None of this is new to the genre, of course. That is, by tweaking the settings to turn off alien attacks during the trading post scenario, I was able to enjoy the early days of a peaceful pastoral existence focused on developing a village farmland aesthetic instead of battling hordes of alien bugs. My desert military outpost, on the other hand, had a big headstart on tech but had to jump into the heavy lifting of generating electricity and replacing our rickety lean-to with a stone hut almost immediately because there were only a handful of trees to cook food and keep warm with during the frequently frigid days.įinally, to shamelessly call back to my own RPS content, I’m thrilled to say that Stranded: Alien Dawn will Harvestmoon. While they have a long road ahead of them if they’re going to make it back to their homeworlds, wood is plentiful enough that they can subsist easily on campfire cooking and build with little thought for where those resources are coming from. In the crashlanding scenario mentioned above, my ill-prepared survivors had the good fortune to land in a lush temperate forest where they were tasked with reinventing basic technology like hunting bows and housing. Each biome also has a unique mix of flora and fauna which your survivors must study closely in order to carve out a niche for themselves on a new planet. These choices aren’t just window dressing, though–while there aren’t many scenarios or biomes to choose from, each pairing offers a different set of goals and challenges that completely change the direction of the game. The game starts up pretty much how you would expect: you choose a difficulty level, one of three scenarios, and one of two biomes to play on before selecting your survivors from a set of several dozen premade characters. This game has been at the top of my to-be-played list for a while and now that it’s exiting early access for a full release, it’s safe to say that Stranded is the closest thing to my dream human vs nature survival game I’ve seen yet. It’s a rough start, but they have no choice but to work together from here on out.įor fans of the survival simulation genre, crashlanding on an alien planet is a familiar premise, but it's one Stranded: Alien Dawn absolutely smashes. Well, at least I don’t have to worry about her running off into the woods or something. She punches Samantha full-on in the face, knocking her unconscious (“Oh, I guess that’s what ‘knock out’ means,” I realize a moment too late). Samantha, one among my ragged band of survivors, breaks down sobbing on the ground and I direct Maki, a veterinarian, to do something about it. It all adds up to a classic story of human vs nature in which your survival depends on carving out a niche for yourself on a planet teeming with life.Īs our shuttle hits the ground, the world erupts into smoke, chaos, and confusion. Stranded: AD builds thoughtfully on the survival sims that came before it, keeping what works and streamlining what didn’t.
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