Stranded: Alien Dawn Review (phoneticdecay)
I was hoping to be able to write a positive review. This game has numerous elements that make it a worthy addition to the genre.
Rimworld is among the ultimate colony simulator, but man the graphics leave a lot to be desired. Focusing so much on the sim experience really pushed the engine and did not allow much of a visual aesthetic.
This game is trying to balance that visual 3D element while incorporating as much sophistication as they can on the management end.
The character interactions are lovely, with a great deal of mod support being geared at increasing the immersion and realism of the colonists. The building mechanics of this game have a few bugs, but ultimately use a series of tools that are easy to master and lead to some really awesome builds.
However the AI and Priority assignments of the colonists leaves a lot to be desired. Some amateur coders have developed a few mods that try to sort out some of the bugs and quirks that seem to contribute to frustrations.
A simple example would be prioritizing a crafting station to produce 5 of type of food. Once 5 units of the food have been crafted, the colonist will continue with another task. Until someone comes and eats a single unit of food and then colonist responsible for cooking will stop gardening to rush over and make a single unit of the missing food.
This is one of the most frustrating aspects of the game and contributes to a great deal of my frustration.
Some of the Character oriented mods have been able to correct this troublesome quirk, to a degree... but my primary source of grief is a lack of customer support.
I have a VFX bug that persists. Searching the net at large has yielded a handful of others that claim to encounter the same bug as me.
During construction of certain structers like foundations & garden plots, a visual underlay will be shown beneath the texture of ground / object. It creates a swath of land that appears to be highliy reflective. It makes the game all but unplayable. Everyone that i have spoke to with this issue has an AMD machine.
The developers and customer support are refusing to engage or acknowledge the issue at all. Instead of anonymous in game bug reports, i would like to be able to have an email exchange with someone too try an figure out if i should just get a refund.
I have reported the bug in game and connected with "developer" on a steam thread. So far it is apparently a lack of my drivers being up to date. Despite all drivers being current and others claiming this issue only appeared after they increased system requirements mid Early Access. My machine is not top of the line, but exceeded parity of those on Nvidia boxes that were able to play.
The game looks epic and what parts of it i was able to engage with gave be a bi of joy... however i really cannot play the game and developers seem oblivious to my issue because it falls into such a small number of people experiencing it,
Like any Early Access title.. or title period... read some of the discussions and reviews before purchasing the game.
I recommend looking at Mercury Fallen or Going Medevial if you want a game with similiar mechanics and gameplay.