems turn out to be internal at some games studios, too. Take Dune: Awakening director Joel Bylos, who has finally settled—for now, temporarily—on the fact that Awakening is not, in fact, an MMO, per this interview with FRVR.

"I don’t think it’s an MMO. I’ve worked on multiple MMOs for sure, but I think there was a weird space where we were trying to do slightly more. We have this big, connected world, we have this big deep desert with lots of players being able to go in there. So it was a hard game to describe, and I always find that people kind of have a very set notion of what a genre is. So it’s hard to describe something that does something slightly new."

Bylos is, at least, an authority on what constitutes an MMO to a degree. He's worked on MMOs The Secret World, as well as Conan: Exiles, another survival-MMO hybrid (see what I mean? Definitions are insufferable).

"It’s not an MMO, is my strong feeling right now. It’s definitely not." says Bylos, citing the fact that most endgame progression in Dune: Awakening is done via crafting rather than chasing after item levels on a treadmill.

Still, that's not always up for developers themselves to decide—take Crimson Desert. During my preview event, developer Pearl Abyss was adamant it's not an RPG. Yet look at PC Gamer's own staff, and you'll have people (such as our own Fraser Brown) swearing up-and-down that it is, or others arguing that it's a weird hybrid.

Personally I'm on team "it's at least an action RPG" because no pure action game has stronghold management, but that's exactly the point. Definitions are a nightmare, and we should all collectively give up the written word in exchange for panicked screaming. I'd be out of a job, but I wouldn't have to think about the difference between roguelike and roguelite ever again.

Like a toothy, grinning leviathan prowling the depths, waiting for unsuspecting explorers to come toodling along in hopelessly delicate, defenseless mini-subs Subnautica 2 continues its reign of terror: Unknown Worlds announced today that the game has now surpassed 4 million sales in less that one week.

The latest sales milestone comes after Subnautica 2 pushed out one million copies in its first hour of release, and then doubled that to two million in its first 12 hours. And despite some professed trepidation from Unknown Worlds parent Krafton, the game's early access state has not diminished enthusiasm for it: Subnautica 2 currently holds a "very positive" rating across more than 74,000 user reviews on Steam.

"We're incredibly grateful for the response from players around the world," executive producer Fernando Melo said. "Seeing millions of players dive into this new world during Early Access has been an incredible moment for the team. Community feedback continues to help shape the future of Subnautica 2, and we're excited to keep building the experience together with our players."

Something else I found interesting in the press blast is the description of Subnautica 2 as "developed by Unknown Worlds, founded by Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire." I get a lot of press releases, as you might imagine, and I don't recall any of them ever pointedly naming the studio's founders like that—except in cases where the PR is about a new studio announcement, of course. It's honestly a bit weird.

Except it's not weird, in this specific case, because of the well-publicized dispute between Unknown Worlds and Krafton. Here's a summary of the whole mess if you're late to the party, but the crash course version is that Krafton promised the studio founders, along with CEO Ted Gill, a veritable boatload of money if Subnautica 2 was a hit, and then tried to weasel out of it—an effort that blew up in the company's face in a very public and humiliating way.

Since then, Krafton has taken a much lower-profile role on the whole, including being removed as publisher on the Subnautica 2 Steam page; Krafton told us in April that it's "focused on successfully supporting the early access launch of Subnautica 2," but what that actually means in a practical sense, I do not know. It reminds me more than a little of Valve's effort to ensure that its name, and not that of publisher Sierra, led the way on Half-Life—and we all know how that turned out. (If you don't know, Steam basically rules the kingdom of PC gaming now, and Sierra went out of business about 20 years ago.)

How close the Unknown Worlds honchos are to their big payout is entirely a matter of speculation at this point, as the requisite numbers have not been revealed publicly. I would imagine, though, that Krafton CEO Changham Kim is probably doing his best to think about something else right now. Anything else.

One of the biggest discussions emerging from Subnautica 2's tsunami of an early access launch is the debate over combat. Just a few days ago, we reported that developer Unknown Worlds says players "are here to exist on this planet, not dominate it." Still, that's not stopped many players from demanding the means to fight back the horrifying sea beasts lurking below the waves.

In a new blog post, the developers spoke on three areas of feedback the game has received so far. Of course, this begins with creatures and combat.

"Right now, some predator encounters feel more frustrating than tense or exciting. Mitigation tools are not always clear, reliable, or satisfying, and players do not always have enough confidence in how to respond when a creature attacks. This is not the experience we want."

Honestly, this doesn't particularly surprise me. I think most players have completely overlooked just how strong the distraction flares can be—they basically pacify any creature. It's more or less your only tool of self-defence early on, though, until you start unlocking a few Biomods, like Electric Discharge or Camouflage.

Luckily, some improvements are already in the works, including "creature aggression timing, aggro range, flare effectiveness, Survival Tool effectiveness, and creature interactions with vehicles and bases." These changes will arrive over various upcoming patches.

And then there's going fisticuffs with fish. "We have heard the strong request for more direct ways to deal with hostile creatures, including the ability to kill them," the devs explain. "We understand where that request is coming from. When avoidance and mitigation tools do not feel effective, it is natural for players to want a more decisive solution."

"Our current direction is not based on judging players who want combat, and it is not because we think those players are wrong. Subnautica has always been built around vulnerability, exploration, and survival rather than traditional weapon-based combat. We believe that this is part of what makes the game unique."

So no, Unknown Worlds has reaffirmed that creature combat isn't on the bingo cards, and that's a position I can get behind. These sea monsters are only as terrifying as they are because there's little I can do against them but come prepared with flares and get outta dodge when things get hairy. But right now, encounters are more than a little janky, and that's definitely something developers need to address—just not, you know, with guns.

The last point Unknown Worlds addresses is how it's going to handle the early access period, explaining that it's not just about collecting bug reports: "We will not always be able to make every requested change, but we do have a responsibility to listen carefully, explain our decisions respectfully, and show through our actions that player feedback is shaping the game."

Some of those changes and improvements aimed at community concerns will arrive "in the coming weeks".

Biomods are effectively your skills in Subnautica 2. Some are active effects, like dashing to avoid predators or producing a jolt of electricity, but most of them are passive buffs that go a long way in making life under the waves easier.

You'll have access to only a handful of Biomods at the start of the game when you power up the Biolab in the Welcome Center, but once you reach the Alien Ruins and unlock the Bioscanner upgrade, you'll see the full repertoire at the Biolab.

The only hurdle is that you need to scan various creatures across the ocean to unlock each Biomod. Below, I'll explain where to find each of the creatures you need to scan, and what each Biomod does.

How to get all Biomods in Subnautica 2

There are currently 15 Biomods, which consist of five active and ten passive. However, you can only equip one of each type right now. The Subnautica 2 roadmap explains that there are planned improvements coming to Biomods in update 1.1, including more passive Biomod slots.

At the start of the game, you have access to the following Biomods when you power up the Welcome Center and interact with the Biolab inside:

You'll be restricted to these four options until you complete all the tasks in the starting area and travel to the Alien Ruins to the east, at which point you can find the Bioscanner upgrade. Once you collect this and equip it at the Modification Station, you can scan creatures to unlock additional Biomods. While you're told what creatures you need to find, you won't know what each Biomod does, or even where to find said sea beasts.

Here are all the remaining Biomods that you need to unlock, and where to find the specific creatures they ask for:

Sonic Echo

• Type: Active
• Effect: Emit a sonar pulse to highlight nearby resources
• Scan: Collector Leviathan

To unlock Sonic Echo, you need to scan the terrifying Collector Leviathan, which you'll recognise as the beast patrolling the gorge between the Tadpole Pens and the Alien Ruins.

You can either scan this Collector Leviathan or go down to the Metal Farm area (with the green glowing pools), where you'll find two more. Either way, you'll want to stick close to cover and use Distraction Flares or the Camouflage Biomod to be able to get close enough to scan it. I didn't have much luck using the Electric Discharge Biomod, despite how useful it sounds here. As you've no doubt found out the hard way, if this monster grabs you, it'll kill you in one bite.

Electric Discharge

• Type: Active
• Effect: Emit an 800-volt electric shock to deter medium and large predators
• Scan: Electric Geordie

You can find the Electric Geordie you need to scan near the Alien Turbine. From the Alien Ruins Research Outpost, head east towards the Angel Comb, where you'll find Electric Geordie next to a large metal pillar (like a chess piece) with a blue light on it. There are more by the green glowing pools at the Metal Farms, too. I recommend using your Tadpole as bait, since the fish will latch onto it and shock it.

Chum Cloud

• Type: Active
• Effect: Release a cloud of delicious bait to distract predators
• Scan: Houndgar, Toxic Sponge

To unlock this Biomod, I actually recommend you travel back to the starting area. That's because you can find Houndgar near the Cicada shipwreck in the volcanic area, not far from the Tadpole Pans. They're about 720m southwest of the Alien Ruins, or 550m west of the Lifepod.

Toxic Sponge, on the other hand, is easy to scan in the small cave just 30m east of the Lifepod, almost directly below it.

Bioluminescence

• Type: Passive
• Effect: Glow in the dark
• Scan: Sandspear, Electric Geordie

If you've got the Electric Discharge Biomod, then you'll have already scanned an Electric Geordie. Otherwise, I recommend going back to the Alien Turbine and scanning one there.

Sandspear are found in or around the seabed in the starting Shallows area. I found one in a cave 70m west of the Lifepod, so not very far away at all. You'll sometimes see them shimmying about in the sand.

Camouflage

• Type: Passive
• Effect: Become invisible to predators when not moving
• Scan: Bullethead

You'll often find Bulletheads lodged into cave walls, so they're easy to miss if it's dark. I found multiple in a cave 120m away, 300 degrees northwest of the Alien Ruins Research Outpost. The cave covers more or less the entirety of the area underneath the Research Outpost, and there are multiple entrances.

Water Retention

• Type: Passive
• Effect: Gain more water from all sources with enlarged, orca-like kidneys
• Scan: Coral Crab

Coral Crabs are easily found around the rock pillar in the open seabed near Chap's base about 120 degrees southeast of the Lifepod, 200m away, just past the Welcome Center. However, you can also find them with the Houndgars near the Cicada shipwreck overlooking the Tadpole Pens in the volcanic area.

Homing Sense

• Type: Passive
• Effect: Detect nearby bases with electrical power
• Scan: Surge Jelly, Hammerhead

You'll find both Surge Jelly and Hammerhead near the Lifepod in the starting area. There's a large group of Surge Jelly just past Chap's base, roughly 250m south of the Lifepod, near a large natural currant.

Hammerheads are common further out from the Lifepod, but I recommend going towards the Coral Crabs and sulfur deposits by the rock pillar near Chap's base, 250m southeast of the Lifepod. There should be one patrolling the area, not far from a pack of Nibbler Mango.

Threat Sense

• Type: Passive
• Effect: Detect nearby threats with specialised hair cells
• Scan: Hoverthorn

Hoverthorn are absolutely tiny fish that are quite hard to actually scan. On the bright side, they're easy to find basically all around the Alien Ruins. I recommend going close to the edge of the pit with the Collector Leviathan between there and the Tadpole Pens, which is roughly 300m south, southwest of the Alien Ruins.

Dermal Garden

• Type: Passive
• Effect: Slowly grow nutritious algae on your skin
• Scan: Needler Mango

Needler Mango is one of the easiest fish to scan since they have a dedicated nest area, which you've likely already visited before to get Creature Enamel, Ruby's blackbox, or the Tadpole depth module. There's a bunch of them about 250m southeast of the Alien Ruins Research Outpost. Since they take a moment to line up their shots and again between volleys, that's the best time to get close for a scan.

Slow Metabolism

• Type: Passive
• Effect: Your microbiome becomes more efficient, making food loss slower
• Scan: Nibbler Mango

Nibbler Mangoes are the most common predators in the starting Shallows area, so you're bound to run into one by swimming in any direction from the Lifepod. I once again suggest going towards Chap's base, 250m southeast of the Lifepod, or towards the Old Habitat 350m to the north of the Lifepod.

Water Secretion

• Type: Passive
• Effect: Slowly fills a water packet by filtering fresh water from the sea
• Scan: Water Slug

Ah, the humble Water Slug. Existing only to be turned into bottles of drinking water, you can find Water Slugs on the seafloor virtually anywhere, whether that's around the Lifepod or the seabed around the Alien Ruins Research Outpost.

Best Biomods in Subnautica 2

Right now, you can only equip one active and one passive Biomod, making the choice of which ones to use even harder. Some are unfortunately pretty terrible, like Homing Sense to detect bases with electricity, while others are very useful if you're struggling with something specific.

These are the Biomods I recommend you use:

If you're trying to fix the Power Plant in Subnautica 2, you've likely realised that you need to power up the area in order to access the Observatory—that big tower near the Alien Ruins. This is your big story objective in early access, and actually concludes the narrative so far when you do get inside, teasing some future content and updates.

Actually repairing the Power Plant is very resource-intensive, and requires many of the upgrades you'll find in the region, making it the culmination of your journey through the alien ocean so far.

How to repair the Power Plant in Subnautica 2

To enter the Observatory, you first have to repair the Alien Power Plant, the huge structure above the Angel Comb that dominates the Alien Ruins region. There are multiple stages to this, so I'll walk you through each, though it's worth noting that you'll need the Tadpole Depth module to do any of this.

1. Clear the Angel Comb and get Axum Vision

Your first step is to clear the Angel Comb in the Alien Ruins, the center of which is to the east of Research Base, if you follow the big purple tube. All of the details you need are in that linked guide, including videos showing each of the viral bloom locations. To destroy each of these, you'll need to unlock the Feedback Resonator upgrade for your Sonic Resonator, as this allows you to destroy the flowers from a distance so they don't close up.

After you've cleared the comb, acquire the Axum Vision Adaptation, then head inside the alien control room built into the wall of the crater, overlooking the Angel Comb. Interact with the console at the centre by the window to fix the first stage of the Power Plant.

2. Repair the Alien Turbine and restart the Power Plant

Your next step is to repair the giant Alien Turbine above the Angel Comb. Drive directly upwards onto the big circular structure and move around to the east side of its circumference, where you'll find a few colony crates and a blue light, above a broken turbine you can scan. If you're unable to scan this, it's possible you might need to craft the Bioscanner upgrade first, though I can't confirm this for sure since I already had it when I scanned the turbine.

Scanning the turbine reveals it was sabotaged (presumably by the colonists) and you'll need a lot of materials to repair it, namely:

• 10x Titanium Ingots
• 10x Mangalloy Ingots
• 10x Strontium

This is a huge number of resources, but to break it down, this is what you'll need for the Processor in order to produce the ingots:

• 60x titanium
• 20x Celestine
• 10x Atacamite
• 10x Troilite

The 60x titanium seems like a lot, but this is because, as well as needing 10 Titanium Ingots, you need an additional 10 to craft the Mangalloy. The resource you'll struggle with the most is the Troilite—I suggest using a Metal Farm to produce some, and always make sure to keep at least one Troilite that you can use in the farm, since there seems to be a very limited amount of it available.

Once you've crafted it all, bring it back to the turbine, either with the Tadpole Haul Chassis or by clearing 30 slots in your inventory. Bring out your Habitat Builder and construct the turbine as you would any facility. Now head to the control room directly opposite the turbine and interact with each of the alien consoles inside, interacting with each dial and slider until it turns green, as shown in the video, before activating the central console to turn on the Power Plant.

How to enter the Observatory in Subnautica 2

Now the area is powered up, the door to the Observatory (the tower near the Alien Ruins Research Base) has opened. If you drive around the circumference of the tower to its west side, the opposite end to the Alien Ruins, you'll find a door you can head inside and a lever to pull. I won't spoil what happens inside, but this is the end of the current story content for Subnautica 2's early access.

Subnautica 2 is now out in early access, and despite all the drama preceding it—so much drama—the game itself is actually great. Hurray! But hold on a second, because publisher Krafton is not done trying to shoot itself in the foot.

We've now got some post-launch drama to enjoy, courtesy of Subnautica 2's ridiculously severe EULA. Now, EULAs often have weird stipulations, frequently serving as a reminder that we don't technically own our games outright, we've just purchased a licence. This means, for instance, if you die and try to bequeath your Steam account to a family member, you're out of luck.

Even with that in mind, there's some wild stuff in the Subnautica 2 EULA, with a bunch of the worst offenders collected by Reddit user SickPois0on on the Stop Killing Games subreddit.

I've already breached the agreement several times myself, even just in this article.

For instance, by poking fun at this overbearing EULA, by the broad language it uses I am arguably breaching the part of the agreement that says I cannot "harm the reputation of Company, our affiliates, our service providers or licensors, or the reputation of the Game, the Documentation or the Services". Whoops!

If our autoplay video shows any clips of Subnautica that we've uploaded, this news story is also in breach of this part: "Any Gameplay Video must include the following prominent disclaimer either at the beginning of the Video or, if live-streaming, near the Video in a visible font: 'This video is subject to the Game’s Terms of Service and was not endorsed or sponsored by KRAFTON, Inc.' We may terminate the limited license granted to you to create, distribute or otherwise make available a Gameplay Video in our sole discretion without notice or liability to you."

Some players have taken this section to mean that the same disclaimer needs to be included on images as well, but this seems to just be a misunderstanding stemming from the clause's mention of images in the context of them appearing (along with music, sound effects and any other assets) in live or recorded videos.

It looks like I'm also breaking one of the clauses right this very second because I fired up the game while my VPN is active, and that's naughty as well, apparently. Per the EULA, I cannot "use IP proxying or other methods to disguise the location of your use or Device, whether to circumvent geographical restrictions on the use of the Game, the Documentation or Services or for any other purpose or in a way that violates these Terms".

My VPN is frequently on while I'm at work so I can check game prices and deals in different regions, and I use it outside of work as well. I've never used it to circumvent any restrictions in Subnautica 2 because it's readily available in the UK, but I guess that doesn't matter because the clause includes "any other purpose", which I suppose covers "I forgot to turn it off".

Then there's the clause that says I can't use or permit the use of the game on more than one device at the same time without purchasing a "separate, additional license" from Krafton. Can I still have it installed on multiple devices? Does streaming it from my PC to my Steam Deck or my Shield TV count as using it on multiple devices at the same time? It's a very broad clause, which is a bit of a theme in this EULA.

What else have we got? Oh yeah, here's a good one—and by "good", I mean "broad, confusing and extreme". The EULA states that you cannot "engage in acts prohibited by applicable laws or generally unacceptable by social norms". The other night I left a seaslug on the floor in my base to see if it would die because it was outside of its natural habitat. Is that animal cruelty? I think society would consider that 'not normal'. Oh dear.

And you're not allowed to post spam. Trolling a friend during your underwater adventure? Krafton might take the game away from you. But don't worry, it looks like Krafton could do this at any time and for any reason.

It's worth noting that a lot of the contents of this EULA are boilerplate, even the egregious stuff. This is a legal team ticking boxes. And EULA's aren't automatically enforceable—though this never stops them being full of things that would never pass muster in a court of law.

Also important to note: Unknown Worlds isn't responsible for this EULA. This is Krafton's doing. Over on the Subnautica Discord, animation programmer Sam Dark addressed some of the community's concerns regarding the EULA, stating, "We will obviously never take any action against any player playing the game, streaming it on twitch or youtube or in discord to friends, you can play on linux with proton (we're steamdeck verified), we have nothing that runs outside of the game exe, and we have someone looking into the EULA. You're also welcome to mod the game as long as you follow the rules Donya shared a while back about not selling the mods etc."

This was in direct response to a user worried about the video clause, as well as clauses regarding mod creation and the EULA giving Krafton the right to remotely access "Game Software residing on your Device".

EULAs get changed, of course, and Krafton even notes that the terms of the agreement could change at any time (which, yes, makes it hard to know if you're in breach of a clause), so we might see some cuts and clarifications coming up.

Frankly, Krafton could use a PR win right now. While Subnautica 2 is already a huge success, the messy legal battle has made the publisher look extremely foolish, particularly when it came to light that Krafton's CEO regularly uses ChatGPT, and that he'd used it to try and find a way to get out of paying a bonus to Unknown Worlds' studio heads.

Anyway, the drama continues.

Reaching the Alien Ruins in Subnautica 2 is like transitioning from the tutorial to the real deal. You've got to cross an open expanse, which a terrifying sea monster (the Collector Leviathan) calls home, and then you're let loose in a new, even more difficult location.

Before you travel to the Alien Ruins, there are a few things you should prepare to save yourself time and effort. Likewise, once you reach this new area, you'll suddenly have a bunch of new objectives to complete and materials to gather. Here's how it all works.

How to reach the Alien Ruins in Subnautica 2

After you investigate the Tadpole Pens, you'll get the objective to cross the gorge and reach the Alien Ruins over 600 meters to the east. This mission effectively takes you to the next area, though you're able to return at any moment (providing you've got the resources to survive the trip).

Before you leave for the Alien Ruins, I recommend doing the following:

• Build the Scout Ray Chassis Tadpole upgrade at the Vehicle Bay terminal, increasing its speed and handling. The blueprint is inside the Tadpole Pens if you missed it.
• Increase your inventory size by interacting with Biobeds.
• Stock your inventory with backup batteries, a spare power cell, food, drink, healing, and base-building materials, including quartz, titanium, copper, and silver.

When you're properly prepared, it's time to travel to the Alien Ruins. The goal is simple: reach the other side of the open seabed. However, your destination is over 600 meters away, and there's a Collector Leviathan in your way, the largest, most deadly creature you'll have encountered so far.

The best way to do it is to stay as low to the seabed as possible in your Tadpole and drive straight towards the Alien Ruins, or stay close to the surface of the ocean instead. The Leviathan will begin to chase you and possibly even hit you, but keep driving forward until you reach the other side of the gorge, at which point you can use the cliffs as cover and repair your vehicle.

Reach the Alien Ruins, and you'll find the Research Station. Head inside and switch the power on by inserting a battery into the socket in the bedroom. Then interact with the NOA in the command room. This will list various locations you can visit to progress, and you'll soon be able to return to NOA to get actual quest markers.

Here's what you should do next:

Axum Bacterial Culture is a very pesky material to find and harvest in Subnautica 2. It's very well-hidden and protected, but you'll need to risk it if you want to craft a Metal Farm. As the name hints at, these handy little devices duplicate valuable metals so you don't need to keep trekking back and forth.

Before you can harvest some Axum Bacterial Culture, you need to grab the Depth Module for your trusty Tadpole from the cave near Ruby's second blackbox signal. This lets you reach deeper areas in the Tadpole, and even with the upgrade, your submarine will be reaching its limits.

Subnautica 2 Axum Bacterial Culture location

You can find multiple Axum Bacterial Cultures in the central glowing green pool in the Metal Farms cavern, about 75 degrees northeast of the Alien Ruins Research Base, 870 meters away. It's roughly 450 meters down, which is why you need the Depth Module equipped on your Tadpole, and even that's the deepest your Tadpole can get.

Be warned that this area is patrolled by a leviathan and other aggressive fish, making it a very dangerous location. Make sure you bring a Repair Tool for your Tadpole and some healing.

As demonstrated in the video above, this is the route you need to take to find Axum Bacterial Culture:

1. Head east from the Alien Ruins Research Base, dropping off the ledge and descending, and continuing east over the alien structure on the sea floor
2. Soon you'll spot a big purple tube (it looks like a crab leg), which you need to follow towards the Angel Comb underneath the Alien Power Plant (it's past Anita's second blackbox signal, if you've got this task)
3. Go northeast from the Angel Comb, following another purple tube down a narrow ravine, until you reach an area with green-glowing pools and a bunch of pillar-like alien structures around the outside (these are Metal Farms)

You'll likely already have the blueprint for the Metal Farm if you're hunting for Axum Bacterial Culture, but you can find it by scanning the said pillars in this area. Similarly, you can find the Feedback Resonator blueprint down here too.

Axum Bacterial Culture is a very rare material, but it's made worse by what I assume is a bug that's causing it to disappear when you harvest it, leaving you empty-handed. I recommend harvesting this material by carefully breaking the outershell using a tool like the Flashlight or Scanner, not the Survival Multitool.

Alongside Axum Bacterial Culture, you'll also need the Mangalloy Ingots to craft a Metal Farm, which requires Titanium Ingots but also hard-to-find materials, Atacamite and Troilite.

If you've had your eye on the Subnautica 2 discourse for the past few days, you already know it revolves around a single topic: to kill or not to kill?

Long story short, players want a way to fight back against hostile sea creatures like Nibbler Mangos and Hammerheads, pointing out that the original Subnautica had a survival knife you could use to stab mean fish and even leviathans to death.

Subnautica 2 devs, meanwhile, have responded by essentially saying: "How about no?" Okay, what they actually said was go play some other game if you want to kill stuff, because Subnautica 2 is "not a killing game." Fair enough: it's their game and if they don't want to add weapons, they obviously don't have to.

But now there's now an option if you like Subnautica 2 but still want to kill stuff: use a mod. The Killable Creatures mod by jibotron doesn't give you any weapons, but it weaponizes some of the tools you already have and lets you fight back against all those oceanic pests.

"Getting into Subnautica 2 for the first time and then realizing they took away the ability to kill made me angry," modder jibotron said. "Why take away a feature so simple especially when its a sandbox survival game? And after seeing the devs tell people it wont be coming back and it doesn't suit their vision for the game I thought why not make it myself having experience modding other games."

With the mod installed, swinging the survival multitool (it's a hammer) deals 20 damage to creatures and the sonic resonator deals 50. Do enough damage and you can kill just about any creature you see, after which they'll float upside down like an aquarium casualty.

I've been swimming around this morning trying it out, and it does work, though quite honestly I'm siding with the devs on this one because I don't think the game really needs traditional weapons. You could already discourage Nibbler Mangos with a sonic resonator blast, and they do so little actual damage it hardly seems worth bothering with.

In fact, just chasing the Nibblers around to kill them was far more of a chore than worrying about a stray nibble every now and again. It takes several resonator blasts to kill them, and once they've been stung they swim away so quickly that it's pretty time consuming to chase them down to deliver a few more blasts.

That said, I have to admit it's pretty satisfying to waste one of those blue bastards. I don't mind the tiny bit of damage they do, but they've startled me often enough that they deserve to pay the ultimate price.

I also took out a Hammerhead—they're irritating since they'll headbutt your parked tadpole endlessly—and I even resonated a Coral Crab to death, which just made me feel sad since they're cool to look at and don't seem particularly hostile. I haven't tried taking out leviathan yet, because I imagine that'd take quite a long time. I'm sure someone will do it, though.

You can kill smaller fish, too, like the ones you usually grab to use as food, though the downside is that their floating corpses aren't harvestable for resources. You can't harvest the bigger fish, either, which is a shame. Revenge on nibblers would be much more satisfying if I could cook 'em up and nibble on 'em too.

You'll find the Killable Creatures mod on Nexus Mods. Like most Subnautica 2 mods, you'll need to install the UE4SS mod first.

Since Subnautica 2's cetacean-sized early access launch last week, a contingent of its players have been vocal about their frustration over their inability to retaliate against its predatory sea life with their own lethal intent. Subnautica 2 devs at Unknown Worlds haven't been swayed by those complaints, urging players to seek out one of the many other survival games if they're looking for a sandbox where they're free to kill whatever they find.

That stance isn't likely to change in the future. In an interview with PC Gamer ahead of its early access launch, Subnautica 2 developers said killing fish outright is fundamentally incompatible with the game the studio wants to make.

"The tone of the game we're making is that you are here to exist on this planet, not to dominate it. You're not the conquering colonist here," said Unknown Worlds gameplay design lead Anthony Gallegos. "The goal here is not for you to master the world and bend it to your will."

Subnautica 2 does give players tools to defend against hostile marine life: They can craft flares that distract ocean predators when thrown, and an eventual tool for harvesting resources can also be used to repel sea creatures more directly (and forcefully). And you can, of course, shove fish into your pockets so they can eventually be cooked and eaten or turned into fuel for a bioreactor.

But where even Subnautica 1 allowed players to kill fish using a survival knife, Subnautica 2 maintains a firmer line about whether it will let players kill wildlife at their discretion, because it promotes a relationship between the game's players and their surroundings that Unknown Worlds doesn't want to enable.

To explain that stance, Unknown Worlds creative media producer Scott MacDonald offered Subnautica 1's leviathans as an example. The studio gave its leviathans beefy health stats with the assumption that players wouldn't think fighting them was worth their time—but crucially, Unknown Worlds left those health bars visible.

"We set the health bars to be so high, we thought no one's gonna bother killing them or anything like that," MacDonald said. "And then what happens is the community takes it as a challenge, right?"

As the developers tell it, once players realized they could kill leviathans with enough effort, many of them went about systematically purging Subnautica 1's oceans so they could gather resources without any danger. Its predatory sea life went from being a threat to learn to coexist with to an inconvenience to be eliminated.

"You do the work of killing Leviathan and now it's perfectly safe. But you also end up robbing the game of its tension," Gallegos said. "To us, minor decisions like that have major impacts."

He noted with a chuckle that Unknown Worlds co-founder Charlie Cleveland "was always a bit sad to see how people used a lot of the things in the game to murder things." As a result, the studio is being a bit more mindful in maintaining a more equal dynamic between the player and the alien sea life.

"Making sure the leviathans are always kind of present reinforces the idea that you're not the master of this world," Gallegos said. "You're not here to bend the creatures and everything to your will. You're really meant to coexist with them in a way that, I think, was always the goal of the original Subnautica as well."

If, after all that, you still really, really want to kill those fish: There's a mod for that.

Building a Metal Farm in Subnautica 2 is absurdly useful when it comes to duplicating rare metals like Troilite. Later on, when you're repairing the Alien Power Plant, you'll need a lot of this material and there isn't very much to find on the map, so using a Metal Farm is a much better approach.

You'll need to have reached the Alien Ruins area via the Tadpole Pens to do this, and you'll also need the Tadpole Depth module. Otherwise, here's what you need to do to unlock the Metal Farm blueprint and how it works.

Subnautica 2 Metal Farm location

You need to scan three Metal Farms to unlock it as a blueprint, but thankfully they are all in the glowing green pool area about 870 meters northeast of the Alien Ruins Research base, bearing around 75 degrees. This location is very deep, around 450 meters, which is the limit of your Tadpole even with the depth module attached.

This area is filled with predators and patrolled by a leviathan, so bring a Repair Tool for your Tadpole and some healing for yourself. The video above shows how to get there, but in case you can't see it:

1. Head east from the Alien Ruins Research Base, dropping off the cliff and descending until you spot the purple tube, which you should then follow to the Angel Comb
2. Go northeast from the Angel Comb following another purple tube down a ravine, which will lead you to an area with green glowing pools and lots of alien column-like devices around the outside—these are Metal Farms

Scan a few of these and you'll unlock the blueprint, though stay as low as possible to avoid the leviathan. While you're here, make sure to grab some Troilite and an Axum Bacterial Culture—you can get these by smashing the materials in the pools—since you'll require both to actually craft the facility.

How to build a Metal Farm in Subnautica 2

Metal Farms are a bit strange since they clearly require power, but they don't mention a power consumption on their blueprint. You'll likely have to build some more power infrastructure to support them—since you can build them anywhere, I recommend building one close to your already linked power production so you don't have to craft an extra transmitter.

Crafting a Metal Farm costs you:

• 1x Mangalloy Ingot
• 1x Axum Bacterial Culture

Crafting the Mangalloy Ingot requires one Troilite, one Atacamite, and one Titanium Ingot.

How to use a Metal Farm in Subnautica 2

Once powered, using the Metal Farm is straightforward enough:

1. Interact with the front of the device to "open storage"
2. Place whichever metal you want duplicated inside—I recommend Troilite since it's annoying to collect and you need a lot of it to reactivate the Alien Power Plant
3. A timer will appear on the front
4. When the timer runs out, the Metal Farm will produce an ore node of the corresponding type on top of it
5. Smash this with your Sonic Resonator

Since you get a random amount of ore from smashing a node, it could be one or three, but as soon as you do, the Metal Farm will start producing more. If you can provide the power infrastructure, you can even craft multiple Metal Farms to get more ore.

One of the many tough aspects of creating things for public consumption—whether the great works of art of old or videogame news articles (which are the great works of art of the 21st century)—is dealing with public feedback.

So I feel some sympathy for the Subnautica 2 dev (spotted by GamesRadar) who's rankled a few fans by telling them that, if violent gameplay is what they're after, they'd be better off playing something else.

In response to a player on Discord lamenting the fact they can't kill anything in Subnautica 2, level designer Artyom O'Rielly was pretty blunt: "We aren't a killing game. Go play Sons of the Forest or something if you want to kill." I'm gonna go ahead and guess that O'Rielly wasn't intending to tell players to go do one, but that's kinda how it came across, and the comment attracted more than a few negative reactions from onlookers. It was not long before Reddit threads spawned from upset fans.

Perhaps the most material objection to O'Rielly's comment was the fact that players currently have no way to deter aggressive fish from their bases. Fair enough if Unknown Worlds doesn't want to make violence a part of its game, but you have to admit it's a tad frustrating to be smothered in angry fish you can't do anything about. But fear not, O'Rielly swung back to assure players that's not meant to happen, and "That'll be fixed in a future update too."

You ask me, I do think it's nice for a game to offer the fantasy of existing with nature rather than violently dominating it (you might say that nature contains plenty of violence already, which is fair, but all nature outside of humanity that I'm aware of also lacks the sapience to abstain from that arrangement), and I think little kerfuffles like this are just the price you pay for having this kind of immediate interface between devs and fans.

And hey, you get nice moments too. In response to another fan, a little later on, thanking the team for the game, O'Rielly replied: "I am glad you are enjoying the world we built and love. We want to keep updating and giving you more and more until 1.0."