UBOAT
UBOAT is a simulator of a submarine from WWII era, yet different than all you have seen so far. It is a survival sandbox with crew management mechanics while its primary theme is life of German sailors. The boat is their home, but it can become their grave at any time. In UBOAT you control the crew in order to control the boat. You look after their physical and mental health, because if the sailors are hungry, tired and their spirit is low, there’s no chance of winning even a skirmish. The extensive damage system is a foundation of the game's survival elements. Unprecedented situations are bound to happen as the effect of received damage, testing player's creativity and ability to stay calm. You can try to save the whole crew or leave someone behind, to save the others. While your ship travels through the open seas, you will often find yourself being on your own. Use your management skills to spend resources taken on the trip optimally and in special cases try to recover them on the sea, by asking your allies for the help… or by looting wreckages of enemy ships.
Game Discussion
Steam User 75
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.
Steam User 53
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.
Steam User 49
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 for players new to the Subsim genre.
- Runs easily without modification 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).
- 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.
- 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)
Steam User 57
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.
Steam User 39
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.
Steam User 32
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.
Steam User 32
Wow... I sat down to play this game yesterday, hear I am 26.1 hrs later. How I was able to relive the joy I felt gaming as a kid again, it rekindled the spark in my heart for gaming. I had all my snacks and drinks lined up, I was so immersed and engaged for the entirety of that time, to the point where time just slipped away. So I warn you now, sore and all, this game is an unbeatable experience. Salute to the sailors in Subs I'm dying just simulating what you all do. 10/10 game will unplug from reality with it again!!!