Studio Wildcard and Snail Games have just thrown a big old party for the Ark franchise’s tenth birthday. While Ark 2 is sadly absent, it has fully revealed the new expansion for Ark Survival Evolved and dropped a preview of the next season of Ark: The Animated Series. Oh, and out of the blue, it’s just announced a mysterious new project called Ark Aquatica that sounds like it could be a seafaring survival adventure like Subnautica.
While I was extremely sad to see another big moment come and go without any more news about the Ark 2 release date, the new trailer and details about the Lost Colony expansion for Ark Survival Ascended didn’t disappoint. While fans revel in Lost Colony theories, there’s another big mystery that they’re trying to figure out. Despite not receiving a trailer, a blog post, or even a tease at the end of Ark’s big tenth-anniversary montage, a previously unknown project called Ark Aquatica was revealed in a simple post on the official Ark X account.
It makes absolutely no mention of whether this is an all-new, standalone survival game, or another expansion for Ark Survival Ascended. All it says is that “Ark: Aquatica is being developed by @SnailGamesUSA Colorado, please follow them for more updates.” Snail Games USA is the studio behind the more family-friendly, Minecraft-inspired spinoff PixARK which released in 2018.
The sudden reveal of the project, and the lack of information, has left Ark fans surprised and confused. A theory I share with many of them is that this revolves around water, so it could be a Subnautica-style experience where you get to dive down to extreme depths and build underwater bases. Survival Ascended does of course already feature underwater gameplay and sea creatures that you can tame, but maybe Aquatica is taking things to a new level.
I’ve also seen predictions that it could replace Atlas, a waning pirate-themed MMO built by Ark Survival Evolved devs. Admittedly though, Sea of Thieves pretty much owns that corner of the industry and Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones is floating around there too, so that’d face a lot of competition. It may not even be a PC experience – this could very well be some kind of mobile game, we just don’t know at this stage.
PCGamesN has reached out to Snail Games and Studio Wildcard for clarification on what Ark Aquatica actually is and what platforms it will release on.
With Snail trying to spin up yet more Ark projects despite its worrying silence over Ark 2, it does at least assure in the post that “Studio Wildcard remains entirely dedicated to the production of Ark: Survival Ascended & Ark 2.”
Until we see and hear more about Lost Colony, Ark 2, and Ark Aquatica, here are some more brilliant dinosaur games and co-op games to try.
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