Once Human’s free Isles of Abyss expansion arrives on PS5 on October 22, adding five oceanic regions and ships that double as mobile bases. Players start with a wooden raft and can turn it into an armed Sea Fortress, then join friends in fleets to explore the new waters.
The official announcement on PlayStation Blog describes the vessel as a workshop, forward base and weapons platform. Ship construction allows designs including cannon-equipped pirate ships and industrial rigs, with players coordinating their builds to handle different hazards together.
Exploration starts on an island, but the remaining four regions can be tackled in any order. Island resources supply naval technology and weapons, while materials recovered at sea feed back into land-based equipment and base upgrades. Diving opens up sunken ruins, aquatic resource gathering and deep-sea hunting, so progression involves leaving the deck as well as improving it.
An ocean that fights back
The sea itself is a conscious entity called the Sunken Lord. Its manifestations include watching lighthouses known as The Tower and ghost ships called Voyagers. Regional hazards include fog, black tides and falling temporal fire, with bosses in colossal towers leading toward a confrontation with the Sunken Lord.
On PS5, the expansion supports DualSense haptics for waves, storms and impacts during naval combat. Adaptive triggers add resistance to cannons and grappling lines. The developer also says SSD loading allows uninterrupted transitions between land, sailing and underwater exploration.
Once Human is a multiplayer open-world survival game. Its official PlayStation game page lists required online play and optional in-game purchases; both the base game and this expansion are free to play.
The announcement repeatedly calls the PS5 release “tomorrow” and names October 22, although its opening also contains an unexplained October 21 parenthesis. It gives no exact unlock time or regional schedule.