Game Away, Mr. Wilson – Review of the indie game Stranded Deep (2022)

Stranded Deep is a survival indie game developed by Australian video game studio Beam Team, who just finished up the game’s Early Access -stage and published their debut title. In the aftermath of a mysterious plane crash, you are stranded in the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Alone, without any means to call for help, you must do what you can to survive in the unmapped territory. So how is it?

Survival as a genre has been popular among indie developers in recent years. Stranded Deep, The Long Dark (2017) and The Forest (2018) for example, are all built around the same three core mechanics: scavenge, craft and survive. While these games give you such comprehensive freedom, which is hard to find in the biggest AAA titles really, I think this is the root of the popularity of survival games: as an indie game developer, you can try to explore your games’ potential more freely and not have to necessarily build you game around the plot of any kind. This works because as a game, you are just giving the players the arena to experience and create their own fantasies. Sadly, I think here the aspect of plain survival is not the most long-lasting as the crafting is pretty repetitive (so are the islands as the milieus) and the constant dehydration makes you, rightly so, live some problems again and again ‘till the very end.

One thing I have never gotten my head around is the game world’s own, unnaturally fast day and night-time rhythm. Due to this, everything is too hectic and on the edge, so you really just can’t stop thinking about the sticky situation in which you are. But, goddamn, hurray for the game’s great UI design! The ”Casio really knows you well” -design works well while serving players different kinds of important information and it still holds the momentum greatly without cutting off the ongoing gaming experience. Although I have to say, the inventory system I found to be pretty annoying and clunky. I just couldn’t stop the everlasting bungle, so all my stuff were always all around the jungle.

While survival as a genre is clearly trendy, to me, it is expelling to find the exact same essence inside the genre’s games. If you have no capital to build at least a coherent, in-depth story of your own and just put all your coins into slightly different crafting systems, what’s the point? Choose the scene of the game to be something newish (let’s say, like a tropical island) to stand out from the crowd? It feels to me, that at some point, the amount of a mbition put into the game project just reaches the game company’s limits. And that’s perfectly fine. Just don’t think the game is something that it isn’t.

Stranded Deep gives you a sense of confusing loneliness and a vast unknown, therefore, terrifying world. While the continuous scavenging and crafting become annoying pretty soon, the game’s atmosphere serves the purpose brilliantly. It’s not the game for me on which I would lose my day, but it’s the game for me where I can cast away briefly.

 

Publisher: Beam Team Publishing

Developer: Beam Team Games

Platforms: PC, Linux, MacOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch

Release Date: 11.8.2022

Genres: Survival, indie

PEGI: 16

Photos: Promo pictures from the game Stranded Deep (Beam Team Games 2022) https://store.steampowered.com/app/313120/Stranded_Deep/

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