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Fifteen hours is about all it takes to hit the bottom of Subnautica 2 as it stands, and plenty of us got there weeks ago. It launched into early access on May 14, 2026, and July's update went mostly into creature behaviour and storage rather than new places to swim. The region everyone wants, with the extra vehicle and the enormous leviathan, still isn't here. Eight games from our similar titles list should cover the gap.
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Subnautica
Worth saying up front: Subnautica has no co-op at all, so if diving with three friends is what sold you on the sequel, the 2018 original is a solo trip. It's also still the best thing this genre has produced, one life pod on planet 4546B, no guns, and the only sane reaction to a shape in the dark is to swim. I bounced off it twice out of cowardice before finishing it around the twenty-nine hour mark, and it goes past forty if you check every cave.
Subnautica: Below Zero
Climbing out of the water and trudging across an ice field is the part of Subnautica: Below Zero people forget about, and it does break up the diving nicely. You play Robin Ayou, a researcher looking for her sister, and she actually talks instead of leaving silent PDA notes like the first game's nobody. Twenty hours gets you through the story, roughly thirty-two if you want the lot.
The Planet Crafter
If the part of the sequel you love is watching a base come together, The Planet Crafter is the obvious pick. You're not diving here, you're dragging a dead rock towards being habitable, with oxygen, pressure and heat bars creeping up over dozens of hours. The first time it rains, I promise you'll stop and watch. Version 1.0 landed on April 10, 2024 with co-op for ten people, and the Planet Humble expansion adds a separate map with different minerals once you've cooked the first planet.
Raft
Eight of you fit on the same raft in Raft, easily the most sociable pick here, and it's been on PS5 and Xbox Series since December 4, 2024. The full version with the closing story chapter arrived in June 2022 and runs about twenty hours, taking you from four planks and a hook on a rope to a floating fortress with a vegetable garden and a smelter. Bruce, the shark, chewed through my floor so often that I started building spare rooms out of spite.
Release: 20 June 2022
Sunkenland
Everything on this list is fairly peaceful except Sunkenland, which hands you a flooded world and then sends rival clans over in boats to take your stuff. You dive through submerged skyscrapers for scrap, build on a small island, and defend it. It's been in early access since August 25, 2023, sits at very positive overall but dipped to the mid sixties last month, and the studio reckons another year until 1.0, so expect rough edges.
Release: 25 Aug 2023
Breathedge
I laughed out loud twice in my first hour with Breathedge and groaned roughly ten times after that, which tells you everything about its comedy. The setup is the familiar one, oxygen always running out, except the ocean is the wreckage of a space hearse and your companion is an immortal chicken. Fifteen hours sees it through, though the back half turns into corridors after that lovely free-floating opening. My only gripe? No co-op, and the devs have said as much for years.
No Man's Sky
Yes, I know, No Man's Sky is a space game and you came here for the ocean, but hear me out. Worlds Part II added full ocean planets back in January 2025, and submarines and underwater bases have been in for ages, so there's a real diving game buried in there. A decade of free updates turned the 2016 punchline into one of the great comebacks, most recently in April 2026 with turn-based creature battles and a league to match. Sixteen players, and it runs on basically everything including Switch 2.
Forever Skies
Take the descent you like in the sequel and flip the axis, and you land on Forever Skies, where an airship keeps you above the toxic dust smothering a ruined Earth. You expand the flying base bit by bit while chasing a cure for a disease, and creatures the size of tower blocks drift past in the storms. It went 1.0 on April 14, 2025 on PC and PS5, reached Xbox Series on July 24, 2026, and supports four players, though everyone shares one airship and nobody gets to wander off.
That's our shortlist as of August 2026. There are more names in the full rundown of games similar to Subnautica 2, and we keep adding to it. What are you playing between updates? Let us know in the comments.
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