Hot off the heels of Subnautica 2 hitting 1 million copies sold before Early Access even launched, Unknown Worlds has shared its roadmap for the months ahead as the sport crosses two million sold. The plan is to roll out two focused improvement updates before the following big expansion lands, with the team’s framing being that “not all updates will look the identical.”
The primary update, EA 1.1, is the quality-of-life pass. Unknown Worlds is planning improvements to the Biomods system, Blight encounters, Wrecks gameplay, vehicle docking and fabrication, the PDA Databank, and the Voicelogs priority system, together with latest additions like more passive Biomod slots, a storage cache, and a Sprint function. Truthfully, Sprint being a planned addition fairly than a launch feature is just a little surprising to me, but I’ll take it each time it shows up.
The second update, EA 1.2, is co-op focused. Improvements to HUD signals, the bottom builder tool, and the pinned recipes system are planned, alongside additions like voice chat, emotes, player trading, player revive, and extra customizations. A lot of these are the features players expect with a co-op game, so it’s good to listen to they’re within the works.
Beyond those two updates, the team has the “Future” bucket, which is the massive expansion content. Which means expanding the world with latest biomes, latest creatures, latest resources, latest tools, a brand new vehicle, and the following chapter of the story. There’s no timeline attached to any of it, which is fair since Unknown Worlds has publicly said Early Access is predicted to last two to 3 years. Bug fixes, balance tuning, and optimization are ongoing throughout.
Personally, we’re about six hours into Subnautica 2 as a bunch, and we’re loving all the things we’ve seen to date. It’s principally a sophisticated Subnautica experience with co-op, which is precisely what I used to be hoping for. The team is asking the community to make use of the in-game feedback tool and the Nolt suggestion board to assist shape what comes next, so for those who’ve got specific requests, that’s where they wish to hear them. With the launch numbers Subnautica 2 has already put up, Unknown Worlds can have loads of motivation to maintain the momentum going.