First let me start out that I played a lot of video games. Not as many as some, but probably more than a lot of you. I would say I was an expert of a sort. I know what the tropes are, I can describe the motivations in level design, and I could be considered a source of authority on aesthetics and user interaction. A great example I could point to is the level design of the classic Half Life or Left 4 Dead. If you see a light in a dark hallway, that is usually the level designer attempting to entice you towards the next part of the map. Progression through appealing to our monkey brains.
But some of the best games take our monkey brains and expose their soft pink folds to something else.
A fear of deep water as you tread away at the surface. Dark shapes beneath you, unmoving, yet aware. The thrum of a noise you feel in your chest more than what your soft delicate ears can pick up. That is where terror lives. Screaming, throwing hands up and down, tossing leaves, and baring teeth because running away means that you are the prey. You are the dinner. I know this too. I am expert of a sort.
I wonder how many monkeys were eaten before our fur covered ancestors learned to make weapons? How many poor screaming scared creatures met their end between the jaws of something larger? Monkey teeth are sharp, but those predator teeth… the ones long as swords and serrated like steak knives, those are something else.
The game that I speak of is Subnautica. I have played it from start to finish at least four times, exploring every nook, every cranny, every square meter of the digital world. I have conquered the Leviathans, I have scared off the small and large predators, and I have built farms and resource harvesters in the deepest places of the game world. I have dropped my Seamoth of the crater edge to see how many Ghost Leviathans I can spawn in before I lose my nerve. I dart into the deepest Leviathan spawns in the map as well, swimming right up to the beasts, scanning them, smacking them with my ineffectual heat knife and swimming away before they can kill my character in revenge. I used to laugh about such things.
I have beat the game in every way. I have conquered the puzzles, the resources, the builds… everything.
That is why I am writing this down. Well part of the reason anyway. I have been told to write it down. But I wanted to to assure you.
To let you know that your monkey brain is not prepared.
I thought a couple weeks ago, that I should do it again. I said to myself, Hey Self.
Self went, Hey what?
I continued, We haven’t beat Subnautica in the last year. Maybe reinstall it?
Too bad you can’t flush the memories of playing it, but it would still be better than half of the games the triple A studios are vomiting on the market.
Self went, Hell yeah. Let’s do it, irrational voice in my head.
A couple right clicks here, a couple left clicks there, and boom, Steam had installed it and thanks to my fast internet, I had the game at my fingertips again. Time to dive into Safe Shallows, start scanning, and find as much Titanium wreckage as I could to get a jump on builds and the blueprints. I can kind of trick myself into finding the wrecks, stumbling into them in a roundabout way, feigning surprise and scanning what I can. I can race my O2 timer, and usually play a little loose, knowing exactly how long it takes to take damage. In the past, I have enforced rules that the game designers may not have intended, like I only play with the progression that is forced on me through the narrative, and not just grab as much as I can ahead of time… in effect racing the designer’s intent. I decided to play it that way again, and not rush through.
But now… I am questioning my sanity. Because the game is different. I checked the patch notes, nothing new since my last playthrough. The developers had not changed the game version at all. Yet, here I was, in the Safe Shallows, and I could hear something else.
A thrum.
A thrum that has never been there before. My monkey brain immediately cried out, shrieking its loud monkey scream, and the thrum persisted. It filled my ears, my consciousness, my all. Exploring in the cardinal directions, I could hear it getting stronger to the south, a little west. There is typically a leviathan over there called a Reaper. They are designed to scare first time players, but relatively tame if you know what not to do. It spawns in early and will destroy your first sub called a Seamoth if you let it.
I swam that way, following the sound instead of turning the game off, as I should have.
I found the Reaper dead, floating on its back, with strange graphic fidelity another creature eating away at its carcass. That was a massive red flag. Creatures do not have eating animations in Subnautica. A larger creature will collide with a smaller creature, there will be a flash of green-ish blood, and then the smaller one will be gone. You don’t see a Sand Shark chewing away merrily on a Boomerang Fish. But there, on my monitor, there was a black thing wrapped around the red and orange Reaper like a boa constrictor, mechanically chewing away at the midsection. This was no game model I had ever witnessed.
It looked real.
I hit my screenshot hotkey, but Steam told me that it was disabled. I tried to turn on my Twitch capture, and the app wouldn’t load. I even pulled out my smart phone and tried to take a picture of my monitor, but every time I tried, my camera app only captured a blurry screen.
I couldn’t capture the black form, wrapped around the great beast, its tentacled maw shredding digital chunks of flesh. Below, there were Sea Treaders collecting the scraps that fell from the black beast’s shredding machine of a mouth, which even from this distance, appeared to be a flurry of spiked tentacles and spinning teeth.
Sea Treaders don’t eat either. They go in a circle, stomping the ground in a completely different part of the map. What the hell is going on with my game? I felt a strange distant terror in my gut, as if the scene was real, that huge dead Reaper was real, and the… thing… eating it was even more real still. Purring in the water, the thrum on the deep.
I closed the game, not even bothering to save. My heart was thumping in my ears, the rush of blood pushing on me at my desk, telling me to get up and run.
I sat in silence, forcing my heart to slow down. Once I was calm again, I got to work hitting the game wiki. I checked everywhere. I ran Google searches, I posted to the Steam forums, and I even sent an email to the developer. I found nothing but confusion, internet troll level forms of teasing, and some developer congratulations for enjoying the game so much.
I slid my mouse cursor back over Subnautica in my game list, clicking once to highlight it, wondering if I should uninstall it. I hovered.
That black thing. Its eyes were darker still, flashing from the depths of my mind. A flash of white.
The game booted and I was greeted by the peaceful and serene automated voice welcoming me back. I awaited the thrum. But only the sound of the Safe Shallows waves tapping against the hull, permeating by base. I exited the base door, and first noticed the lack of fauna it. Usually the water was teeming with small fish that made up the bottom of the food chain and the resource ladder, fish that fed the player’s character and helped with basic survival. But now, they were gone like bugs going eerily silent before a storm. In the distance, I heard the undeniable scream of a Ghost Leviathan. These monsters are only in a few key places in the world map, and spawned automatically in the ecological dead zone outside the crater of which the game takes place. They are meant to be a game design choice to keep the player where they should be, exploring the crater’s depths, and not in the vast empty nothingness beyond. Yet, just at the edge of the visual range of my character I could see the Ghost Leviathan tearing away. Perhaps it had glitched in somehow?
My rational brain was of course trying to make sense of it. But there is no sense to be made here.
A pursuing dark thing writhed through the water like it was a chemical reaction not restrained back by any semblance of fluid dynamics or the more obvious programmatic means. It grabbed the Ghost Leviathan by the tail, and enveloped it like a coiled spring, tearing into it, as the leviathan’s hollow shrieks echoed across the Elysium folds of the Safe Shallows. Thumping, bumping, and not far behind, the sea came alive with the sound of Sea Treaders following the malevolent cloud of death providing digital manna from above.
This is all beyond the programming, the design, the epitome of the experience. I know it is a game. I repeat it over and over, like it is a holy mantra. I mutter it under my breath like a forgotten exhalation escaping from between my lips, counter to my aspirations. It sounds far away to my own ears. I flee back to my Seamoth, and head towards the deeper waters.
The vines part, the scattered fish scurry onwards, trying to flee the terror behind. The sandy plains open up below, their red grasses waving as the sand sharks gnash and writhe. I pull into the dark crevice that marks the entry to the deeper biomes… the Lost River is far below me. Warpers drift here and there in the dark, I can hear them even though I cannot see them. Above a shadow eclipses my craft, and I pull my Seamoth as close to the walls as I can, hearing the titanium hull scrape. The writhing black mass sluices past, diving for the deeps. Did it follow me? So far, it has seemed to ignored my presence.
I spun my Seamoth in place to head back to the Safe Shallows. My craft did not move forward.
Black lines creep across the glass, vines of horror foretelling the onset of death.
What can I do? I ask myself mutely. Inwardly I know what my fingers should do to control the game, but my mind blanks, stalling against the muscle memory at my fingertips. My Seamoth slides backwards towards the crushing depth, the blue azure light fading above. I know I could escape the craft, but I also realize that the horror will only grab me and drag me along.
This was not the design.
This is terror. I pushed away from my desk, breathing heavily, but I cannot take my eyes away from my monitor. I reached for the power button, my fingers shaking.
Thalassophobia. That is what it is called. My monkey brain knows that dark things used to prowl the deep waters of the Earth. And here in this virtual world, those dark things have found a new home. A way to feed on those monkeys from hundreds of thousands of years ago.
I screamed, pushing the power button over and over, smashing it as if it is a living thing itself.
The button does nothing. The light of the water fades, as my monitor goes black, and the thrumming drowns out everything else through the soundbar on my desk, the bass making my mouse click as it vibrates the wood.
I know, in my core, that this is only a game. I knew it then, and I know it now.
Isn’t it?
But… what if it isn’t? What if there is something real here? Between the lines of code, residing in the darkened pixels on my screen… an apex predator lies in wait? If I tore my eyes away from the animation of the crushing dark, would I be able to?
With ironic horror, I realize that this is what a deer feels as a car barrels towards it in the dark.
I am only a deer.
I submit, and I feel the terror consume me. I tip backwards in the chair, and my walls writhe, the darkness consumes… everything.
I haven’t touched a computer since. The therapist says I am getting better, but I am not. The darkness writhes everywhere I look. The terror was not a single event, a challenge to escape, it is the outcome. I am nothing more than a meal that continues to struggle it its machine maw.
The invisible leviathan thrums still. I feel it in my bones. My soul is awash in its feasting from, it is only a matter of time until I nothing more than a catatonic husk of my former self. The sea treaders must be nearby, waiting for the chunks to drift downwards.
Thrum.
Thrum.
Thrum.