The whole premise of survival games is unappealing to me, never answering a question I feel is important when everything’s swamped with radiation or zombies or radioactive zombies: why survive? So as a distant observer of the genre, I tend to compare and break games down cynically. Most of Stranded Deep looks familiar – scavenging, crafting, building, exploring, hunting, and all that – but I do like how it’s using its setting of Pacific islands and atolls. Come watch a new trailer to coo and aah at diving, salvaging wrecks, and avoiding sharks.
Stranded Deep’s ocean is more than scenery, being a vital but dangerous way to sustain yourself. You’ll need to fish and hunt whatnot in the ocean, as well as stripping useful stuff out wrecks, but can’t get too greedy. Developers Beam Team Games say they model things like populations and breeding (well, in exaggerated ways), so you could wipe out a species locally or leave an reef barren.
They say sharks aren’t silly monsters attacking everything on sight too, which I find exciting. Worrying about blood in the water is a good concern. Their site is covered in articles explaining bits of the game in more detail.
Anywhere, here, look at this fine trailer:
Stranded Deep will launch into (of course) early access in January. Survival games going early access always seems weird to me, as they’re driven more by systems than content. Having systems missing or wonky leaves a survival game deeply incomplete in ways that, say, a platformer short on levels isn’t. The hypothetical platformer will get bigger over development, but the hypothetical survival game will change massively, and won’t reveal its true nature until the end. But, as I say, I don’t play survival games. Partially because most of them are still in early access.
15/12/2014 at 09:13 Lexx87 says:
For me the answer to ‘why survive’ couldn’t be more simple…because i’m terrified of death and don’t want to die. So i’ll do anything to keep going and protect what and anything I hold dear.
15/12/2014 at 09:48 jrodman says:
Unfortunately, you never win in the end. But at least you might get a high score.
15/12/2014 at 10:01 Rich says:
Life is just a big game of SkiFree.
15/12/2014 at 13:16 LionsPhil says:
*holds F*
15/12/2014 at 09:36 Kefren says:
I’ve no interest in hunting in games (one of the reasons I am dubious about Far Cry 3 and 4, it sounds like you have to go hunting lizards and tigers so you can carry guns – surely you could just take a bag off a dead enemy, or from one of their locker rooms?) So I’m always more interested if there are options to get by with harvested and grown foods, and focus more on building and exploring interesting locations just for the sake of it.
15/12/2014 at 09:54 statistx says:
I was interested since i saw the first Screens on greenlight and back then it was only you and a little boat. They sure went way more ambitious with it now
15/12/2014 at 10:16 Jhoosier says:
Truer words were never spoken.
15/12/2014 at 12:50 pancakeru says:
Yeah, I learnt my lesson with Rust. I pretty much won’t touch early access anymore. That said, this does look fantastic, and I look forward to playing it when/if it is finished in a year or two.
15/12/2014 at 13:12 Turkey says:
I wonder when we’ll get the first survival game from a major studio. They’ve got to be paying attention on how well these games are doing on the steam sales charts.
15/12/2014 at 17:45 Abtacha says:
Sony is making H1Z1, which seems to combine Rust and DayZ.
Early access for that starts sometime in January I think.
15/12/2014 at 10:27 Banjo-Tuesday says:
Man vs Deep.
15/12/2014 at 10:47 padger says:
This looks pretty good. The Forest with (more) sharks.
15/12/2014 at 10:48 virtualmatrix258 says:
I was one of the idiots that bought Rust. It’s going to take some seriously good accolades from the PC community to even think about buying this game. What they should do, which I know is kind of difficult, but they should give everyone a 30 minute demo. If the game runs well and has good mechanics, then I’d buy it.
15/12/2014 at 11:48 mukuste says:
Survival games going early access always seems weird to me, as they’re driven more by systems than content.
But so is Prison Architect, which is generally considered a glowing success story of Early Access, is it not?
15/12/2014 at 12:37 BLACKOUT-MK2 says:
Can I find a football and name it Wilson?
15/12/2014 at 13:10 CookPassBabtridge says:
WILL YOU SURVIVE… THE EARLY ACCESS.
Maybe they can make it even more “survivally” by requiring you to “craft” your own programming code and build some lovely life saving mechanics yourself. I see a bright future for survival games where you just pay a company £25 and then program content on your own.
“If you are not excited to voluntarily program a new game for this company in their present state (three blokes on a sofa watching Family Guy needing some cash to buy pizza) then Early Access is not for you”.
15/12/2014 at 13:39 Monkeh says:
Survival games going early access always seems weird to me, as they’re driven more by systems than content. Having systems missing or wonky leaves a survival game deeply incomplete in ways that, say, a platformer short on levels isn’t. The hypothetical platformer will get bigger over development, but the hypothetical survival game will change massively, and won’t reveal its true nature until the end. But, as I say, I don’t play survival games. Partially because most of them are still in early access.
Well, didn’t you just answer your own ‘question’? If you were to launch a platformer [with working systems] on Early Access, there’s not much more you can do but add levels, which doesn’t really benefit a whole lot from customer feedback AFAIK. Whereas with survival games, as you mentioned, the systems are more important and can heavily change based on customer feedback.
15/12/2014 at 15:10 Urthman says:
Survival games going early access always seems weird to me, as they’re driven more by systems than content.
Are you forgetting that the entire Early Access trend was started by a little survival game called Minecraft?
15/12/2014 at 16:21 jonahcutter says:
Actually I think patient zero of the early access virus might be Dwarf Fortress? I believe it’s been around longer than Minecraft.
15/12/2014 at 16:24 LionsPhil says:
Dwarf Fortress doesn’t require you to pay before you play it in its unfinished state. If we’re waiving that, pick any number of open source games with donate links that have been around for decades.
16/12/2014 at 01:00 alms says:
Same thought actually.
15/12/2014 at 15:19 Jakkar says:
Cursed early access, making me want things I don’t yet want. Again.
15/12/2014 at 15:50 jonahcutter says:
Looks like it’s somewhere between Salt, The Forest and Depth. Not a bad place to be.
Don’t Starve is the premier survival game, imo. And it’s out of its wildly successful early/beta access. If you are interested in playing a survival game, there is no better candidate.
As to “why”? Well, to stave off death. What more universal theme is there?
In defense of early/beta access, many of us find it interesting and fun to experience a game as it evolves into its final form. As well as to give feedback to devs and perhaps even influence it. In that sense, it presents *more* content and gameplay for those who do buy in.
Early/beta access is overall a good trend. It is a strength. It’s gaming at the forefront of our new approach to media/art. One that features far more interaction between the creator and her/his audience during the creation process. The artistic process is no longer largely a one-way street from creator to audience, and this echoes the wider world’s move towards a far more communal approach to everything from entertainment to socializing to journalism.
15/12/2014 at 16:30 Hedgeclipper says:
Is starving to death a universal theme? I haven’t seen much of it round here…
15/12/2014 at 16:09 macaddct says:
Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island board game: the video game
15/12/2014 at 16:19 Congo says:
I probably shouldn’t be, but I’ve been following development of this game for the last eight months. I did the same thing with The Forest , and didn’t even end up purchasing it. Hopefully this game will change my mind, because it looks really cool. I don’t want to get my hopes up too high
15/12/2014 at 16:54 Perjoss says:
Wilson!!!
15/12/2014 at 17:10 rcguitarist says:
This might very well be the one survival game I actually buy…when it is fully released. Early access is bs and i’ll never buy an early access game. When you have a finished product I will give you my money. I would never buy a car at a dealership that is just wheels and and a chassis with the promise that the company will design the rest of it at a later date.
15/12/2014 at 18:54 Pantalaimon says:
*something something Car analogy*
15/12/2014 at 19:00 Pantalaimon says:
Early Access is not a very complicated concept, really. If you like the look of what a game has to offer – today – and you want to support the dev – today – then put your money where your mouth is. A decision you are happy making today to back a project doesn’t somehow become a bad decision months down the line (or vice-versa).
I think a lot of people are merely afraid of someone turning around and pointing at the and saying ‘You backed WHAT?!’ Well, the people who would do that are idiots.
If you feel like a game is a worthy investment at an early stage then that’s what matters. You pay your money and you get your gameplay and the dev is very grateful for it. You’re not speculating on a future project, you’re buying the game immediately in front of you. Whatever happens down the line is largely neither here nor there.
15/12/2014 at 19:53 JiminyJickers says:
A high quality survival game without Zombies. Colour me interested.
16/12/2014 at 16:19 gbrading says:
I much prefer survival games where the survival aspect is more realistic and you’re not being hunted by zombies or mutants or whatever, so this shipwrecked-style game looks interesting. They could do a Life of Pi mode where you have to try and survive in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger.
17/01/2015 at 10:25 FreePSNCodesZone says:
Get Free PSN Codes here! http://www.freepsncodeszone.com