Recent reviews by Stackrunner

Good survival game similar to Ark, Rust, Minecraft, Hurtworld. The tiered crafting and progression is nice as well as being able to customize how things look. Full terraforming is awesome. Monsters are currently too easy to kill by getting them stuck and you can't raid other peoples bases now. The game itself is worth the money, just depends whether it is worth it to you or not.

I really want to like this game. I like certain aspects a lot. I bought it for $6 on a Steam sale so didn't have too much to lose. I can't recommend it right now for two reasons though.

1. Difficult to access / join servers
2. Extremely low player base

There are a lot of issues with joining the servers that leave some playes waiting to get into a particular server because it isn't showing up properly in the server browser. Based on forum activity, it seems that this has been an issue for a long time.

Because of the above issue, as well as other reasons, the player base is really low to non-existant. I've played a good deal of time on one of the official servers and came across some player built structures but never actually saw another player.

The game itself is actually pretty fun solo if you enjoy the wild west atmosphere. The looting and crafting is similar to 7 Days to Die where items have a rarity and more rare items are lighter weight and have better stats.

Combat isn't great but it's good enough.

There are PVE and PVP servers. You can raid on PVP servers but you do so by lockpicks and cannot destroy other people's buildings - can get their loot but their base stays in tact. I actually like this for this type of game because it makes getting raided not quite so bad.

Overall I've had fun but am frusterated with server connectivity and lack of other players.

If this server connectivity issue gets fixed I'll change this to recommended. I have a feeling once RDR2 comes out this game will be vaporware unless something is done quick.

So far so good. I come from games like Ark, Rust, 7 Days, etc. Seems to have most of what you look for in survival games so far. I'll update as I progress. Those who say it doesn't work are wrong.

boring

One of the most realistic survival games I've played.

For the most part, this is a good thing but can make things tedious at times.

Some resources (rocks, some animals, trees) don't respawn which makes things much more realistic than the average survival game. If you deplete an area of a certain resource, you'll have to travel further to find more - regardless of how long you wait for it to respawn. This makes resource management much more vital. Do you have enough wood on the current island to add to your shelter or do you need to save it for your raft? Remember to save some in case you need to make a new tool - also remember to leave quite a few palm trees. No more palm trees = no more coconuts = dead (unless you find another good food source).

One of my favorite aspects is how storing your resources changes your camp and environment. In many survival games, you store all of your resources in boxes or in your inventory. In Stranded Deep, you'll literally drop your wood and rocks and other resources on the ground around your camp (like you would in real life). Your resources piles will build up and change how your camp looks. This makes the game feel much more immersive. They all exist as actual items in the physics system too - you can right click to drag them around - when you move a log, it may hit your coconuts and they'll start rolling all over the place. I can totally see that happening to me in a real life survival situation. Great feature and that in and of itself makes things look more realistic - things can get untidy at times but then you can also spend half a day organizing and cleaning things up.


Beautiful graphics. Watch on YouTube and you'll see.


Currently the map is 5 x 5 tiles (25 total). I hear it used to be infinite and I am totally jealous but I also saw a post from the devs saying they will implement that again in the future.

I'm at the point where I feel like I can survive without too much trouble - even if just off coconuts. It would be nice to have more of a reason to build shelter (devs are introducing weather effects that can be mitigated by shelter which may help). You really want to build a badass bungalow but with supplies being limited, needed for other items more vital for survival and building being expensive it seems like building is a waste. But again, realistically speaking, this is probably accurate - once you have a good basic shelter built you would focus on other tasks.


If you want, you can pretty much just sit around your camp with a couple of solar stills living off of coconuts, crabs and the occasional tiger shark. So, when it comes to replay value, it could use quite a bit in terms of end game.

That being said, I've had a lot of fun playing SD, will keep playing for a while now and when I do take a break, I can already tell that it's a game I'll come back to after some more updates.

Good so far.

Played for two long stints now at two different times ~100 hours



- Excellent crafting and building - some of the best I've seen and I play Rust, Ark, Subnautica, Craft the World, etc.

- Lot's to gather (scavenge) and harvest (mine, chop, collect)

- Randomly generated worlds

- Complete terraforming

- Scary zombies

- PVP, PVE or single player

- Graphics a bit blocky / choppy

- Sounds are scary

- Community is pretty nice considering the genre



9/10 - great game especially if you like building and crafting

Good.

I left my base area on my recently fitted truck - just a seat and solar panel to save room for research items. As a drove around the beautiful planet, I found many items to collect and loaded them on my truck. Unfortunately I ran out of room so had to start leaving some behind with beacons next to them. I also lost my bearings as to which direction my base was and took my best guess towards home. As I ventured, I seemed to be going to wrong way but, glory be, crashed space ship wreckage began appearing and I decided to take items from the wreckage with me and leave behind my previously collected research items.

Still quite lost but not worried as the beauty of this vast planet was intriguing me. I decided to make my best guesses towards home while still exploring and leaving beacons behind from later.

I was weathering storms and avoiding my truck from falling into vast caverns. That is when it happened. A hidden cavern suddenely appeared below me and my truck fell down and got stuck. As I was trying to form the land around me to rescue my truck I fell further and died.

Incredibly dissapointed in losing all of my collected items and my truck in a cavern that I know not where it is, I decided to begin on my recovery efforts.

Instead of leaving my base blindly, I decided it would be best to try and find the direction of my own wreckage. I built a tower - higher than the clouds by forming the land below me. My tower was the highest point on the planet, I could actually see the curvature of the planet from the top but, alas, no sign of beacons or my truck.

Next step was to build a shuttle, and that I did. Upon completion of my shuttle, I launched into orbit (with plenty of tethers on my person) and orbited my planet a few times before spotting what I believed to be the wreckage.

I landed my shuttle as close to the wreckage as possible and tethered over. It was the cave, I could tell because my previous work on the land was visible but my truck was not in sight. I decided to dig down and, after some time, I saw it. My truck and research pods had fallen even deeper into the underground abyss.

I was able to tether and form the land around me to reach them. I then began to explore the cavarn to find a way to drive my truck out. Luckily, this was the easier part of my adventure.

And now here I sit, my truck next to my shuttle. I believe I'm on the other side of the planet at this point but I have confidence that I will prevail. I am about to clean up my tethers and then begin the journey towards, hopefully, home. Wish me luck.

10/10 would get lost and fall into a cavern again.

Tips:

1. Follow the thread on improving performance - helps a lot
2. Play a few times just experimenting and then start a new game to use what you've learned
3. Build out a bit from your first habitat instead of placing all modules right away or you won't be able to build out anymore
4. Be careful of flippnig your vehicles and using them underground
5. Becareful of drilling down where you're standing - you may fall into a cave
6. Minimize tether usage to improve performance
7. Trucks will get power with tethers underground if the tethers are attached to a power source

Other reviews made me very weary of this game but I'm glad I went for it anyway. I have found very few bugs and have really enjoyed my play through so far.
V) and Captical Vessels (CV).

The game provides the building blocks for you to build with but what you come up with is entirely up to you. I find this the most addictive part of the game - to continually build and improve your vehicles to make hunting and gathering more efficient.

Captial vessels are essentially space stations that can fly into different orbits, allowing you to detach your SVs and explore different planets.

Some of the planet types include: temperate, desert, snow, alien and barren.

The sheer scale of this game is amazing. Each planet is very large, can be built on and features unique resources that can only be found on that biome.

I haven't ventured into the online servers yet, am still waiting for stability improvements and wanted to be a vetran player before facing other human players.

Here is my story so far:

I started on the temperate starting planet, akua I believe it is. All was going well, had a base and a HV but I was on a looting mission and my HV was attacked. I was forced to salvage the materials left and make it base to my base on foot. With the salvaged materials I built my first SV and was able to venture into space.

After collecting a large stash of resources, I decided to start making my first CV. It actually became operational quicker than I expected. After adding a garden and a SV landing zone, I decided to fully move to the CV instead of my land base.

This is great because now I can travel to other planets more easily for resource collection as I have almost run out of iron on my home planet.

I am currently in the Omicron orbit (desert planet) and have established a small land base on Omicron to spearhead mining and resource gathering in the area. I have a fleet of 1 CV, 3 SVs and 1 HV but will begin on a large scale project soon to create a new breed of hybrid SV.

Good luck in space everyone!

Day 33.

I set up a second base at a large farmhouse.

Bear came to visit. Took 2 shots and he ran off. Noted direction.

Day 34

I set out early to track the bear I shot.

Found him alive, 2 more shots and he fell - my first bear albeit a possible waste of 4 bullets. Only 4 left now.

Gutted, skinned and cut up all the meat. Made sure to take the valuable bear hide.

Had to leave a lot of meat behind because it was too much weight, will come back tomorrow.

3 hours of daylight left, I'm moving slow because of weight, out of water, a blizzard is starting and two wolves are in the path back to my base.

Wish me luck - I paused to write this review because this situation explains the game.

10/10 would use 4 shots on a bear again.