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Stranded: Alien Dawn

TLDR: It’s good, but there are a lot of things I hope to see moving forward. As of right now, it’s a fun enough playpen, but the game can be more dynamic. This game is getting a lot of comparisons to Rimworld (fair enough), but I would say it’s also reminiscent of games like Endzone (2021). With more elements, the game can definitely stand on its own.
The Good:
- The characters: At the beginning of a game, you can choose four (I hate that we’re stuck on the number four) individuals with custom backstories, skills, traumas, and relationships with each other. Once your survivors land on your randomly generated map, these personalities can cause moods to sour, or for moods to improve. I like that this adds a more social aspect to the game, and encourages me not to just pick the most skilled people. I see a lot of replayability once this feature is more ironed out.
- The world is beautiful and alien. This is one of the rare games that crashlands you on an alien planet, and the planet feels 1) similar enough to Earth to be survivable, but also 2) different enough to be traversed on a spaceship. If you turn your settings up (but don’t), the land is especially detailed and gorgeous. I really enjoyed just looking around.
- There is more to the game than survival . I’ve been playing Clanfolk (2022) recently (which I also recommend if you like Rimworld), and one thing that game has had me think about is the line between survival and living. At first, a good survival/builder game should really toe the line of ‘whatever it takes to survive’ and once that line is finally reached, there needs to be a significant focus on enrichment items. I love seeing how much beyond the bare minimum there is in terms of gameplay. You don’t just make bare minimum meals, or soups, you can also make cakes, or steaks. You don’t just eat berries; you can turn them into fine wines. Characters want to live life pleasurably, and I like that there are the means (at least a bit) to do so.
- The animals : What weird little guys. What funky little creeps. There are ones I want to pet, and ones that if I ever saw them in real life I would turn heel and run.
- The plants : Look yummy. No critiques.
Things I’d Like to See:
- Character Logic : Sometimes the characters will give you a peek into how they are feeling and what they need, but these moments are too few, and too far apart. Regularly my characters start hating each other, even when living in the best conditions and I never really get why. I would love to get more explanations about how and why the social aspects are working in this game.
- The decorations : A new floor does not ‘not a cavedweller’ make. Maybe there are more of these options much further down, but it’s something I keep waiting for and not quite getting. I want to add personality to the places that I build, and to make the lives lived there individual. Right now things feel a bit too…nondescript.
- More enrichment : Similar to the comment above.
- More characters : I like the choices as for now, but I really would like to start with more than four characters. Some people have relationships with multiple people, and it would be nice to include more complex groupings in your camp.
- More story/chances : The story, as it is, is so bare bones, it feels nonexistent. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t start this game thinking I was playing a typically RPG. However, I did expect a bit more. In other similar games, the onus is on the player to make the story, but with that responsibility the game also gives the players the tools to do so. This game does not. With that in mind, I would really like to see the developers commit to this being either a) An experience driven by choices they’ve made, with more chance cars and story elements coming to the area we’ve landed on, or B) An experience driven by choices that the player makes, with more options for creativity (like a create-a-character, choosing how many people are part of your initial camp, having more control over the severity of individual elements, etc) OR, ideally, a combination of both.
The game synopsis says that this game lets your forge your own story, I’d like to see a bit more of that.
- Families : Not to bring up Rimworld, but I really do like to see families in games like these. Not because it’s ‘like the Sims’ (which is a poor critique btw), but because lineages mark the passage of time and growth. Children and relationships change the dynamic of a community, just like elders do. I want to see that my actions matter, I want to see their long-term consequences. On the one hand, I think this would be more complex to do because of the rigid character selection screen at the beginning of the game, but I also still think that this absolutely is a need for this game (and not a DLC. A Basegame need).
- Creating our own Characters: Like I said above, I would like to create my own character, and create characters with relationships that I would like to see playout in my game. Personally, I’m a fan of having a tad bit more control over the story than this game provides, especially since once you get out of the survival stage the game can feel stagnant.
The Not So Good:
- It runs like a donkey : Golly gee willikers, it runs so badly sometimes. I’ve already had a complete crash. I’m not as up to date on my tech talk as some of the other people leaving reviews, but it sounds like there are DRM issues, and system-unfriendly aspects to this game. Not sure why this was necessary.
- Unclear Motivations : So far, in the hours I’ve put into this game, the main issue that I’ve had, is that I’m not really clear on what this game wants to be yet. Whose story is being told, to what end are the characters given choices, beyond clicking here and there, what is my purpose as the player here? The comparisons to Rimworld (as opposed to Endzone) in this respect seem kind of bizarre. At times I feel like I’m just building, and fighting (very Endzone), but rarely do I feel like I’m managing a colony coming into its own (which is what I associate with Rimworld). I need to, at the very least, understand the characters better. I look forward to having more influence on how this game plays out.
- ROT : Maybe I missed something, but the ROT is driving me insane. Food goes bad, and you can’t get rid of it. It just sits on the shelves, and worst than that, the survivors EAT IT. There’s a cake sitting next to a pile of rotten berries, and you eat the rotten berries??? Are you kidding me, my guy? There are a bunch of little things like that that just send me to the moon.

If You Liked This You Might Also Like:
- Rimworld lol.
- Endzone
- Clanfolk


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