Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. Every Thursday GTA 6 O'clock Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts. Every Friday Knowledge From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon. Every Thursday The Setup Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Every Saturday The Watchlist Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Arguably the only thing missing from the original Subnautica was multiplayer, and the devs have heavily promoted the fact that Subnautica 2 is bringing co-op to the table. While the devs quickly pushed back on publisher Krafton's early assertion that the sequel would be a live-service title, I've still had some concerns about whether multiplayer would undercut the sense of lonely adventure that made the first game great to begin with. Luckily, a new dev diary suggests that the co-op feature is pretty much exactly what I'd hoped for. No part of the game will "require cooperative play," according to design lead Anthony Gallegos. "But if I want to come along and bring a friend, they can totally participate with me in every moment along the way. We never wanted to encroach on someone's game that just is like, 'I want to play solo.' We never wanted to have the moment where you had to pull the switches in tandem. That's never the way we want it to be. Optional co-op, start to finish." While this echoes the devs' earlier assertion that Subnautica 2 is "a single-player first experience," it seems that multiplayer was hardly an afterthought – in fact, co-op was a part of the game from its earliest prototypes, and lead engineer Jon Bjarnason says "every single feature that we made since then has been multiplayer capable." Subnautica 2: Everything we know about the new underwater survival game Survival games are more popular than ever, but are they more endangered than it seems? Asked about adding multiplayer to his single-player MMORPG, indie dev says he doesn't want players getting co-op FOMO: "The solo gamer is very underrepresented" You can easily convert a single-player Subnautica 2 session into multiplayer, or you can build a multiplayer world from the start. Full crossplay is supported through an in-game friends list, but you can also send invites through your normal platform friends list. "It's really simple to continue games with your friends or let them continue the game and for you to pick it up later," Gallegos explains. This is all basic stuff, but I've seen far too many sequels fumble what should be slam-dunk additions to ever take it for granted. Amid an ongoing legal battle between Krafton and the original Subnautica 2 leads, it'd be easy to assume the survival game might lose the plot – but whatever else might be going on behind the scenes, it seems the current devs understand what made Subnautica so memorable in the first place. These are the best survival games out there.