So the traditional Subnautica gameplay structure ensues: you explore the immediate vicinity to gather basic materials to craft bigger oxygen tanks and better equipment that lets you explore further out from your starting position, and find more exotic materials for even more complex equipment.Īnd if there's one thing Breathedge absolutely nails, it's Subnautica's majestic quality, as applied to space. Breathedge has much the same starting premise as Subnautica: you're a spacer who's minding their own business on a giant spaceship when it dies horrifically of not all being in one piece anymore, vomiting bits of itself all over 15-20 hours of exploration-based gameplay and leaving you the only survivor with nothing to your name but a single escape pod and the ability to turn raw materials into complex machinery by tucking them under your scrotum for thirty seconds. And while you're at it, remove the interesting story and any particular reason to engage with its base-building mechanics- Wait, I liked those! You removed too much, Breathedge! "Ooh, sorry guess I'll fill in the gap with fourth wall-breaking humor that, over the course of the game, gradually, almost imperceptibly, moves over the line from amusing to insufferable."īut let's not pull our dicks out before the striptease has even begun. "Why yes, I am that very thing, Yahtz in fact, I contain multiple direct references to Subnautica to acknowledge its influence." You know, you're really sucking the fun out of dismissive know-it-all assholery, Breathedge! But yes, take Subnautica and remove all the water so that nothing remains but cold, forbidding vacuum, and that's Breathedge. I head out to the wilderness, gather some wood and some stone, pack them together and tuck them under my scrotum for five seconds, and the result is not a makeshift axe, but an awkward conversation with my prostate specialist.īut anyway, this week, I've been playing an indie survival craft 'em up called " Breathedge", which is Subnautica, but in space. It's not that I dislike survival crafting as a genre I just don't feel like it's taught me any practical survival skills. It's the time of year when AAAs are put to bed to dream restless dreams of middling Metacritic ratings and rampaging seven-headed Twitch influencers, and we have to keep the nightlight on with midrange jank and the usual indie survive 'em ups. This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee reviews Breathedge.