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Subnautica is, without a doubt, my favourite video game of all time, and is one of the main reasons I wanted to take on this project. In my opinion, it has one of the most immersive sci-fi worlds of any video game I've ever played and manages to combine the fantastical aspects with the horror aspects perfectly. Of course, referring back to my three questions, I will discuss how Subnautica builds its storyline and ecosystem on a functional level. I will go into how it uses those functions to inform its aesthetics, and how it takes inspiration from real-life sea creatures for its designs.
The Safe Shallows
The Safe Shallows
The Safe Shallows is the biome you start in; the Subnautica Wiki describes it as “a relatively shallow area, there are few environmental hazards, and no predators call this biome home.” Abundant with fish, sunlight, and early-game resources, this biome functions as the coral reef of this world, supporting extensive plant life and small critters.
Larger animals in this biome include the gasopod (which I will discuss in a bit) and the rabbit ray. The vast majority of life that can be found here are small, colourful fish, such as the bladderfish, peeper, and other iconic fish.
This area is, of course, the brightest visually in the whole game. The plant life, the animals, the colour of the water, it's all vivid reds, purples, and blues. It's no secret that using a variety of different hues of bright colours can convey to your audience themes of life and biodiversity, and can look far more appealing. There is no specific colour that defines this biome, and this matches with its catch-all use to the player.
This biome is always well-lit, even at night — there is enough bioluminescence that the player can easily see around. This allows the player to feel safe here, as they can see easily at all times. Unlike in other areas of the map, the day-night cycle of Subnautica permeates, and you can always see the surface. This makes the player feel connected with the natural cycles that humans are used to, and makes them feel safe just on principle.
Many aspects of this biome are direct references to real-life coral reefs. For example, these giant coral tubes that you find all over the biome look very similar to yellow tube sponges found in the Caribbean. This is just one example, but you can see how Subnautica takes inspiration from real life to inform its design choices. You might think this is a lazy design technique, however in reality taking familiar concepts and using them in your world is a great way to get your target audience to relate with your world. This is just one example of how the Safe Shallows accomplishes this, as you can see pretty much the entire biome is based on a real-life coral reef, and so there are loads of parallels in the biome's aesthetic.
Gasopod
Gasopod
There are many smaller fish that inhabit the Safe Shallows, however none are more distinctive than the gasopod. The wiki describes them as “a fairly large, defensive, herbivorous fauna species”, with a “swollen, nearly spherical body that ends in a rotund tail”. It will eject gas balls out of its tail if it feels threatened, which deals the player minor damage if you get caught in their exploding cloud, hence the creature's name of "gasopod". While they are technically one of the few creatures which can hurt the player at this stage of the game, they are entirely defensive and are mostly seen as docile and lovable by the fanbase.
The gasopod's design is very round and friendly-looking; basic shape language will tell you this is the recipe for a simple, friendly creature. The noises this creature makes are very distinctive; the low, guttural chortles might seem frightening to a new player, but after dealing with some other creatures in this game it is truly put into perspective. The gasopod is slow-moving, defensive, and bug-eyed, and this makes an incredible introductory creature to the game.
This creature's design is one of my favourites in the whole game; in this world, it plays the functional role of a manatee — dumb, slow-moving, with bassy, guttural noises. However, the themes of gas, both in its name and in its defence methods, translate over to its other design aspect of looking like it's wearing a gas mask. These, combined with the colour choice of murky greenish-blue and vibrant yellow (which is a colour commonly associated with mustard gas and other harmful chemicals), mean that the player is immediately able to recognise the creature as being safe and dangerous at the same time. In the same way that a poison dart frog looks so cute and squishy, but has the colouration of a dangerous creature.
The Jellyshroom Cave
The Jellyshroom Cave
This biome is a great example of how Subnautica's worldbuilding can stray more alien and fantastical, whilst still being influenced by familiar concepts. The Jellyshroom Cave is described by the wiki as “a large cavern characterized by a dense population of huge, translucent, purple Jellyshrooms, along with structures such as stalactites and stalagmites”. This cave functions as one of the first deep areas the player will explore, as the entrance to it is close to a number of the game's important early-game landmarks.
The jellyshrooms that make up this cave's flora light up the biome uniquely, and the lack of natural light gives the cave an eerie, unnatural glow.
This biome's aesthetics are simultaneously some of the most beautiful and eery in the whole game. The cave is, as I mentioned, one of the first deep biomes the player will explore, and so the aesthetics match up with this introduction of the unusual; purple is the least seen colour in nature, and fungi are often seen as being mystical and strange due to their connection with decay and the wilderness. The lack of natural lighting means that the entire cave is lit by the bioluminescent jellyshrooms, which gives it a unique ambience rarely seen in natural video games.
All of these aesthetic choices are very intentional by the game — the introduction of the fantastical is an important step for a game such as Subnautica, and they make that leap in a very careful and intentional manner.
I don't think I need to state the similarities between this biome's design and the real world — as I mentioned before, mushrooms are often connected to mystical aspects due to several factors. For example, they are commonly bioluminescent (something you can see emulated in the Jellyshroom Cave), they feed off decaying matter, and are frequently associated with witchcraft due to some species having hallucinogenic or medicinal properties. They are sometimes poisonous, sometimes used in cooking, and therefore are the perfect pick for populating a mystical biome.
Crabsnakes
Crabsnakes
This is the main creature that inhabits the Jellyshroom Cave — the wiki describes them as “a large, aggressive fauna species found exclusively in the Jellyshroom Cave, where they reside in the Jellyshrooms”. They hide inside the Jellyshrooms, and will occasionally come out to hunt or torment the player as you're trying to get resources. Their slender bodies and sharp mandibles are a stark contrast to the round, friendly gasopods, and make it clear just by looking at it that it's a threat.
These creatures tip the Jellyshroom Cave over the edge, making it far less pleasing for the player to experience, and far more unpleasant.
The aesthetics of this creature match its purpose — its slender body and large mandibles make it look like a combination of an eel and a crab, as the name implies. Something that I think is very interesting, and a good design choice on the part of the artists, is its bright red colouration. It's quite common for dangerous animals to be bright colours, especially red, yellow, purple, and bright blue, as it alerts potential predators that they are dangerous. This is called "aposematism", and can be seen in many venomous or stinging animals such as snakes, wasps/bees, lionfish, and poison dart frogs. Given that the crabsnake is based partly on a snake, its bright red white and black colouration is very reminiscent of the coral snake. This snake is so famously aposematic that many snake species (notably the milk snake) copy its tricoloured patterning to trick predators into thinking it's venomous. Giving the crabsnake aposematic themes automatically connects it to the real world, and makes the player feel afraid of it in a very real way. Giving this creature themes of snakes and eels means that it feels slippery, and makes the player want to avoid it — this gives the Jellyshroom Cave an air of fear and uneasiness that builds off of real-world uneasiness and adds to its air of mystique and ambience.
The Dunes
The Dunes
Of course, like any game, this game has a natural progression — you start in the safe areas (e.g. the Safe Shallows), slowly venture out into more danger (e.g. the Grand Reef, or Jellyshroom Cave), until you end up in the late-game areas (the Lava Zones). This game makes it a point that the further down you go, the more dangerous it gets, which helps with progression as it means you're soft-locked by the vehicle's crush depth until you can get better resources. One exception to this rule is the Dunes — this biome is described by the wiki as featuring “vast, sandy plains and dunes, sometimes littered with various types of rock structures”. There are no medium creatures that inhabit the biome, other than the occasional sand shark, so the landscape really does feel like a barren wasteland.
The vast majority of the earth's ocean is empty — less than 1% of the sea is coral reefs, with the vast majority of the ocean being around 3000–4000 metres deep and completely empty. This is a chilling thought, to say the least, and even more chilling when you imagine drifting off into this expanse of nothingness. The Dunes attempt to emulate this real-life experience and emulate the aesthetics as well.
The visibility in this biome is very low and has the effect of dampening the player's vision, making it very difficult to see oncoming threats. This matches with its gloomy and unsettling function and with its relation to the similarly dark and muddy depths of the deep ocean bed.
Reaper Leviathan
Reaper Leviathan
This is the creature that inhabits many of the more dangerous biomes in Subnautica, including the Dunes. I will go more into how the reaper leviathan functions as a means to scare the player in my cosmic horror section, however this creature parallels many real-life animals; some may seem more obvious, for example its mandibles are based off a crab, its slender body is based off eels, and its teeth and general function in-game is similar to that of a shark. There are more subtle influences however; like the crabsnake it has similar aposematic signals to a snake. I also believe that its head layout is meant to resemble that of a lion or other big cat, which is a subtle detail I really appreciate.
Something else that Subnautica does that I just wanted to touch on because I think it is really awesome is the way it builds its intricate biological system — each area in the game, and indeed each creature, has its own lore, background, and biology.
A great example of this is the most iconic creature in the whole game: the peeper. This is a very simple looking fish, with one large eye and a small beak. It is the most common creature in the game, and definitely the most definitive. Because of this, there are many other creatures in Subnautica and its sequel game Below Zero that are meant to emulate this iconic creature — examples include the oculus or the arctic peeper. In order to make this make sense biologically, the wiki lists there being an "Alpha Peeper", which "is the PDA's hypothesized most recent common ancestor of the Peeper, Eyeye, Reginald, Oculus, Arctic Peeper and Red Eyeye." This is a fascinating explanation of how these creatures evolved, and gives the game a new level of lore that shows the creators really put a lot of thought into the worldbuilding and biology of this planet.
Primary Research
Primary Research
I would like to pretend, for the sake of applying this research, that I am a concept artist working for Unknown Worlds. If I were to create a creature concept for this game, how would I go about it? How would I use the skills I've learned in this research page, and put it to the test?
Well, let's start with asking the same three questions I have been using to analyse each section of this game; number one, how will I utilise the existing ecosystem to create a functional creature? I decided I wanted to make a creature for the Lost River, a more whimsical creature that's more reminiscent of real-world deep sea creatures. What type of aesthetics would I like to use, as a consequence of this function and environment? Well, I would love to keep the theme of greenish blue that the Lost River has, and the consistent theme of bones in this biome. What real life animals/phenomena should I base this creature on? I realised that while Subnautica has a multitude of squid, it has no octopi as far as I can see. I pulled together some reference images, which I compiled into this simple moodboard to the left, and you can see where I wanted to take some of my inspiration from. I had images of bone-white octopi, underwater exoskeletons, and blue algae.
I started out by blocking some very simple concepts; I had my moodboard handy the whole time, not only to the bottom right of my first concept, but also on my second monitor. I liked the idea of this creature being very jellyfish-esc, with see-through aspects that revealed bones. These don't make a huge amount of sense functionally, but I really liked how they look aesthetically.
For my second concept, I think that my first few looked a little too much like a regular octopus, so I took inspiration from the seahorse exoskeleton I put on my moodboard and gave it a similar nose. I really like how this turned out, especially with the crests on its back looking like the spine of a whale.
Concepts Sped.mp4
Final Sped.mp4After compiling these inspirations and early concept sketches, I wanted to create a semifinished reference. I also wanted to begin experimenting with paint brushes in order to build up colour and play with the lighting, which is something I will discuss more in my concept art subpage.
I ended up abandoning the idea I had to make some of this creature's exposed bones covered in green algae; if I were to develop this idea further, I might include aspects of this. Otherwise, I had loads of fun messing around with different layer types, with depth and the idea of semi-opacity — this design has some really cool aspects to it, and I love how it glows.
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