Subterranauts
Last updated: 2025-10-21
- Highly enjoyable with friends
- Numerous critical bugs and glitches
- Developers abandoned the game
- Insufficient content and variety
- Effective scary atmosphere
- Train-based resource extraction gameplay
Emotions
Players are satisfied with the game's overall quality, value for money, and unique take on the genre, often comparing it favorably to 'Lethal Company'. The game's optimization, atmosphere, replayability, and convenient features like the terminal input and cargo platform also contribute to a positive experience, especially when playing with friends.
Excitement stems from the game's potential for future growth, new content, and its current features like unique enemies and horrifying environments. Players are thrilled by the chaotic, spooky, and tense moments, often feeling it surpasses similar titles and offers an addictive survival experience.
Joy is primarily derived from the game's fun and hilarious multiplayer experience, particularly when playing with friends. The overall engaging gameplay and memorable moments, such as getting run over by a train, contribute to a highly enjoyable social experience.
Disappointment arises from the game's perceived unfinished state, lack of updates, and unrealized potential, leading to concerns about developer abandonment. Players also express frustration over limited replayability, lack of content variety, low player count, and difficulties with matchmaking.
Frustration is caused by numerous bugs, such as crashes, disappearing HUD, invisibility glitches, and critical errors that ruin the co-op experience. Players also feel frustrated by repetitive gameplay, unclear enemy counters, frequent one-shot deaths, and mechanical gripes like screen shake and unintuitive controls.
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 77% · Negative 23%. Score: 23 / 100
Positives:
- Players consistently praise the game for being extremely fun and hilarious, especially when played with a group of friends. It offers memorable experiences and is considered a great way to spend hours.
- Many reviewers consider this game a significant improvement or a better alternative to Lethal Company, highlighting its unique flair, dynamic approach, better graphics, and less punishing gameplay. It's seen as a fresh take on the genre.
- The game is recognized for its interesting mechanics, unique take on the genre, and significant potential for future growth. It feels fresh and distinct despite comparisons, with developers showing care and quick fixes.
- The game successfully creates a dark, eerie, and scary atmosphere through its lighting, sound design, and horrifying environments. Enemies provide genuine scares, contributing to an immersive and tense experience.
- Players appreciate the variety of enemies, noting their unique mechanics and challenging behaviors. This diversity keeps the scrap-hunting experience fresh and engaging.
Negatives:
- The game is plagued by many bugs, including fatal ones that ruin multiplayer experiences (e.g., invisible players, non-rendering enemies, disconnections) and prevent basic actions like item manipulation. These issues significantly detract from the game's quality.
- Players widely report that the game has been abandoned by its developers, with no significant updates or communication since last year. This has led to a perception of an unfinished product with a rapidly declining player base and lack of new content.
- The game offers very limited content, leading to short engagement times (3-4 hours) and quick repetitiveness. There's a lack of variety in items, enemies, and overall gameplay experiences, making it boring for players.
- Players are frustrated by the lack of clear ways to defend against or counter enemies, often leading to instant deaths. Enemy spawns seem random, and the monsters themselves are not considered scary or interesting.
- Players report issues with performance, including frequent FPS drops and a feeling of lower frame rates despite high displayed FPS. There are also complaints about excessive screen shake and poorly designed, overly dark locations with invisible walls.
Gameplay:
- The game centers around using a snow train for transportation between stations. Players must gather specific resources (iron, copper, rubber, plastic) from underground bases and return them to the train before it departs, adding a time-sensitive element.
- The game's difficulty increases over time, with more enemies and larger interiors appearing as days progress. Various creatures, including centipedes, lamp-heads, 'roombas', 'black stalkers', mannequins, and explosive entities, populate the facilities.
- Many players note the game's strong resemblance to Lethal Company, describing it as a clone or highly similar treasure-hunting extraction game. While it shares core mechanics, it introduces its own unique elements.
- Players have a limited inventory of 5 item slots, with an additional equipment slot for items like scanners or backpacks that can expand capacity. This forces strategic choices about what to carry.
- Flashlights are essential for navigating the extremely dark environments of the underground facilities. Without them, players risk stumbling into deadly traps and enemies, highlighting their importance for survival.
Performance:
- Player feedback on bugs is mixed, with some reporting no issues while others note the game is still somewhat buggy. This suggests that while bugs exist, they may not be universally experienced or game-breaking for all players.
Recommendations:
- Player sentiment is highly divided, with many recommending the game while an equal number advise against it, often due to its unfinished state. Many players express hope for future updates and polish, indicating potential if development continues.
- The game is frequently compared to 'Lethal Company,' with some recommending it as a fresh alternative and others suggesting players stick to 'Lethal Company' or similar titles. This indicates a strong association with the co-op horror genre.
- The game is recommended for casual play, especially when enjoyed with a group of friends. This suggests its core appeal lies in social, cooperative experiences rather than solo or competitive play.
- A specific bug related to multiplayer transparency requires a game restart to fix. This highlights a technical issue impacting the multiplayer experience.
- The game is highly recommended for players who enjoy looter-style games. This points to a specific gameplay loop that resonates with a segment of the audience.
Miscellaneous:
- Players see significant potential in the game, expressing strong anticipation for future updates, more content, and a larger player base. There's a hope for continued development and refinement, with some suggesting free modding could aid long-term growth.
- Many players note the game's strong resemblance to 'Lethal Company,' often describing it as a similar concept or even a 'clone.' This comparison sets an expectation for the game's quality and genre.
- Players suggest specific quality of life enhancements, such as HUD changes, an option to customize scroll wheel inventory movement, and a display for total materials next to the quota. These changes are seen as crucial for improving the overall player experience.
- Some feedback is either very limited, unclear, or not directly actionable, such as comments on spelling, curator advertisements, or personal gameplay habits. This feedback has very low constructive value.
- A significant bug allows players to exploit a second switch to generate excessive money when creating a game. This issue could impact game balance and fairness.
