During the 2015 Steam holiday sale I purchased Stranded
Deep. I’ve been thinking about picking
it up for some time because I enjoy survival games although most never see
their full potential. I made the mistake
of buying it along with Subnautica which made me unconsciously compare the two
even though they are very different survival type games. So I stepped away from Stranded Deep and came
back to it after a few week to give it a fresh look.
First off obviously the game is still in early access so
there are issues and I can understand that.
Thing’s like the hammers doing nothing, not being able to cut down
trees, several items not having inventory images, these things are excusable. I think the game in its current state portrays
what the game design is trying to do and the game play shows the extent of what
they plan to create. What I would like
to do is look at the game from a design perspective and offer some opinions.
Currently when the game starts you are in a life raft
floating near the island you chose in the world creation screen. In play through videos I have seen
there was a plane crash scenario that let you be in this predicament. Obviously I don’t know what the developer’s
plans are but without it and maybe even with it I think starting in the raft is
a bad choice. First time players could
be disoriented because you do see many distant islands you could paddle
toward. Also the raft physics and
controls are not great and I seemed to have a natural tendency to press “W”
while paddling because I want to go forward which would make me walk off the
raft and into the ocean. Even after
knowing you don't need to press forward I still found myself doing it many
times. Getting back into the raft is
clumsy and it takes some time to realize you can only climb up the side with
the small ladder. Eventually you make it
to the shore and struggle with another odd feeling that you want to drag the
raft out of the water which you really can’t do. So you leave it feeling that it might drift
away. Personally I feel waking up on the
beach would be a much better solution.
It avoids all the weirdness of the raft, puts you on the correct island,
and you would instantly feel that you washed ashore after an incident. My assumption is that the developer didn’t go
this route because placing a player spawn in a randomly generated shoreline could
be challenging, much easier to plop them in the ocean and let the player figure
it out.
Graphically the game looks great. I’m really amazed it’s the Unity engine. There are really beautiful skies and sunsets
and the ocean looks really amazing. The
game objects suffer from some harsh LOD popping which affects game play
poorly. Since you are searching the
beaches for useful items you can’t really see anything from a distance so you
have to walk every beach and see if anything “pops” into existence when you get
closer.
The water tech is pretty good. Unlike Subnautica the designers of Stranded
Deep realized that the ocean is a character in the game. It is both the friend and the enemy of the
player and should show moods. So on
sunny days the water is clear and colorful.
On rainy days it is dark and menacing.
Unfortunately there isn’t a lot of wave action. As a player I was afraid of setting up my
settlement on an island with low elevation for fear of the ocean waves sweeping
over it during a thunderstorm. But so
far in my hours of playing there haven’t been any thunderstorms or scary high
waves which has been disappointing to a degree.
Game play itself is pretty basic. Survival expert Les Stroud is quoted in
saying that the easiest environment to be stranded is a tropical island as long
as you have fresh water, and I would so far agree. Stranded Deep is fairly easy. You have a wrist watch that tells your
health, hunger, and thirst. Most all of
this can be controlled with coconuts and frankly that is where the game falls
short. You drink the coconut milk then
cut the coconut in half and eat it which fills both needs with one item. So in regards to surviving you just won the
game. Really all you need to do then is
paddle around gathering coconuts. However
in what I consider a strange decision the designers made your hunger drop much
faster than your thirst. A really odd
choice since everyone knows you can survive much longer without food than you
can without water. This often leaves you
in a weird spot where you don’t want to waste the water in the coconuts so you
drink it before eating even if you don’t need it. Which means you are always super hydrated, not
what I would have expected on deserted islands with no running fresh
water. I thought water would be the
struggle.
There are of course other food items you can gather such as
crabs and potatoes. Potatoes for some
reason make you throw up if you eat them raw.
I don’t really understand why since you can totally eat raw potatoes in
reality. This is a bigger issues when raw
and cooked items remain stacked together in your inventory which I can only
assume is a bug. So you cook an item and
if you don’t cook the entire stack you never know if what you’re eating is
cooked or raw, but you figure out which you grabbed when you throw up after. I would assume there are fish you can eat
although I have yet to do so.
Other than gathering food items you can gather building
materials. From things such as
driftwood, shipping containers, salvaged metals, you can create buildings and shelters. This is a neat thing to keep you busy but I’m
really not sure there is a point to doing it.
Standing in the shelters seems to create no benefits at all. Granted I became sunburn once from sun
exposure but does that mean I should be standing in my shelter during the day,
and what does that game play look like?
Reminds me of the game The Long Dark when you have a fire going, nothing
to craft, and a frigid blizzard blowing outside, nothing to do but stand there. Waiting is not game play. You can even create structures with multiple
rooms and multiple floors. Still I’m so
far lost why you want to do this in a game where you are alone and nothing is
attacking you on land. I get that it’s
just fun and I’m fine with that, it would just be great if it was tied into
game play somehow. Perhaps keeping
things dry could keep food from rotting or keeping yourself inside during a the
rain can keep your health from dropping.
The only enemies I have encountered have been the sharks,
tiger sharks and great white sharks. In
real life deep ocean and sharks freak me the hell out so this game has the
ability to push my panic buttons.
However the game plays a little warning musical event when they appear
so you scramble even if you don’t see them.
In murky water I can’t handle it.
Just the idea that they could be there make me to leave all water
explorations for sunny days and clear water.
So far I have not been killed or even attacked by anything in the game. I get the hell out of the water as soon as I
see one.
I have however died several times, but not to the
sharks. All times it has been from
falling while climbing for coconuts.
Climbing the trees is really clunky.
You never really know when or why you are going to fall. Sometimes you don’t and sometimes you drop
from what seems like no reason at all.
Often the game feels confused as to which direction the inputs
mean. Generally pressing forward would
make you climb and pressing backwards should make you descend but this doesn’t
always work. I’ve had several occasions
when pressing back makes me continue going up so you start using a little
lateral movement to get the right results which can often make you fall. Hitting the ground sometimes does nothing, sometimes
you break a limb, and sometimes you die outright. Breaking a limb causes your health to start
dropping to zero and you have to eat and drink much more. Also your wrist watch view becomes terribly skewed
and you can hardly get into a position to view it at all. I would assume crafting bandages would help
but that requires cloth when I have only found once. My health dropped to zero and then
nothing. My watch kept beeping at me but
there was nothing I could really do about it.
I didn’t die and eventually got sick of it and started over.
I think the game has great potential and I hope it will reach for it. It's possible I have not played enough to get the full scope of the game but Steam says I've played 9 hours which is enough time for me to have some solid opinions. I think the food/water system needs an overhaul. Coconut should only keep you barely alive forcing you to seek out fish and other food sources with more drive. Islands with a more stable environment involving small mountains and fresh water streams to seek would be great. Tropical storms with high waves and lightning would really shake up the easy lull of the current difficulty and cause the players to create high building structures to escape the rising water. The introduction of daily tide cycles and ocean currents could also add to the difficulty. I think they have a good game on their hands that could be an excellent game if the continued development has the funds to do so.
Note: I did not create the screenshots. They were gathered from Google.
