Little Kitty, Big City
Little Kitty, Big City
Game
Game2026
Modern Naval Warfare
Developer Wave Ops
Command the silent service. Modern Naval Warfare is the definitive tactical simulation that puts you inside the pressure hull of a Virginia-Class nuclear submarine. This uncompromising tactical simulation offers unparalleled depth in graphics, physics, and authentic combat systems. From the Steam store page
206 reactions from 2 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky) · newest Sep 30, 2026 · last updated Oct 8, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
59
Mixed
121 positive · 84 negative
95% range 52–66%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 121 | 84 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
1 newer reactions are still waiting for a label.
Steam's own rating
Mixed
177 of 303 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What people are saying
Summary pending — the reactions are listed below.
Reactions
60 of 206 · most liked firstDISCLAIMER: I am a prior US Navy Firecontrol Technician (FT), my standards and expectations for the implementation of certain features are probably higher than most. Having said that, I will do my best to approach this review from the perspective of your average subsim player. The Good: -The interior of control initially looks passable (more on this later) -The documentation provided is sufficient for the purpose of controlling the simulator The Bad: -Control is nothing more than a 3D…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A $60 Unfinished, Glitchy, Embarrassing Mess The volume of disappointments and ways the studio has bungled this release is actually quite impressive. The game was in development for 4 years and was supposed to release as a full 1.0 version title. Just days before the release, they announced the game wouldn't have enemy AI. The release date came and went, they claimed it would release within hours, which turned into days, which turned into "we'll let you know". It turned into an early access…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Sub sim fans were excited for MNW. Instead, we got a car crash. A screeching u-turn from full release to early access just days before launch date, resulting in a delayed launch as descriptions were hurriedly rewritten to conceal all the missing content and required branding was added. Sadly, this set the tone for everything that followed. No enemy combat AI whatsoever - they will not fire back or take any offensive action. They are only capable of defending. At release, combat AI was 'a…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I'm super excited for this sim but until it gets AI there is literally no gameplay. Zero sound design outside of the command room (not even your own propulsion), pretty poor optimization with some very weird graphics when it comes to effects like motion blur (which you can't even turn on or off). There's an ok amount of other units (ASW planes, a couple of heli's, the Nimitz, some patrol craft, a few UAV's and Russian subs) which I'm guessing would be modelled pretty well if the AI actually…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Poorly optimized. Game needs time, absurd price not even worth purchasing.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Comments on other reviews: "the information on crewmember's screens is a placeholder JPEG that does not reflect the current contact picture or simulation "reality" -> That guy didn't check the options. You can enable additional real time displays in the options. It is off by default, because it drains performance. "this is incredibly inefficient when performing tasks that require multiple things to happen at once" -> You can jump to stations with the F2-F10 keys, and you can right click in…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Save your money. This is barely an alpha build product that's been in production for four years. There are glaring issues that any serious sub sim player will recognize. The game is barely in a playable state. The graphics are not high-fidelity as I suspect many players were hoping for. It's a glaring shell of what could be with virtually no substance. It's not a serious simulator. There are basic features that I cannot imagine for the life of me would be easily overlooked by a naval sim fan.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →EDIT: GAME IS ABANDONWARE. No actual patches to the game other than a “render bug” that caused the round world to appear flat? Year is 2026 and Ai can make a free game that works better than this slop. 1/4 the way through EA and ship still does not surface as supposed to, broken 8 ways from Sunday and still charging 60$. I really wanted to like this game, great concept with already some great systems. Unfortunately I cannot recommend the game at the state it’s in , 60$ is absolutely absurd,…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →As it is right now, this game is not worth paying full price and I do not believe this game qualifies as "early" access. It barely works, any mission with more than a few ships will make even the top 5090 video cards drop to horrible frame rate, missions don't work (tracking is buggy, and ships don't necessarily go where they are supposed to), loading a game only partially restores how things were and prevents you from deleting things that were loaded, it's just a mess with potential. I bought…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is exactly what a sim should be. 17 inches of instruction manual pages and not a clue what your supposed to be doing . Also if you don't want to add to your game time save the PDFs in a separate file as the meter is still running when you read the manual. Helpful if you don't want to exceed the 2 hour return window
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Hey everyone, Captain here. I want to take a moment to talk about Modern Naval Warfare and the way a lot of the community has been reacting lately. I get the frustration — trust me, I’m a submarine‑sim nut just like the rest of you — but some of the heat being thrown at the devs is getting out of hand. Here’s the thing we all need to remember: 1. If there’s a “better” modern submarine simulator out right now… point me to it. Seriously. If someone knows of a fully modern, actively developed,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is a teaser demo, not an early access GAME. It's bugged to hell and hopelessly unoptimized. I am not kidding - you literally CANNOT complete the first campaign mission - is anyone testing this before release? Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of promise, but this is one of the worst Early Access games I have played this year. It's completely not ready - and the price tag is absurd for something that broken. As a side note - visuals are sadly looking like from 10 years ago. Why on…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It seems like this game is far from being in an alpha state. The game engine is not optimized and it’s lagging badly. I know this game has been in development for a few years, but this is a joke. The AI doesn’t fire back, the game keeps crashing, and it lags like hell. The sounds are weird, and it looks more like a workbench or a concept of a game rather than an actual game.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game was not ready for any kind of release, it has great potental but if you are on the fence about it, I would, as of today, recommend saving your hard earned money.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Nah bro , this should have not releashed at this state , it's pathetic. Someone would expect it to work at some level given the asking price but nope. It looks like a scam it feels like a scam it smells like a scam I'm not sure if this is going to improve ever...
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is in early Alpha stage. Most systems are bugged, it suffers of performance issues (5080 and an I9 can barely handle 4x time compression) It has a lot of potential, but needs a few more patches to be playable.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →THIS GAME SHIPPED WITHOUT AN ENEMY AI. THE AI WAS NEVER BUILT BECAUSE MATRIX FOCUSED ON THE MILITARY VERSION WHICH NEVER NEEDED AN AI. AND THEY CHARGE $59 FOR THIS GARBAGE. NOW THEY WANT TO MAKE AN AI? NOW???????? AND ALL THOSE IDIOTS ON YOUTUBE LIKE JIVE TURKEY MAKING PHONY VIDEOS, PRETENDING THEY ARE IN HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER WHEN THERE IS NO ENEMY AI AND NO ONE IS PURSUING THEM, THE MASLOS BROTHERS INTERVIEW ON YOUTUBE WAS A DISGRACE. SEND THIS TRASH BACK TO MATRIX. TAKE IT OFF STEAM
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I don’t recommend the game in its current state. The game touts itself as a complex sim where you need to read an in-depth manual to understand how to use the systems. In reality, the systems function at a very baseline level. The best way to describe it is “cocktail napkin” implementation of the shipboard equipment, with more attention paid to the math surrounding the physics of sound propagation. There is very limited documentation on these systems as well. The vast majority of documentation…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really wanted to like this game but as for its current state it is NOT worth the asking price. Whilst some people in the discussions are trying to justify it by saying your not buying a full complete release the game still feels like a scam. What is there is some submarine gameplay like silent hunter but there is no in game tutorials right now and enemy ship ai is lackluster in the offence department but can evade and go only defensive right now (i don't think they can shoot back). The price…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Not much working well and consistently at the moment. And even if its persumably very deep, there are issues with the simulation that break the sim. To that price I would/should have gotten a refund if i could, but i have used too many hours on trying to find a reason to like it - but i cant atm.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Excellent potential and I really want to like this sim, it promises to fill a niche that hasn't been for decades. But, and it is a significant one, this is both: a. very far from having a fleshed out gameplay loop, there is simply no "warfare" simulated at the current state, and; b. not in anyway justified in charging full price for the current state of the product.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The concept is excellent, and with a lot of work, Modern Naval Warfare could become a worthy successor to Dangerous Waters. Unfortunately, it is currently buggy, incomplete, and extremely poorly optimized. Even on a Ryzen 9 9950X3D, RTX 5080, and 64 GB of 6400 MHz RAM, it crawls while barely utilizing the available hardware.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →unfortunatly at this time i deffinatly dont recommend this, i want to, i waited ages for this to come out, but at this timew there are so many bugs, no enemy ai, so like shooting fish in a barrel, constant problems with freezing etc etc, the level this is at now it will probably be a good year until its remotely playable, comments fall on deaf ears here on steam, as the devs never come n talk. look back in a year the the huge price tag for an ea maybe worth it
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Full release at launch turned into "Early access" after Steam found some shady stuff in the way the game was being advertised. There is no AI combat, you are literally learning to shoot at water cans that barely evade torpedoes. Development is almost slowed down to a halt since the "release" of what was supposed to be a masterpiece. Good gameplay performance is out of the question, there are more broken systems that working ones and some Youtubers literally claim "it's just how it works in the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's not ready for Early Access. Its the most dysfunctional entertainment software i've run, I'm a fan of the idea, the plan and the genre, but this is a fiasco that makes Early Access get a bad reputation. its crashing, stalling and stopping in ways that are new and different every time. The sub can silently stop responding, there's 3-4 different bug reports from confused people on the discord and that's before the massive memory leak that slows the sim and eventually kills it in a myriad of…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game promised so much and delivered on none of it. They couldn't be bothered to give proper updates when release was delayed and tutorial videos still aren't finished. It might be good in the future but I don't trust the devs. Do proper research into the state of the game before buying.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →So this is barely a positive review so I must first say the bad: 1: This game on Windows has a major memory leak or progressive performance loss issue. A subsim in particular having an issue that prevents long sessions is almost a dealbreaker. 2: Time-warp has a chance of causing a plethora of issues in the game that are not fixed by just coming out of time warp, optronics failing, unresponsive pilot station, and exacerbating issue #1 These two issues are probably the worst issues a subsim…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →In short, there's a lot of potential, but it's VERY Early Access. Performance optimization is terrible, and I have a very capable machine... This is the most disappointing aspect so far. I have to trust that the sonar, sound propagation, and radar modelling etc is as well done as the devs suggest. There's really no way to tell. Broadband seems good, but narrowband and demon are very unintuitive and there are NO tutorials or documentation to help. Recognition guide and other documentation is…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Definitely NOT worth 60 dollars. It is beyond insane to me that they feel that 60 dollars is an appropriate price tag to give this game despite the current state its in. So where do i even begin Absolutely ZERO ai: technically they have "defensive ai" in this build which at its most would try to counter your torpedoes and harpoons. but thats about it. I dont even know if this defensive ai will even counter launch on the line of bearing the torpedo came from. there is zero aggressive ai in…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game is running great on Linux out of the box (with Proton). No slowdowns or laggs so far. PC Specs are attached. Very hardcore simulation - I love it. I will need hours and days to understand each system and use it and thats whats it about for me. Cant wait for updates in the future. Right now, its enough to learn even without the offensive AI.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Oh man! Waited and waited for this game. Was expecting to be overwhelmed with a complicated subsim that would take weeks to understand. What I got was an almost alpha level, buggy sim if you can even call it a sim. alot of the basic features don't work, frame rate is horrendous on a mid range rig with settings turned way down. Even the introductory video stutters! The bumbled release was a joke as we all know. No AI! I mean. Come on! The graphics aren't anything special either. Read the other…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It pains me to write this review. Not so much in the wallet (I bought a key, I didnt wanne spend 62 euro on this simulator) but more for the developer and the quality of the game right now. Not having AI that fires back and 'only' doing evasive manouvres is a small problem compared to the current state of this 'game'. Even with Dangerous Waters experience this game is still a big jigsaw puzzle even the experienced submarine streamer I love to watch isn't able to crack. Things like Sonar and…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really want this sim to make it out of Early Access and have it fully function. A lot of it does indeed work. But the moment you start moving things or dumping a lot of calculations with sonar it becomes obvious how fragile the sim engine is. It breaks under any real heavy data crunching. There is no enemy AI, mostly just training missions where you play around with the subs sensors to understand bearing and range. It needs way more time. Leaving EA in 2026 looks unrealistic. I really feel…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Because the DEVS work with the US navy, they apparently are not allowed to put any "realistic" functionality in the game at all. I'm very sad that this Sim will probably never be the "DCS" of naval warfare that we hoped. It most likely will be an unplayable mess until it is eventually abandoned.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Instant crash when clicking on a station. Horrible performance. Waited over 5 years for this sim and i wonder what the devs did in that time. I hope it gets better over time. Right now it's too underdeveloped even for an Early Access game.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Man... I was so excited. Bad early release didn't come out on time. Needed more code review apparently. They needed to do more for this to be even considered a demo... There's a lot of spelling/grammatical errors in the mission briefings and all over. That was my first clue this was going to be a rough one. The crew doesn't communicate to you except sometimes in a text box at the bottom that has way too many 'filters.' You can skip time on a NORMAL gaming set up. You can get to about 4x and…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A game under development for more than 3 years, somehow manages to implement less mechanics than 20 year old sub sims. Optimization is non-existent, it didn't crash for me but the sub stops responding out of a sudden. Definitely not an early access game, more like they let us play the tech demo they made. This genre has been lacking for some time now, so it has the potential but probably needs multiple years.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Poor optimization breaks time compression which makes everything take a very long time. Going above 6x compression would result in a message about "not enough system resources" while the game was using less than 10% on my CPU and 30-40% on my GPU.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I see a lot of people saying this game was released too fast and was nothing more than a money grab that the developers, after one or two updates, will abandon in a broken state. I agree the timeline felt rushed, especially once Sea Power dropped and put extra pressure on the team. That said, I’ve been following the developers on Discord and watching their updates. Their roadmap shows a clear vision, and I believe that once this is properly polished, it will become the new standard for naval…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The main reason I would not recommend this game is that it feels a bit too far from finished. I myself tried to get a reimbursement but I obviously was above the 2hr steam limit allowed to claim it. In 2hrs you might not even have managed to learn how to dive the sub. I might like the game more once I figure out my way but at least keep that in mind. I also had a couple of crashes but yeah that's why it's early access.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It is a tech alpha at best. I have had this on my steam wish list from the moment it was available to be added, and I can not be more disappointed. The lack of sound just kills it for me you truly feel like you are alone on the submarine. I think with time and who knows how long that will be the reviews will change. It is hard to say do not buy this, if we do not support the game it dies and the Subsim genre going forward does not look great but go in reading the reviews and have your eyes open…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Refunded. I don't recommend this game, because it just a shell of a game. Its not worth $60 for early access. As I played I was not convinced that the game was working as intended. The game sound isn't good, as there is no communication from the AI Crew at this point. I may give it a another go after the game has more time in the oven.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Let's get the obvious complaints about gameplay out of the way - there is none. The AI is anemic, the missions are sterile, and the briefings are just a sentence or two... Many hopeful reviews say that even if there's no game to speak of yet, there's bones of a good simulator which can act as a solid foundation. There's not even that. - Many sensors and stations are just janky or broken. Narrowband waterfalls jump around the screen in spurts. Controls (like on the fathometer) will lock…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →84AUD, 60USD, 54 pounds or 62 euros. Most people aren't used to this price for Early Access games but, this is how much simulators tend to cost if you look at almost any flight sim. Devs these two promises in their original Early Access statements before changing them last minute: Game will be playable on launch Dynamic campaigns I understand that they dropped both out of the Early Access Game note, but that was last minute when everyone had already read the original one only to be met with a…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Would be a lot more enjoyable if i didn't get 20 fps at 1080p. Going to wait for optimizations but currently it is simply unplayable.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Runs like a turd, but if they can fix the bugs and optimize it, it could be a great experience. I'll update my review when it's in a better state.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Not ready for early access afterall. Wait for some updates. edit: Almost 6 hour of play. Lost of potential here. At the moment lots of bugs. Some missing features. Performance is not great. Still keeping this a thumbs down. Can't recommend in current state. Will revise after some updates. edit2: After two updates I am walking away from this game. It is dead in the water. The updates were small and the enemy AI is still MIA. I can't see them turning this ship around.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game that's been advertised for what feels like 10 years, finally released and falls short of every metric of expectation. If you want to learn? Watch YouTube videos and hope. AI workers work half the time. You have to micro manage 13 things at once without the Ai help and if you don't know, pause it and try to comprehend YouTube videos. Disappointed in the product that's been in the works for years. In addition, the price tag is obnoxiously high for being worked on for so long and this is…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Is not an Early Access game - is a Tech demo. The tech being demonstrated is well executed and could have been repackaged into a great free demo for an actual game but as of May 2026 this is being listed as a full price game without having any functional game play. No Crew AI, no external AI, very opaque systems (literally, most display are blank and only real 'game' is working out how to turn them on) and no manual. This last part is critical since developers talk of Modern Naval Warfare…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A lot been said about this game both in the discussion and in the reviews. Ill attempt to give you my balanced opinion. Firstly I played the original 688i, Sub Command and Dangerous waters and have hundreds of hours sank (no pun) into each. After the initial disappointment of a delayed release I was excited to finally get my hands on this game. First impression is and was that this is in VERY Early Access. Despite the blurb on the store page this feels far from complete. Optimization is poor,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →waaay too expensive for what it offers (bugs, passive AI, performance issues)
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Please, for the love of god do not part with your money for this absolutely steaming pile of dog turd. I hope one day they can get it sorted, but I think that's going to be a VERY long way away. There are so many bugs that it should not even be in early access. Also, the developer was NOT transparent at all about the state of it. UPDATE 6/7/26 - Still an unplayable slop fest full of glitches, bugs and voids. 2/10/26 - Still crap.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →YEARS waiting for THIS???!!! At current state it is UNPLAYABLE. But it’s okay let’s wait for another 3/4 years and maybe I’ll give it another try
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Version 0.115.2 (517) This product is "Early Access", but I would say it's more like it's still very much in Beta. The Single Missions are created by Wave Ops and have issues. Some missions are impossible to complete ("Richest Man In The Sea", for example), while another one tasks your sub with committing mass murder. These appear to be placeholder missions that haven't been fully fleshed-out and most certainly are not in their final form when the sim gets to version 1.0.0. Opposition AI does…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Been playing for many hours and have yet to be able to get the torpedoes to function properly without any success. I have had better luck with the HARMS. This game needs some in game tutorials or else have some sort of easy mode. Will go back to UBOAT at least it works. This game needs about another year of development. I would not recommend this game in the stage it is in. It is worth about $20 at this stage.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →So this “simulator” would actually be a very good simulator if they had spent at least a few more months developing it before releasing it into Early Access. There is absolutely no detailed manual about how to use the systems, whether it’s sonar, radar, etc. the only things available are basic quick-start guides. As a veteran simulator player who has played many different simulators, including DCS World and many others, I can clearly see that everything is modeled in great detail and almost…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →have not even played a single min. of this game, but this is the reason for my review. As always, this developer puts out a game early and wants you to play, but refuses to include a more detailed, "hands on" tutorial. Yes, I can watch a video, but a real tutorial is watching and listening to the instructor, while selecting all the buttons/areas you need to me to select for the the correct steps to be successful. Instead it is; watch video, write down steps and try to remember. Terrible…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →After 20+ years we finally have a new modern era subsim. Well, most of it, anyway. What the game does include works very well. I've been running MNW 45 hours and counting. The level of fidelity is quite extensive. This isn't an arcade game, this is something you can sink your teeth into, commit hours to a fire control solution (that god for autosave!) and the payoff is worth it. Early Access: the game has minimal enemy AI. I have seen the AI take evasive action and change course to engage…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Absolutely not worth 60 bucks at the moment unfortunately, I'd recommend waiting at least a few months for this one and check then
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Overall, I would recommend it. However, it has its flaws. the biggest one being; Sonar is just crap! From how the automation works, the screen and reporting, the DEMON sensor, active sonar, ship[ classification and so on. Really bad at this point in its development. As an ex Sonar operator, i can tell you right now, Sonar is why you want the game, but here its just rubbish. Cold Waters is better at it than this is.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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