Subnautica 2 dev says people like survival games so much because they speak to our "little monkey brains" and "we're all little monkeys"

Guess what: I'm a little monkey. And you? Ha, I bet you thought this day would never come, but you've been revealed as a little monkey, too. The truth is, every single person you've ever met is a silly baby monkey – picking their nose, eating an overripe banana, playing Subnautica 2…

At least, they are in the mad, monkey world according to Subnautica 2 designer Anthony Gallegos, who tells Edge for its magazine issue 414 that – as you may have guessed by now – "we're all little monkeys," and this fact of existence might be what draws us to survival games.

"Everyone's little monkey brains like shelter and food," Gallegos explains. I imagine underwater survival game Subnautica 2 – now set to release in Early Access 2026 after the series' creators were suddenly ousted last month – will have plenty of both to offer, though the primate inside you might not be interested now that fans have called for a boycott of the game.

But, anyway. Back to monkey business: Gallegos remembers how "I used to work at this one Marvel studio, and we had some coworkers that would occasionally bring their kids to work."

"I was watching this little kid play [Astroneer] and I was like, 'Oh geez, good luck kid, that game has no onboarding,'" he recalls. "I came back two hours later, and he had made a base that was leaps and bounds above anything I could have fathomed for myself. I was like, 'Ok, either this kid's a genius, or survival-game mechanics are just simple enough that they're universally approachable.'" It's the planet of the apes.

As Krafton acquires Last Epoch, the hit ARPG's lead says he isn't worried about an ugly Subnautica 2 situation happening to them: "There's plenty of misinformation."