Barotrauma Review Summary

Excellent core gameplay and mods boost replayability, especially with friends, but solo is overly difficult, the learning curve is steep, and optimization is lacking.

Mods enhance replayability greatly: Mod support is a major strength, providing nearly infinite replayability, extensive customization, and a vibrant community. Mods can adjust difficulty and add variety.

Great fun with friends: Playing with friends is a core highlight, creating memorable and chaotic moments. The multiplayer experience is addictive and highly fun.

Core gameplay is excellent: Players consistently praise the core gameplay as highly fun, addictive, and excellent. The game delivers a very positive emotional experience.

Submarine editor is versatile: The submarine editor is powerful and versatile, allowing deep customization and creative designs. Players enjoy building their own submarines extensively.

Co-op and solo both great: The game offers an unmatched co-op experience and also plays excellently in single player. It is considered one of the best co-op games ever made.

Solo play is too hard: Solo play is extremely difficult due to demanding tasks, brainless bots requiring micromanagement, and awful AI that wastes ammo or fails to maintain the sub. The game is not recommended for solo players.

Steep learning curve: The game has a steep learning curve, is not beginner-friendly, and explains little, leading to frequent deaths in the first few hours. This creates a high barrier for new players.

Hard to find good teammates: Finding reliable friends or random players is difficult; random players are often toxic or hit-or-miss. This makes consistent enjoyable multiplayer sessions hard to achieve.

Solo play is boring: Solo play is widely criticized as boring, not enjoyable, and not viable. Players strongly feel the game requires a team to be fun.

Gameplay becomes repetitive: Gameplay is repeatedly called monotonous, repetitive, and lacking variety after many hours. This suggests long-term engagement suffers from low mission diversity.

Diverse crew roles: Players take on distinct roles like Captain, Engineer, Medic, Mechanic, Security, and Assistant, each with unique responsibilities for submarine operation and survival.

2D co-op survival: The game is a 2D sidescrolling cooperative survival game set in a submarine, focusing on managing resources and surviving against creatures and environmental hazards.

Custom submarine building: Players can design and build custom submarines using a comprehensive editor, allowing for creative control over ship layout and systems.

Dangerous sea creatures: Hostile creatures like crawlers, mudraptors, molochs, and abyssal leviathans attack the submarine, causing hull damage and threatening the crew.

Cooperative and solo modes: The game supports both cooperative multiplayer and single-player modes, with a campaign that can be played alone or with friends.

Optimization is poor: General optimization is poor, causing lag, FPS drops on high-end GPUs, slideshow-like performance in specific locations or late game, and random freezes even without mods.

Mods cause instability: Mod integration leads to frequent crashes, low FPS, and stuttering especially with heavy mods, though some users report stable performance with many mods on modest hardware.

Multiplayer is broken: Multiplayer is plagued by P2P disconnects, high ping, server crashes due to weak hardware or DDoS, and session loss when the host disconnects, requiring third-party LAN tools.

Runs well on low specs: Despite performance complaints, some players achieve smooth 60 FPS on low-end hardware (10-year-old PCs, laptops, toasters) and praise the engine for a 2D game.

Uses only one core: The game mainly uses a single CPU core instead of multi-core, limiting performance scaling on modern processors and causing CPU bottlenecks.

Best played with friends: This is the most emphasized recommendation across all feedback. The game is best enjoyed in multiplayer with friends, and solo play lacks the full experience.

Friends are essential: Multiple clusters stress that friends are essential for the full experience, or even to enjoy the game at all. The requirement for a social group is the most consistent theme.

Highly recommended by players: A significant number of players give the game a perfect rating and strongly recommend it, especially when played with friends. These ratings suggest high overall satisfaction.

Good value for money: A smaller number of players find the game worth its price and recommend purchasing it without conditions. These are straightforward endorsements.

Universal recommendation: A highly positive, all-encompassing recommendation given by several players, suggesting the game has broad appeal. This is a general endorsement.

Community fair range: $15.00 - $25.00.

Game completion: 100.0h.

Story completion: 100.0h.

Session length: 2.0h.

Barotrauma starts with a steep learning curve, slow pacing, and punishing difficulty that frustrates many new players, but after overcoming the initial hours and learning the complex systems—especially with a coordinated group—the game becomes deeply immersive and rewarding.

Friction: steep learning curve; slow and boring early game; punishing difficulty; complex and obscure mechanics; confusing tutorial; need for coordinated multiplayer group.

Unlock drivers: learning core mechanics; playing with experienced friends; understanding class roles; completing early missions; gaining familiarity with submarine management.

Co-op Chaos Crew: Chaotic, team-dependent, often improvised roleplay. Motivation: Social chaos and emergent storytelling with friends. Stance: buy.

Solo Endurer: Methodical, multitasking, using orders and manual control of bots. Motivation: Perseverance through solo play despite AI limitations and high difficulty. Stance: sale.

Management Simmer: Analytical, builder, tinkering with systems and submarine design. Motivation: Mastery of complex systems, creative submarine engineering, and crafting. Stance: buy.

The game runs well on lower-end Windows systems with <8GB VRAM and sufficient RAM, but performance degrades on mid-range VRAM (12-15GB) and on Linux/Proton, with significant stuttering and optimization issues.

Windows <8GB VRAM / <16GB RAM: positive. Players with less than 8GB VRAM and less than 16GB RAM generally report good performance, with minor lag in loot-heavy situations.

Windows <8GB VRAM / 16-31GB RAM: positive. Players with less than 8GB VRAM and 16-31GB RAM report smooth performance and high frame rates, with occasional mentions of CPU bottlenecking.

Windows 12-15GB VRAM: negative. Players with 12-15GB VRAM experience frequent stuttering, low GPU usage, and unoptimized performance, especially on larger servers.

Steam Deck: Barotrauma shows mixed results on Steam Deck. While native Linux support exists, many users report crashes, performance drops, and explicitly warn against playing on Steam Deck. The game suffers from stability issues and late-game stutter, resulting in a high-friction experience.

Linux and Proton: The majority of Linux user reviews indicate strong compatibility, with a native Linux build and successful Proton use. A couple of negative reports exist but are outnumbered and lack detailed evidence, keeping the overall friction low.

Monetization: Most feedback revolves around the base game's price and optional DLC. There is no evidence of microtransactions, loot boxes, pay-to-win, or predatory monetization. The complaints are about standard DLC practices, which do not raise the score above 20.

External guides: User feedback reveals a significant reliance on external wikis and guides to learn game mechanics and roles, with some users explicitly stating the game should teach its systems. Additionally, one technical crash was reported when trying to access the wiki button. No complaints about farming, inventory management, or navigation were identified.

Powerful submarine editor: Players have access to a powerful submarine editor that allows complete customization of submarines. This feature is praised for its depth and flexibility in modifying gameplay.

Better with co-op: The game can be played solo with AI companions, but co-op is highly recommended for the best experience. Single-player is possible but less enjoyable without friends.

DLC content available: The game has or is expected to have DLC content, and players hope for more. This indicates potential for future expansions and additional content.

Variable playtime hours: Players report a wide range of playtime, from 18 to 118 hours. This shows the game can offer significant engagement for those who enjoy it.

Ongoing developer updates: The developers are still actively updating the game. This ongoing support suggests a commitment to improving the game over time.