Stranded Deep

When your whole world comes crashing down and you're the only survivor, how are you expected to rebuild from that? Whilst many would sit back and give up, Stranded Deep lets you face every fear. From unknown creatures dwelling below the surface to harsh weather conditions that keep knocking you down, are you going to get up and fight? Or will you sit back and let life take its course?

I've pretty much always had a love/hate relationship with the survival genre, though it may not be what you think...

If you persevere, there may be some small enjoyment to be found in Stranded Deep. After all, it is (mostly) functionally playable. But most, including myself, won’t be in a hurry to load it up again after their first few hours.

If you have enough spare time and patience, Stranded Deep can guarantee you that your time will not be wasted, and you will not have to spend too much money or space on the hard drive either.

Stranded Deep has borderline wretched controls and has some crafting and survival mechanics that make the boy scout and backpacker in me furrow my brow in confusion. That being said, the game is fun and exceptionally rewarding!

The game absolutely shines when it comes to its core feature of crafting… It’s a welcome challenge with solid and addictive gameplay

Stranded Deep is a recommended crafting game that unfortunately muds with its ugliness and its mistakes an evolution system that is fun and engaging.

Stranded Deep is a fun, engaging, challenging title with heaps of potential. If you enjoy the more realistic create and craft genre, heavy with resource management and land/sea exploration, you will have a whale of a time exploring and surviving every inch of the tropical map.

Despite its questionable development status, Stranded Deep has a lot to offer. I’d welcome further development, but even in its current incarnation, this compelling survival sim is more than worth diving into.

To sum up, Stranded Deep is an absolutely fantastic game. It looks great, it sounds great, and it plays great. I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves survival games or sims, anyone who loves crafting, and anyone who needs something either immersive-enough or peaceful-enough to help them through lockdown or quarantine. If you love the ocean, you are bound to love Stranded Deep. I’ve been passionate about the sea and everything in it since I was tiny, and this game does not disappoint. I was horribly disappointed with Sea of Thieves because of the sheer lack of anything to see or find underwater, but Stranded Deep does not fall into this trap at all. I was overwhelmed with the attention to detail on things like a shark — you can even see the markings on their skin. For an indie game, it’s astonishing that so much time and money has been spent on their oceans. A lot of devs would have cut corners here, but Beam Team Games didn’t. Check out more fantastic game reviews at OpenCritic.com or have a look at our recent articleslike us looking back at The Last Of Us. How do you feel about Stranded Deep? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter @thecognetwork. As always, thanks for reading COG!