Subnautica
BANGER · Narrative · 2018
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
BUY IT.
A BANGER at $29.99.
- Length
- 29.6h
- Value
- $1.01/hr
- Reviews
- 97% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, 20 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS.
Descend into the depths of an alien underwater world filled with wonder and peril. Craft equipment, pilot submarines and out-smart wildlife to explore lush coral reefs, volcanoes, cave systems, and more - all while trying to survive.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
The lowest price on record is $7.49, set in August 2025. It has been discounted 76 times in the 12 years tracked here, typically at 50 percent off, with about 6 weeks between sales. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 3 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 6 weeks.
Value puts it in the top 1 percent of the games it competes with. It is pricier than 98 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 99 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Satisfactory ($39.99, scores 98) beats it on value, while it beats Subnautica: Below Zero ($29.99, scores 71).
The math says it holds its tier up to $44.33, and you are being asked for $29.99.
The press gave it 87; the people who bought it give it 97 percent. A 10-point gap in the buyer's favour.
This site sampled 799 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 21 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written May 2026 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 78 percent of the 9,530 reviews written there were positive, against 97 percent overall, and those are 3 percent of everything written about it.
It came out 8 years ago and 2.7K were still playing it at the last check.
It carries Valve's Deck Verified rating, which is the one that means it just works.
The drop-off
90% start to 12% rarestNo achievement in this game marks the ending, so there is no finish rate. The curve runs from the most-unlocked achievement to the rarest, and its shape is where players stop. Steam global achievements
Players
2,719 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
You might think Subnautica is a survival game about exploration and building stuff. It's actually a horror game. It should have been named "Anxiety Simulator." Jokes aside, Subnautica is an amazing game. But the general feeling I got is that the "difficulty" curve makes the game progressively go from relaxing and casual to a hardcore gaming experience. I really liked the first few hours of this game: you start by...
For those who enjoy diving or swimming. I recommend giving this a try. You might just end up hating water-related activities altogether-haha! >////<
The BEST survilvel game ever if you are bunkering in for a game that will last you a few days this is a great pick if you are not scared of deep waters.
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
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Subnautica scores 93/100 on the BANG Score (a BANGER). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/264710/subnauticaThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 10, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.