Stranded Deep

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.

All in all, Stranded Deep is good fun and will keep you entertained for a few hours. There are a lot of things to do, but a few features seem to be missing (multiplayer would be our main suggestion, but we'd also like bigger and colonisable islands). It's a good survival experience with a lot to offer, but it could have been great with a few choice additions.

Available now on the Xbox Store for Xbox One, Stranded Deep represents a survival videogame in one of the purest forms: desert island life. It is certainly not a difficult concept to conceive, but Stranded Deep is an excellent example of a notion done countless times in other media. There is an open-endedness to it for those looking for a new way of life but there is also a primary objective for those wanting to escape.

Though not quite stellar, Stranded Deep does a decent enough job of enabling the player to live out their castaway fantasies. It's just something of a shame that the occasionally clumsy UI and lack of multiplayer functionality make the game a little less compelling than it needs to be. Nonetheless, those looking for island bound thrills of escaping deadly shark attacks, delving down into forgotten wrecks and living the life of an island castaway will find much to love in Stranded Deep on PS4.

Stranded Deep è un survival nudo e crudo, più indicato ai grandi fan del genere che non ai neofiti. La produzione di Beam Team si propone come un’alternativa essenziale e fieramente hardcore ai vari Rust, ARK e simili, ma finisce per inciampare - almeno su console - su un comparto tecnico approssimativo e un adattamento del sistema di controllo tutt’altro che impeccabile.

Stranded Deep non dispone di contenuti e varietà paragonabile ai survival più famosi e nel complesso ogni sua meccanica è abbastanza derivativa. Il gioco non corre rischi e propone proprio ciò che i fan del genere si aspettano: per questo motivo è un'avventura solida e godibile. I problemi tecnici e di interfaccia sono spiacevoli, ma non sono così gravi da rendere Stranded Deep ingiocabile.