If you've been following the Pillow Fort for even just the last two weeks you'll recognize exactly what game Stranded Deep is.... and if you're new here... then all you really need to know is that there are giant killer crabs, sharks that will grab you and swim away, and physics that will have you rolling in tears of laughter. If you want to get a full taste of the comedy in this game, feel free to go view any of the half dozen shorts we've created and that will give you the full scope of just how ridiculous this game is at times. Also... this game is free to play if you have the Xbox (or PC) Game Pass and we'll just say that it's highly recommended by us, but let's get into why.
Game Description:
Take the role of a plane crash survivor stranded somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Come face to face with some of the most life-threatening scenarios that will result in a different experience each time you play. Scavenge. Discover. Survive.
Story:
This is not a story-driven game in any way. The entire plot line is that you're stranded in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by small islands, and you're trying to escape by building a plane to eventually fly away from this Giant Crab infested place. There aren't any quests or helpful hints as to what to do either the way there might be in The Forest or 7 Days to Die. It's purely a "figure it out and pray you don't get eaten by a shark or sliced to bits by a giant crab, or fried to a crisp because you stayed in the sun too long and didn't have an aloe ointment, kind of game. So, that's where we'll leave this section... small and insignificant just like in the game (lol).
Gameplay:
Despite the fact that this game has no storyline and the entire point of it is to escape, the gameplay of this game is hilarious and highly enjoyable. There hasn't been a single moment of 12-15 hours we've now put into it that we've thought "why are we still playing this?" The game is exceptionally fun (if you like the survival genre) and feels like The Forest & Subnautica had a baby. Why? Well let's break it down...
Survival:
The main point of this game is to survive (obviously) and to do so, you need to be crafty. Since we've been playing this together in the 2-player Co-Op mode, we've had to be extra careful about our supplies to ensure that both of us can live to fight crabs another day, but it honestly isn't easy.
There are a few stats that you need to manage, the big ones being your Hunger & Thirst, but you also need to keep your SPF (sun exposure) down and your health up. Your health only regenerates if your other stats are full... but keeping said stats full can feel impossible. Sure, you can go around climbing up the trees (or cutting them down) to collect every single coconut on the island and drink coconut milk for thirst, but usually by your third or fourth coconut, you're puking your guts out and instantly dehydrated, so the only sustainable way to fight off thirst is to build a rain collector. No biggie? Yes... it is... because the sheer amount of resources you need to craft such a thing isn't usually found on the first island you arrive on. You might get exceptionally lucky and find them all on a sunken ship, or some random chests scattered around washed-up boats on the island, but in our case, it wasn't until we decided to venture to a second island that we found the resources we needed.
It's also worth saying that by that time we'd been murdered by crabs once and had to reset to our latest save because the tools we had were shotty at best and we were easily bested by a pissed-off Sebastian ... it was obvious he didn't want us accidentally catching a glimpse of Ariel singing her latest solo. When we weren't fighting him off, Pumba decided to take up his cause and eliminate us as well... so... basically... beware the giant crabs and evil boars. They can and will kill you.
All of that just to stave off death by dehydration. I will say that fighting off your hunger is a lot easier. Make a crude fishing spear and step 2 feet into the water to take a stab at the tiny little sardines swimming around. Don't do what I did and collect 40 of them. You will have to skin them one at a time (which requires a refined knife) and you can only cook 1 at a time on a regular campfire, 2 if you bother to upgrade once, and 6 if you get a full-fledged smoker, but that again requires some precious materials that you probably don't have until a few days in, as well as some extra crafting levels. By the time you finish skinning them all, the first ones will probably have gone bad, so my advice is to catch 4-5 per person, make a couple of basic campfires using the plentiful sticks and trees around the island, and fill up while you can.
The SPF meter is actually quite easy to manage. We honestly didn't find that it affected us too much. You can just go stand under a tree in the shade if you get too hot and there's always plenty of trees around. I could foresee it becoming a problem if you stay too long on the open water with your raft, but it doesn't take long enough to travel between the islands for it to become a problem, and once you build the bigger more sturdy raft, you can just craft a shade for it anyways so we didn't find that this affected our game negatively.
The last, and obviously most important, stat is your overall health bar. It's difficult to raise once a crab has taken you down to one hit from death and you'll have to listen to your watch annoyingly beep at you until it's gone back up. The only way to bring it up is, as I said earlier, to max out your food and water bar, and then it'll start to slowly rise.
Status Effects:
One key thing to note is that there are status effects in the game that can make it significantly harder to manage your stats. These can include poison (as Ducky found out after getting bit by a snake and developing horrible red warts all over his character), broken limbs (from the multiple times we fell from high places), severe sun exposure (seriously, just go find a tree), bleeding (Bruce the Shark taught me about this one when I was minding my own business mining clay in the water. He thought I looked pretty tasty and just carried me off into the deep, leaving me bleeding and swimming ferociously with my already broken limb towards the shore). The last and the most fun... diarrhea... which is how we found out you shouldn't eat too many coconuts, or raw fish/food.
All of these effects can be cured if you have an antidote, splint, aloe cream, or bandage, which thankfully don't take too many resources and by the time we had explored a second and third island, had little farms growing all the plants we needed to provide such things. Unfortunately, diarrhea can only be cured with proper hydration and diet, so definitely try to avoid this because it's already hard enough keeping your thirst up during the first 10 days.
Island-Hopping & Exploration:
The main way you find resources in order to get yourself out of the hellhole that is this place is to take your little raft around to all the islands... and sunken ships... to collect resources. Chances are your inventory won't hold even half the stuff you find, so make sure you pick up every chest you can to stuff all your items into, and then just pick those up instead. I love anything that feels like it's bigger on the inside and allows you to increase your carrying capacity tenfold. No, your character can't carry more than 10 items, but you can certainly carry 10 chests that have 5 items each in them because that makes perfect sense... don't question it.
Do be careful when you visit new islands though because each will have a couple of critters whose main goal in life is your death so consider this your warning.
Honestly, the exploration is fun. By the time we'd had a decently established base on our second island, we found that bouncing around to the other ones was comedically fun and enjoyable. We'd visit them, strip them of their resources, and then return to improve our home away from home.
The only thing I found truly terrifying in this game was the underwater exploration. I couldn't bear to play Subnautica as I have Thalassophobia (the persistent and intense fear of deep bodies of water such as the sea, oceans, or lakes) and this game is playing into it as well. It doesn't affect me too badly when we're close to shore and along the reefs that are lit up well from the sun shining overhead, but swim a bit deeper into the depths of a sunken ship where the light fades and I start having mild panic attacks and have to look away from my screen for a moment. Of course, that means my character is probably close to drowning at that point, but we've been leaving Ducky to the deep dives as he's far more brave than us, so, consider that a warning to those that do experience Thalassophobia... this game will trigger it.
Crafting & Building:
The other huge part of this game is the crafting and building systems. You can craft everything from a crude stone tool to take a stab at the crabs with, a house to escape said crabs, all the way to a helicopter so that you can attempt to brave the skies and take yourself home.
I will say that crafting is easy and painless so long as you have the materials. There's no wait time or any of that jazz, but you do have to have a certain crafting level to unlock the good stuff such as a smoker, tanner, and a better raft. A note on the raft, you definitely want to invest resources into making a bigger and better one. The orange inflatable one you're given upon arrival is slow and clunky at the best of times, but go through the trouble to throw together some buoys and wood platforms and it'll cut your sailing time between islands in half. It'll also allow for more chests to be placed upon it so that you don't have to squeeze them all into your inventory. Be careful and make sure you always properly dock your raft though, otherwise, you'll be left staring at the horizon crying about all the resources you just lost.
Honestly, after a few days and exploring a few of the islands, Ducky and I had a pretty great little base where we found it easy to maintain our vitals and could finally feel safe spending more time adventuring to the other islands or diving deep into the sunken ships, rather than feeling like our life was a gamble of whether or not the next coconut we drank would lead to diarrhea and dehydration, or stave it off for another few hours. The tip here is that if you invest time into getting yourself set up on one of the islands, the game will get a lot easier overall.
Audio & Visuals:
Audio:
As far as raw ambiance and sound effects, they're fantastic! From the distorted underwater sounds to the pouring rain and violent lightning, to the way the crabs click their claws as they charge toward you, the game sounds are great!
I will say that this is definitely a game that the music got turned off. It was too loud and repetitive for me to enjoy it but I will note that I usually turn off music in all survival games, The Forest & 7 Days to Die included.
Visuals:
The graphics of the game are pretty great! I do love the texturing and details of the items, islands, animals, and ocean. Even the sunken ships have a fantastically realistic rusted texture applied to them. I will say that your character's eyes have this permanent "I've seen things" face that makes us laugh anytime we get close to each other.
I want to include one note that I'm not sure if I should put here or in the bugs section, but there has only been rain physics in our game once. What do I mean? Well. Anytime it rains we see the dark clouds overhead, hear the rain pouring down, and see the beach getting wet and the waves growing violent, but no rain is actually falling from the sky. We experienced it once when we traveled to our second island but we sadly died and had to reload, and even since we have yet to experience the joy of rain. Maybe it's the game's way of punishing us for having died to a Giant Crab... but regardless, as someone who adores the rain, it makes me sad not getting to actually stand in it.
Combat:
I don't want to say that combat is a big part of Stranded Deep, as it's more of a secondary thing that you'll have to experience at some point or another. There are tiny crabs that will beat you up, and Giant ones that plot how to cook you on your own fire for dinner. Sharks that swim away with you, snakes that slither up and take quick bites of your ankles, and apparently giant sea squids that we have yet to experience even 14 hours into the game, but they're there don't you worry. The combat is slow and clunky for the most part. You can craft crude bows and spear guns that give you the ranged advantage, but the targeting can be odd and the game physics will do their best to get in your way.
All-in-all though, it definitely feels realistic in terms of a survival game. I'm sure that if I attempted to survive on a wild island, I would be no better than my character at taking down a wild boar. It would most definitely take me out before I could even scratch its ankles so... bonus points for realism? (lol) Be careful when you decide to take on one of the unforgivable critters though, the game only saves when you manually save it at your tent, so be prepared to lose progress if you haven't saved in a while... this includes all the items you might've collected.
Bugs:
This game is absolutely riddled with hilarious physics issues. From sticks standing perfectly upright on each other, metal scraps slicing your arm off, the way your character hilariously carries the raft, or the fact that when you carry logs it looks like you're casting "Wingardrium Leviosa". Heck, you even turn into Nearly Headless Nick when you're riding in the raft. I'm not joking when I say the amount of clips we've turned into shorts is unbelievable, and the more we play the game, the more we find. They really don't negatively impact your game (most the time) in any way, but they do make me laugh.
One main bug we found was that when you sleep, your stats change drastically... or not at all. It was honestly quite frustrating going to bed with a nearly full health bar, stomach, and hydration level, only to wake up with a beeping watch saying our health was low and so was everything else. I understand completely that your hunger and thirst deplete when you sleep, but the health bar? I didn't know we died slowly in our sleep. Makes me question going to bed just a bit more at night.
Another one we experience every time we load the game is the fact that the game does not retain your audio information. Upon start-up, without fail, I have to go into the Audio settings to get the music to turn off and the sounds turned down. The even funnier thing is that I don't actually have to adjust the settings, I just have to click on the Audio tab and then the game remembers where I want my levels. I'm not sure if it's just a weird sync issue or what but it does bother me ever so slightly since the game music upon startup is obnoxiously loud.
Oh... and I randomly just died during the game. My health bar was high with a full stomach and no need for water, and no status effects on me either. My character just threw her hands dramatically in the air and she fell to the ground dead. I was so confused I couldn't help but laugh. Thankfully Ducky had a bandage and quickly picked me back up. The even weirder thing was that after I was revived, my stats were exactly the same as right before I'd died so... not really sure what happened.
Conclusion:
Despite the comedic game physics, the bugs we've experienced, and our pure fear of crabs that this game has instilled in us, we'd highly recommend this game! We've put 14 hours into it and I feel like we could put in another 14 and be just as content fighting off crabs to finish our escape plane as we were the first time they claimed our lives.
While we can't speak on the solo-player experience, we definitely recommend finding a buddy to take on the islands with. Sure, it's twice the amount of food and water you need to find, but at least then if you're beaten up by a crab or starve to death, they can pick you up with a simply crafted bandage and you can continue on your journey a bit less painfully.
While you can of course buy the full version of the game to own permanently, you have no reason not to go give it a try if you're already subscribed to the Xbox/PC Game Pass and enjoy this genre.
I can and will say that it is a survival game and is not going to be like Stardew Valley where they hand you a couple of resources to get you started and come drag your near-lifeless body out of the mines anytime you stay up too late or pass out from exhaustion. The game is unforgiving and the bugs make it even more challenging at times, but the amount of fun we've had in it matches that of 7 Days to Die and The Forest, and then some. It's a great addition to the Survival genre for sure.
Disclaimer:
Please note that we have not been paid or promoted for this review and are not affiliated with Stranded Deep or its developers officially in any way. All thoughts are based on our own genuine experience of the game. All footage is based on the Game in its current state as of 04/29/2023 and is subject to change in future patches or expansions at the developer's discretion.
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