UBOAT

UBOAT is 10% torpedoes, 90% consequences.

I bought UBOAT because I wanted a submarine sim. I kept playing because it’s a submarine captain sim.

What I love:

Crew management actually matters. Roles, fatigue, morale, injuries, trauma, repair priorities. You don’t “drive a sub”. You run a floating crisis machine.

Emergent tension. The best moments aren’t scripted. They happen when a patrol spirals: a leak becomes flooding, flooding becomes panic, panic becomes mistakes, and suddenly you’re making brutal calls with imperfect information.

Atmosphere and pacing. Long stretches of quiet make the contact moments hit harder. The game understands suspense.

Rock-solid stability. No weird glitches, no random crashes. You launch it, it runs clean, and it stays running until you decide you’re done.

Realism settings done right. You can tailor the sim to your skill level. Start with gentler settings so the learning curve doesn’t punish you, then keep dialing it up as you improve. Eventually you can push it into near full realism… and at that point, it’s basically lethal.

What to know before buying:

This game can be slow by design, and it can be unforgiving when you’re learning.

UI and systems have depth. You’ll be pausing, reading, and tweaking a lot early on.

If you want a “jump in and explode ships instantly” experience, this is the wrong flavor.

Upside: the devs have kept supporting it with ongoing updates, and there’s more content on the horizon (which makes buying in feel less like a dead-end).
Recommended if you like: Silent Hunter vibes + crew/management tension
Playtime: 354 hours
Verdict: One of the best “I’m responsible for everyone in this steel tube” games I’ve played.

I had a really enjoyable time with U-Boat. I played it across different skill levels, and it works well no matter how you want to approach it.
One thing that really stands out is the repair system. The whole mini-game of fixing the sub when things go wrong is honestly great, and probably one of my favorite parts of the game.
I do recommend it.
As an old submariner, I just naturally enjoy a game like this. Even though I wasn’t on diesel boats, there’s enough there that makes it easy to connect with. Little things like the crew morale system, where they’ll play cards, actually land for me. That was a real thing, especially back in the 90s, something you’d do after getting off watch.
Overall, I had a good time with it and would recommend it to others.

The spiritual successor to the Silent Hunter series, great game all round but does need some more polishing to truly stand against giants like Silent Hunter III. I will list both the things I love about the game, and the things I think need to be worked on below.
TLDR: Would I recommend this game? Absolutely worth picking up when it goes on sale, even at full price it is a great game with a lot of potential. And a great introduction to the Subsim game genre
Great things about the game:
- Beautiful modern graphics.
- Silent Hunter style career mode with special missions outside of anti-shipping operations.
- Simple and easy to use interface plus extensive difficulty setting options for players new to the Subsim genre or returning Silent Hunter veterans.
- Runs easily without the need for major on newer systems (Unlike older Silent Hunter games).
- Great selection of playable submarines with walkable interiors (Type IIA/D, Type VIIB/C/C41) + Type IXA/C/C40 DLC
- Correctly modeled and accurately simulated C/37 and S3 style Torpedo Data Computers.
- Well modeled mechanics revolving around torpedo maintenance and failures.
- Extensive crew management system including shift scheduling and officer rotations.
- Native Steam Workshop support for mods.
- Prize law mechanics (Allowing the ability to stop and board neutral/hostile merchants) which were always lacking from Silent Hunter
- Fantastic damage model and damage control system, from minor issues like fixing a periscope damaged by a near miss to patching large holes in the pressure hull.
Current issues that need work:
- Low variety of Allied warships and merchants, Axis ships are effectively non-existent, leading to repetitive encounters with the same few variations of merchant shipping. (This issue can be rectified by workshop mods)
- Allied ASW AI feels unintelligent and are far too easy to evade, simply diving deep or resting on the seabed makes it almost impossible to die due to the way detection functions in-game meaning avoiding allied escorts even late war is a non-issue.
- Diving physics for the U-Boat are just flat out terrible, the boat takes no angle whilst changing depth, rather just dropping like a rock. The U-Boat responds way faster than it should to depth change orders, and can dive and rise whilst completely stationary (Impossible without flooding the negative tank or blowing ballast respectively which is not done in-game, would be quite loud, and use up valuable compressed air). (This issue can be rectified with workshop mods)
- Breaking into ports even major ones is almost comically easy (Subnets and minefields can be revealed by air recon and even then are usually not extensive, plus patrols by warships and aircraft are often limited or non-existent.
- The U-Boat is rocked by the ocean too much while submerged, to the point that even in relatively calm waters the periscope bobs up and down excessively making the process of gathering target data difficult at range. (Complete periscope stabilization is available as an option in difficulty selection if this is a problem for you)
- Deck gun and Anti-Air gun ammunition is stored in the same storage system as food and spare parts, leading to severe shortages of ammunition and spare parts (10-30 deck gun rounds instead of the 100-200 typically stowed) if you want to have enough food to keep the ship at sea. (This issue can be rectified by workshop mods)

Whilst I can readily recommend this to players who possess more skill, intuition and dedication than I have, it is with great regret that I find myself uninstalling this game after once again attempting to master the basics of its gameplay. Even on the lowest difficult setting, essentially "entertainment" level, I still find it far too difficult to complete missions without losing several crew members and, usually, the entire boat itself. Quite how anyone manages damage control limitation whilst attempting to plot a torpedo solution for a destroyer or corvette that are bearing down on them at the same time is beyond me.

I always watch the videos of Wolfpack345 and other players, enjoying their patrols and admiring their skill, but even with the appreciation of their methods and tactics, these do not translate to my game when I attempt a mission.

Having bought the game in early access, I can see that it has been developed and enhanced by its creators from a reasonable beta product into a fully-fledged top flight PC game. The community mod makers have added countless useful and valuable aspects of the U-boat service, and WWII in general, to further enrich players' experiences and long may they continue to do so.

Amazing sub game, the simulator is very flexible and lets you customize your level of play however you want, and I mean any level. You can play the game with ai assistance and have the computer line up the shots while you drive or take your double dose of victory meth, break out the protractor tools, stop watch, and do all the math your self. Run around the submarine in first person, pull random levers over the sub, you just made the sub bottom out and launched all the torpodoes, did you not shower? Good you are just role playing a proud and efficient kriegsmariner. Lose your self in your insane Das Boot dreamworld, suddenly you have 200 hours, a custom 1930s german submariner soundtrack and your youtube feed is all related to the call of the sea.
My fantasy consumed me after a terrible encounter with a convoy off the coast of Ireland. We had encountered a large group with a modest number of escorts. No problem for our veteran crew, we got in front of the convoy and lay silent beneath the waves infiltrating the middle of the formation as we had so many times before. The crew spotted the prize of the formation, a pair of tankers, we lined up the shots and the crew spoke in whispers as the torpedo tubes filled with water. We fire and dive for as deep as we can go before they even hit their target to make our escape. The radio operator reports the explosions as the crew silently celebrates. Another contact, enemy destroyer moving towards us, did he hear us as we limped away or just blind chance? Then the most horrid sound, sonar pinging right above and then the reports of depth charges entering the water. No problem, a few quick maneuvers and we can dodge these pathetic attempts to stop us. Our crew has survived depth charge attacks before. Alas I zigged when I should have zagged and the boat took a direct hit. Water and screams are everywhere compartments go dark as we hurdle to the bottom of the sea explosions all around us. Our saving grace is we were off the coast. We bottom out in 200m of water, we frantically plug the leaks and try and play dead. The next 10 minutes were nothing but explosions as we huddled in the darkness and water. Finally the charges stopped. We were not sure if the enemy thought us dead or had run out of charges all together. We found the will to try and make repairs once again and began the slow process of putting the sub back together. A week later we managed to reach home. After a long rest and vacation it was time to hit the seas again, I was anxious now though the fun was gone and it was replaced with fear of being so helpless again. We found a convoy and I began the preparations to start our attack. Then I closed the game, I completely lost my nerve not gonna lie the thought of having to go back down there in that nightmare can straight up made my uboat self close the game in a PTSD induced episode.
would become a drunken troubled sailor who stares out at the sea again/10 kinda game right here

As a little kid, I never dreamt of becoming a fighter pilot, a fireman, a policeman, or even an astronaut - I wanted to be a submariner. While the dream faded with age, the interest in the area never did. As a consequence I have played about every submarine game out there. This one is the best of them all, so far, for me.

I think they hit the perfect balance of gameplay. The technical level is great overall, while some sound effects may need an overhaul (eg. firing your MG or deckgun doesn't sound right). There are some pathfinding bugs where crewmen ends up continuously walking into other crewman, or sometimes they can't get to the task you assign them (eg. repairing the deck hydrophone), etc - but overall it works fine.

Setting up effective shifts for your crew and officers is surprisingly fun, and so is developing their skills and experience over time. The way I play it the game is quite time-consuming, but there are plenty of options to timeskip and fasttravel etc. I just like to return to port by myself, and take my time. The simulation-part is handled admirably, with options for both the hardcore simmer and the more casual approach. Well done indeed.

There's plenty of people thinking this is a challenging game, and others that think it's easy.
Don't get fooled, it's really hard if you don't have pantience.
The tutorial is easy and low stress, but when you start the game it cranks it to 11 without giving you time to take a breath to figure out the game mechanics in a calm fashion.
In my games, and I play as easy as I can, the enemy ships are relentless, they detect me very fast and they don't ever give up chasing me even if I lay completely still on the bottom.
Other times the enemy seems like they just don't care if you sink their ships, but that happens rarely.
It is a very hard game to learn properly, and after over 30 hours I'm still a landlubber who don't know how to properly play this game.
But I'm still hanging on loving it! It's something else being chased by a couple of destroyers, while you try to hide from them knowing that they WILL kill you if they find you! It's one of few games that actually makes my adrenaline rush a bit, and that's why I can recommend this game!
Just don't think it'll be a walk in the park, because the Atlantic during WW2 was merciless which this game depicts in a perfect way.