Subterrain
In Subterrain, you fill the shoes of Dr. West, the apparent lone survivor of MPO, an underground city on Mars. Do what you must to survive: battle enemies, fight hunger and thirst, mend your wounds, and gather resources in a constant struggle to survive the catastrophe that’s beset Mars! SURVIVAL - Struggle against your own bodily urges, such as thirst, hunger, exhaustion, and more! - Manage your oxygen and thermal levels while exploring! COMBAT - Struggle against the persistence of time! Race against the spread of the infection! - Enemies will evolve over time from cocoons to monstrosities! CRAFT - Produce armor, guns, grenades and upgrades using 3D printers! - Research items to create more powerful versions! Create your own light-saber or power armor! EXPLORE - Explore randomly generated sub-levels and hand-crafted locations! - Find clues to the infection! Escape the nightmare!
Steam User 3
Tentative yes. You should know what you are getting into first.
It's a well-made survival and base-building core featuring a non-RPG, barebones, top-down shooter, and a rather disappointing exploration. It starts off really great, just on the right note of "What horrible things have happened somewhere deep in the cosmos" and it kept me engaged for quite some time with the new stuff coming my way, the first steps towards arming myself, the first travel to a different place, establishing the base of operations, etc., ...only to show me:
That the exploration was a rather large disappointment. As soon as I took off the pink glasses the enticing start provided me with, I found out that there's actually very little of it. I just went about uncovering the 'fog of war', looked into every container (and there were a lot), picked up the materials therein, and shot stuff that moved.
Man, I visited at least briefly 5 different areas beside the main hub, which is to say about half of the game's scope, and to my dismay, I found out that every single area has the same underlying design. Same number of floors (5), same turning on the electricity and lift everywhere, same exchange of oxygen or thermals, etc. The only thing that varied was where I did it, and the actual 'theme' of the particular areas' rooms and corridors. Granted, a little 'quest' memo here and there and some rare attempts at hiding the upgrade schematics in **** spoiler alert :) or having to pay attention to those usually small containers with the important door key-cards gave me something to 'truly discover' but frankly, it didn't help much in the overal.
That the combat was very barebones: shooting with three different weapons, some melee, some shield kind of thing I actually never used, and a sprint mode that substituted a bit for a dodge. Every enemy used one type of attack, some ranged, some aoe, some melee. That's it. Generally, I just shot while backpedaling, sometimes 'dodging' enemy projectiles or attempts to jump-attack me, sometimes circled the enemies or lured them to become stuck behind some crates.
Honestly though, I didn't mind that much. It was not some kind of ARPG game or anything, so these features served the purpose of feeling that I overcame some dangers, and that was good enough.
On the other hand the the base building seemed a well-thought-out part; all the designs I unlocked, all the researched better versions of weapons and equipment, mining or processing junk items to gather materials for that, fighting the infection with new scientific approaches or items—either as a disease in my character's own body or in general, such as suppressing it in larger areas using advanced environmental control, and last but not least—dealing with the always dwindling power outputs and juggling between want and risk so that my core power generator didn't overheat (and boy, you don't want that to happen at this game at al). Very nice!
That leads me to survival part. Also neat! There were the fractures, disease levels, overal HP, minding to urinate and take a dump every now and then (I never let my character soil himself, but I suppose it would had brought some kind of a debuff), eating, drinking, sleeping, and all the buffs and debuffs the various levels of the above mentioned brought.
The rest, like the graphics, sounds, bugs, or no bugs was fine. Good even at times. And anyway, as usual, you can see such stuff in the gameplay videos, so I won't expand on them much.
I mean, look, dear reader, I am not much into survival or base-building games; I'm more of an RPG, FPS, and action kind of gamer, and yet, the latter two parts were what actually kept me engaged for many hours before the said sad cons wore me off through the sluggishness and areas designed so repetitively that it reminded me of going to work 9-5, mon-fri. I think that's saying a lot about what this game does poorly and what it does gratifyingly.
I am looking forward to the second installment a bit. It reputedly has some RPG features, and possibly, some variousness to exploration and questing too? I should rather like that in a game such as this.
Steam User 2
This is the only survival horror game I have ever actually enjoyed other than signalis.
Steam User 1
One of my favorite games. I don't know how many times I've played it at this point. Play this. Buy this. They made a sequel that is coming out soon. If that is even half as good as this game it will be worth it.
Steam User 1
Hidden gem of a basebuilding/survival horror game. Instead of resource management, you use time to build your supplies and are pressured to progress by a variety of different in game mechanics. It's all simple to understand, but ultimately a challenging game to beat.
Steam User 1
Reminds me of the golden age of the flash era - which figures, as that was how long ago it was made. It takes relatively simple game mechanics, a decent game design, and runs with it as far as it can without overstaying it's welcome. It's kinda fun coming back to Subterrain as an adult a decade or so after struggling with it as a kid.
The only downside of the game is that you really feel the time crunch. There are a lot of environmental details and item descriptions I ignored in my rush to stay afloat of the infection mechanic. From what I hear, the upcoming sequel will be turn based, which will solve that issue.
Steam User 1
very fun game for the first 10 hours. scary, got a couple of jump scares. The only down part is, it gets redundant very quickly. nice concept !