Stranded Deep (2015) Review
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played on ps4
developed by Beam Team Games
published by Beam Team Games
review published on 05/07/2024
Stranded Deep, sun stroke is not fun.
Blaring sun, rumbling tummy, dry mouth, and the paranoia of imminent death. Stranded Deep (2015) wants to be a cohesive survival video game, but its lacklustre execution never realises that goal.
I first played Stranded Deep back in 2021 thanks to it being a part of the PS Plus Essential lineup. A ham fisted tutorial after a plane crash teaches you the absolute basics of survival. Chopping trees, hunting wildlife, maintaining your health bars, are all aspects that are conditioned to you. Not long after, you fend for yourself. On a small island, surrounded by an expansive sea touching the horizon, distant islands invite you to explore. While it takes some time to get used to the clunky controls, including the crafting system and inventory management, it is exciting to be the master of your own destiny. Taking the rubber life raft, the thing that saved you and an icon for survival, out to sea for an expedition to other islands. Bobbing over the bright blue waves of the endless sea, paddling forward, with the sun beating down. It brings a catharsis that cements the feeling of aloneness. No miraculous act of God will save you from this tragic situation, it comes down to you to survive. After enough time, you start to notice the sameness of Stranded Deep.
Identical islands, the same wildlife threats, the routine statchecking problems. It has become uniform. The veil of procedural variety has been pulled off. The little amount the game presents, it has already been exhausted. There is a chance, especially in the first couple of playthrough attempts, you do not find the different elements that break up the monotony of exploring like monstrous sea creatures or an aircraft carrier. Navigating the world is brutal. There is no in-game map. You will get lost, unless you plan extensively by signposting each island or consulting the cartographer map in the main menu. Expect to exit the game to consult the map everytime you want to know where you are.
The only thing left to explore is more familiar islands to craft more ways to craft more things. You are required to frequently repeat the same jobs because they intertwine with the core gameplay loop. If you refuse to do so, you will die. Remember, you need to eat and drink to survive. These tasks reward you by allowing you to survive longer to do more of the same tasks. The realism of its survival mechanics are undercut by an underdeveloped world with rough edges in piloting its controls and a sameness that disincentivises you to keep going. Nothing after the initial three hours hooks you, abandoning you as fast as the game started. It is repetitive, and you just wish the credits would roll already.
If you push past the pain, you find ways to distract yourself from the usual jobs. Building structures, refined tools, and complex transport are some of the things you can create in your sandbox. It provides a freeing moment of choice that helps break up the core gameplay experience. And if you are not doing that, you are playing around with the wonky physics engine, stacking crates like pins to bowl down with a coconut. Don’t have too much fun. Your Casio wristwatch will soon remind you to take your vitamins, your needs need to be met. Back to the 9 to 5.
It would be disingenuous to not mention what stained the game from the very start. I encountered a horrible game breaking bug where you could not interact with anything in the world. Nothing worked. You cannot pick up food, use tools, sleep/save in your shelter. You could not play the game. Even after loading back in multiple times, the same bug persisted. A new save file seemed to do the trick, but after sleeping for the first time, the bug returned, contemplating whether to uninstall and reinstall the game. The former was true, the latter not. This bug completely destroyed any interest in the game for a long time, leaving it discarded in the figurative rubbish bin. It was only after a couple of years I revisited the game, hoping that this bug was patched out. Thankfully, Stranded Deep did not decompose as I had expected and did not experience this bug again, but it still lingers in my mind that some game breaking threat could poison me at any time.
While Stranded Deep falls over itself with its repetitive gameplay loop, lack of variance, and bug infested bed, the game offers enough unintentionally enjoyable moments through its sandbox features to salvage it from oblivion. The feeling of venturing off to different islands brought sadness, knowing you are all alone to survive the harshness of island life and the realisation of its repetitive emptiness. There is something here for those interested in survival games, it is a very vanilla experience. Too many stumbles makes it difficult to warrant a super hearty recommendation. There’s too many holes in this life raft.
