I got a new video game recently and the second I opened it I fell in love with it. The game’s name is Subnautica.

The premise of Subnautica is that you (the player) have narrowly escaped a Mining Vessel (space ship) named The Aurora, which ultimately lands you on an uncharted ocean planet named 4546B. After the crash there are only about 5 survivors. By the time you realize that there were other survivors, they’re dead. When you fix your life pod’s communication system you realize the wait time for rescue is 99999 hours, or 595 days, which is 2 to 3 years! So, you’re technically abandoned with no human help, no company, and an endless source of food and water.

Subnautica takes place in an unsettled ocean planet filled with odd alien fish, snakes, slugs, you name it! There are several different biomes generated in the game, which include: Safe Shallows, Grassy Plateaus, Kelp Forest, Koosh Zone, Crash Zone, Grand Reef, Sparse Reef, Floating Islands, Dunes, Mountains, Caves, Shroom Caves, Forgotten River Zone and so many others. The time set for Subnautica is in the early 2600’s after mass human colonization spreads across several galaxies. So, much of the technology you find in Subnautica is laser, hologram, time-stopping, gravity-altering, and other odd interesting technologies.  

So far I have built a pretty large base. I have a fruit tree farm, two water purifiers, a large and small submarine, an aquarium, an office and an observatory. I have explored quite a bit and even encountered a leviathan reaper, and trust me, he is one terrifying fish! 

There is a study published in Science News Magazine that says that humanity’s appearance will become generally brown skinned, stalky and will have larger eyes. Subnautica is in alignment with that hypothesis, and in the few instances when you see your avatar, you can see that you have dark skin, short legs, and as for the eyes, I really don’t know.

The point or goal of Subnautica is to survive while fishing, farming, building, exploring, and even mining, and most of all avoiding the many, many, MANY different types  of fish that wand to eat or kill you.

Actually Subnautica shares a lot of similarities with another game called Stranded Deep, like the game plot, challenges, survival abilities and even the graphics. But Subnautica is still a Beta* game for Mac, so there are a lot more bugs and glitches there. I will write something on Stranded Deep eventually, but for now, I’m gonna go play…

The House Of The Scorpion:

Another Book Report by Raven Galel,

for a book by 

(really, remember Doctor Illuminatus?)

  I recently read a book called The House of The Scorpion, which is about a clone, named Matt, and his experience in the opium empire run by the original Matteo Alacrán. He grows up but faces countless perils due to the reaction he gets from the other humans, who think he is simply like a cow, or a dog.

The list of characters includes:

El Patrón (Matteo I)

Matteo Alacrán (The clone, Matteo II)

Rosa (A servant)

Cynthia (Matt’s caretaker)

The children: Tom, Maria, Steven

Tam Lin (A bodyguard)

Mr. Ortega (Matt’s teacher)

Matt’s friends: Chacho, Ton-Ton, Felipito.

Maria’s Mom

Senator Sanchez

And there are a lot of other secondary characters.

The Setting:

The Setting for The House of The Scorpion is quite interesting and has a large backstory. It is what was once northern Mexico and Texas, which, to stop the flow of immigration, were united into a country known as Opium. Opium controls most of the world’s drug industry and is about as powerful as the US is today.

The Story:

Matt was created from a skin cell taken from El Patrón. The fetus eventually was planted in a cow and was born. He grew up in a small house. One day a group of kids came and convinced him to come out of his hut. He broke the window (since the door was bolted) and got hurt. They brought him to ‘The big house’ and there he was helped, but when the house doctor realized he was a clone he threw him out. Then he was healed and thrown in a room with sawdust. He lived like and animal for 6 months, until one day El Patrón sent for him. Matt lived like a semi-normal kid until he was 10. He and Maria were best friends, but one day, while trying to get Maria to stay at the Big House, he fed her dog a poisoned hamburger, (which was poisoned by Tom so that Matt would die) and accidentally killed the dog. Maria left for 4 years. And when Matt was 14, El Patron ordered Matt’s heart for a transplant. Cynthia then unveiled her idea of putting light poisons in Matt’s blood, thus making Matt’s blood & heart useless for a transplant. El Patron dies and Matt escapes for Aztlán, the country where Maria lives and he is welcomed by a plankton factory where he lives in slavery for a few months before he escapes to Maria’s Mom’s home, a large hospital/church where Matt lives for a while before being given the mission to go to Opium and destroy the empire.

The House of the Scorpion is a VERY complicated and long book that plays with pretty interesting ideas. It’s so catching that I read 500 pages in only 3 days!

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone, and while I wait for the sequel, I am reading George R.R. Martin’s A Night of the Seven Kingdoms. Hmm, wonder what that book’s report is going to be like…

Afterthought:

Hey guys! I know I haven't written in a really REALLY long time, and I'm sorry, also, I really have no excuse. I will be writing a blog post on Subnautica, eventually.

- Raven