March 18 at 8:50am PDT Snail Games has now confirmed that Ark Aquatica is a new DLC for Ark Survival Evolved. The headline and body of this article has been updated to reflect the new information.
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 also announced a mysterious new project called Ark Aquatica. Initially sounding like an all new game that could be a seafaring survival adventure like Subnautica, it's in fact a new DLC for Ark Survival Evolved – the first expansion for the first Ark game in some time.
While I was extremely sad to see another big moment come and go without any more news about the Ark Survival Ascended didn't disappoint. While fans were reveling in Lost Colony theories, there was another big mystery that they were 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 .
It made 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, left Ark fans surprised and confused. An initial theory I shared with many of them is that 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 could take things to a new level. I also saw predictions that it could replace Atlas, a waning pirate-themed MMO built by Ark Survival Evolved devs. ittedly 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.
However, Snail Games has now pushed out a press release explaining exactly what Aquatica is, and it's not what many Ark fans anticipated. This will be a new DLC map for Ark Survival Evolved that features a "non-canonical" side story. 95% of Aquatica's play space will be submerged underwater, and it features an Ark ship that's crashed into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
Snail Games says that there are "17 new creatures with extraordinary abilities" to capture and tame. You'll also get access to 60 new engrams, which will let you craft gear like lead boots for walking along the sea floor and TEK Air Pockets that let you breathe inside underwater bases.
The Aquatica DLC for Ark Survival Evolved will arrive on PC in June 2025. It'll be the first expansion for Evolved since the Fjordur map dropped in 2022, so this really a surprise for those still playing the original version of Ark.
ARK: Aquatica Trailer!
Releasing in June 2025 for #ArkSurvivalEvolved
Thoughts? pic.twitter.com/gf5VaA9h9Z
— ARK Ascended News (@ARKAscendedNews) March 18, 2025
With Snail trying to spin up yet more Ark content for its older games, 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 co-op games to try.
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