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> The world design of the game does such a good job of offering a guided exploration that feels completely natural.

I must have been too dense to figure this game out. I gave it like 4-5 hours and couldn’t establish a sense of “ok this is the next goal” sense.

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In my opinion, the way Subnautica motivates is players to play is through a natural sense of exploration - it wants you to think, "This is such a cool planet, I want to explore it" and not "What is the most efficient way of making these numbers/progress bars on the screen go up."

I totally understand what you mean though. I passed on Dark Souls on my first try due to the lack of a specific goal but it is my favourite game of all time now.

The first rule of Subnautica: if in doubt, go deeper :).

But yeah, I remember there were a few moments I wasn't exactly sure what I'm supposed to be doing; fortunately, the world was interesting enough to explore that I ended up stumbling on "next steps" at random. Probably as intended - the game doesn't really force you into taking a specific path horizontally; the vertical axis provides a natural progression path. See also: the first paragraph :).

<mild storyline spoiler alert> except if You're in the void just outside the main continent </spoiler>

Oh right. "Warning. Entering ecological dead zone." Wait, what?!

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