Swimming in open water can be a pretty nerve wracking experience. Back in my home town,  a Great White shark was hauled out of the water off a popular beach just this week. The only unusual part of the story was that it was dead – These giant predators are always around. That’s one of the core fears of open water swimming: What’s underneath me, that I don’t know about?

Even when swimming out on the ocean, there’s one unfailing truth: As long as the sea is calm, you can always swim to the surface. But what if there is no surface? What if the only thing above you is rock? For many people, cave diving, or swimming through …

Diversity of environments is a key design feature of Subnautica. We want Subnautica players to be able to experience vastly different and beautiful ‘biomes’ as they explore the underwater world. Of course, no underwater world would be complete without a coral reef!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu9ydODgflw

Cory painted Coral Reef Zone 3 to the team visualise what a coral reef biome might look like. Creating an ‘alien’ coral reef is quite tricky, because by their very nature terrestrial coral reefs already look quite alien!

We also need keep our desire for diversity of coral life in check: Each new life form is a new model that needs to be created and put into the game. There are financial, performance, and time expenses …

Subnautica will take you to diverse environments: From lava, to ice, to coral, and more. In these environments, you will encounter all sorts of creatures, big and small. The above image is Cave Thing, and is a piece of Subnautica concept art that tries to give form to several gameplay ideas.

Cave Thing is painted with a diver’s mask at the edges, hinting at Subnautica’s first person nature. On the right, a small vehicle of some kind if shining lights on to the evidently bemused creature. Small vehicles will be pilotable (or this one an un-manned drone, supporting the swimming player?), deploying from ‘mothership’ style larger vessels (See Exterior Sketch for more about this!).

Most importantly, this little encounter is …

One week ago, we revealed that Unknown Worlds is working on a new game: Subnautica. We want to share Subnautica with you from its earliest moments, bringing you concept art, early design thinking, and more.

Today we are following up on the original three concepts with Exterior Sketch. This concept was only the second ever to be created for Subnautica, penned by Cory after he completed Interior Hallway (We’ll show you that one later!)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ct7rTUcgHk

Exterior Sketch was the first attempt to give form to an idea that is central to Subnautica: That players would interact with substantial underwater vehicles. These submarines would enable exploration and discovery by providing protection, mobility, and utility below the ocean surface.

Since this …