- Primary Subject: Underwater Survival Games
- Key Update: Recommendations for games similar to Subnautica
- Status: Published
- Last Verified: 2026-05-27
- Quick Answer: This article recommends top underwater survival games for players who love Subnautica, highlighting their unique features and gameplay loops.
There is a particular kind of restlessness that sets in once you have seen everything that an Early Access game has to offer. When you've already roamed the entire world, you know where to get the best resources, you've got a very comfy base, you've got the coolest rides, and you've read every piece of lore that game has to offer. You just want more things, but those don't exist yet.
I'm talking about that kind of restlessness we all have for Subnautica 2.
Let me start by saying underwater survival is a narrow genre. Most ocean games are adventure games that most often than not just happen to have water in them. A lot of survival games take place in forests, deserts, or space. The specific combination of vast underwater worlds, resource management, base building, and that specific flavor of loveable dread that Subnautica has perfected is rare enough that no single game on this list fully replicates it. But each one captures something real from it, and together they cover a lot of ground. Or ocean. You know what I mean.
#5 Barotrauma
You are in a submarine beneath the frozen ocean of Europa. The lights are flickering. Something enormous just hit the hull. The engineer is trying to weld a leak in the reactor room, the medic is unconscious after a creature got inside, and the captain is shouting coordinates nobody can read. This is a normal Tuesday in Barotrauma, and it is absolutely wonderful.
Undertow Games built a 2D submarine survival game that runs on good comms, crew management, and the very human tendency to completely fall apart under pressure. The full 1.0 release landed in March 2023 after a long Early Access stretch, and it is in a very solid shape today. Each procedurally generated mission sends your crew through hostile ocean biomes filled with creatures that can sometimes make Subnautica's leviathans gentle giants. You maintain the ship's systems, manage oxygen and power, and ultimately, try not to get each other killed. Solo play is also possible, but it gets a little lonely. With friends, it is chaotic, funny, and brilliant.
#4 Sunless Sea
This is a Victorian gothic survival RPG set on the Unterzee, a vast underground ocean beneath a London that has literally been dragged underground. You captain a steamship across it, where you need to find ways to budget fuel, food, and your crew's slow descent into madness as you trade between strange ports, chase stranger leads, and occasionally get eaten by something you probably should not have sailed toward.
The ocean here isn't a backdrop. It is an active, hostile presence with its own twisted logic and rules, most of which it will not explain to you. Stories unfold in dense, beautifully written text passages, and each port hides characters and histories that reward patience. It has permadeath set in default, which sounds overly punishing, until you realize that it is how the game is meant to be played. To have a fresh start on a slightly different voyage.
The Zubmariner DLC, if you want to go even deeper, meet more monsters, and a few amicable zombies that want to sightseeing, is worth every penny.
#3 Dave the Diver
Dave the Diver has a "more elementary" interpretation of survival, but it earns its place here because nothing else on this list will make you care as much about going back underwater every single day. Dave is a chubby, lovable diver who spends his mornings exploring a mysterious "blue hole," and his evenings running a sushi restaurant with the fish he caught. That, and being involved in a secret society of merfolk, aggressive environmental protection enthusiasts, and a couple of people who would poke fun at Dave's weight.
Released in 2023 by MINTROCKET, a division of Nexon, Dave the Diver became one of the year's most beloved games almost instantly. The Blue Hole shifts in depth and layout every time you dive, which makes exploration fresh well past the point where most games of this type start to feel redundant and repetitive. The ocean here is full of species that behave like they have their own schedules, with bigger creatures lurking in the deeper zones that you are absolutely not prepared for the first time you encounter them.
The survival mechanics here are light, in the sense that all there is to manage is oxygen and gear, but the compulsion to keep pushing deeper is completely intact.
It is also just funny. Dave is a genuine delight to spend time with, and the game around him is better than it has any right to be.
#2 The Last Caretaker
The Last Caretaker entered Early Access in November 2025 with a premise that is hard to put down once it gets its hooks in. You play as a robot, the last active Caretaker, who wakes up on a version of Earth that is now almost entirely ocean. Humanity has left, and the infrastructure they built to launch the next generation of humans into space is crumbling. Your job is to fix it.
You sail across a vast flooded world on a boat that doubles as your base, as you scavenge wreckage, recycle junk into materials, manage power and fuel, and gradually rebuild the Lazarus Complex piece by piece. The world is quiet and enormous. The pace is methodical in a way that feels deliberate rather than tedious, and the underlying story, about what it means to care for something when no one is left to notice, gives the survival loop a weight that is rare in this genre.
It is still in Early Access, though, and some rough edges will show if you look for them. But the foundation is strong, and what is already here makes a compelling case for where it is headed.
#1 Subnautica 1 and Subnautica: Below Zero
This entry is a bit of a cheat. I'll admit that. You are here because you played Subnautica 2, which means you probably know the mechanics and whatnot. But if there is even a small chance you came in through the sequel first, as I did. If this world were your introduction and you have not yet gone back to where it all started, then this is the best recommendation on this list.
The original Subnautica strands you into an alien ocean with a broken lifepod, a fire extinguisher, and absolutely no guidance on what to do next. There are no maps. No NPC nudging you in the right direction. Just water in every direction and the slow, dawning realization that you are going to have to figure this out yourself. It's a game that doesn't hold your hand, and each discovery feels like it's well worth the effort, one harrowing dive at a time.
Subnautica: Below Zero is the standalone follow-up game, and it trades some of the original game's scope with a more emotional center. You play as Robin, a scientist who has traveled to Planet 4546B to find out what happened to her missing sister. Robin narrates her own fears, cracks jokes when she is nervous, and the icy biomes she moves through feel colder and stranger than the base game. It is a shorter, tighter experience, like it's meant to be, but the story it tells gives you more background information about the wider Subnautica lore.