We recently released Isles of Abyss , the largest free expansion in Once Human history , on XBOX Series X|S. Now that players have had taken some time to chart these dangerous waters, we wanted to take this opportunity to pull back the curtain on how this major expansion came together and how we managed to take our signature “New Weird” and strange worlds survival into the open ocean by completely rethinking our world design. We didn’t want the sea to be an empty transit space connecting dry land. We wanted the ocean itself to actively hunt you.
When our team began brainstorming this expansion, we didn’t start with endless waves, reefs, or nautical maps. It all started with a single, jarring image: a lighthouse standing where it had no right to be.
Drawing inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”, we wanted to subvert a familiar symbol of human safety. On land, a lighthouse guides travelers to harbor; in the distorted reality of Once Human, an anomalous light piercing the dark felt invasive and watchful.
From that single wrong-feeling image, the ocean began to grow outward. That solitary lighthouse became an eye. An eye needed a body. And that body became the sea itself, a colossal, living organism known as The Sunken Lord.
We anchored the expansion’s entire atmosphere around a single guiding feeling: sinking into oblivion. Out on these waters, drifting ghost ships like Sworn Never to Port and No Return Voyage act as displaced organs that have forgotten how to make landfall, while anomalous lighthouses serve as glaring eyes tracking your every move.
Survival horror hits hardest when familiar conventions are subverted.
Horror Through Familiarity: Lighthouses mean safety on land; here, they are the ones watching. Ships mean voyage; here, they are the ones that forgot how to arrive. In Isles of Abyss, the ghost ships you encounter are tragic relics that lost their purpose, monuments to what the ocean swallows and traps in perpetual drift.
Horror Through Loss: Navigating the five marine sectors isn’t just about taking damage; the environment systematically strips away your survival pillars: your vision, sanity, sense of direction, prized gear, or even stable ground. Every sector forces a radical shift in your survival protocol.
Horror Through Scale: The climax of the expansion challenges squads to confront The Sunken Lord. Rather than bombarding a leviathan from afar, your squad breaches its outer perimeter, fighting through writhing tentacles and alien visceral chambers before plunging directly into the leviathan’s heart.
To conquer an ocean this hostile, your ship is far more than transportation. It is your mobile sanctuary, workshop, diving platform, and primary artillery battery.
We brought Once Human’s modular building system onto the water, giving you complete architectural freedom. How you engineer your vessel is your personal answer to the sea’s threats. Some players build stripped-down, lightning-fast skiffs designed to dodge whirlpools and outrun anomalies; others construct multi-deck floating fortresses lined with heavy naval cannons, crafting benches, and deep-sea diving rigs to blast through anything in their path.
This crafting freedom ties directly into our expanded endgame loop. True mastery requires orchestrating survival across three interconnected layers: navigating treacherous open waters, exploring the uncharted islands, and diving into the abyssal seabed for rare components and resources.
To mark the launch, XBOX Game Pass Ultimate members can still claim the exclusive Once Human launch bundle through the Game Pass Perks gallery until November 18, 2026. If you haven’t yet weighed anchor on XBOX Series X|S or XBOX on PC, your crew is waiting.
The expansion is completely free to play. Assemble your hive, draft your ship blueprints, and find out what lies beneath the gaze of the lighthouse.