Stranded: Alien Dawn

Review

Starting a new game, you will have the choice of starting Scenario. The choices on offer are Crash Landing, Trading Outpost and Military Outpost.  There is also Random if you cannot decide which to choose. Each of the scenarios has their own goals for completion. Crash Landing allows you to start with up to four characters who have escaped from the passenger ship, the Alien Dawn, in an escape pod after it had a critical hyperdrive malfunction.

The Trading Outpost scenario has up to three characters who bought a one-way ticket to unchartered territories in the hopes of becoming traders, earning enough Galacticions and buying the planet. The Military Outpost scenario has up to six characters of adventures, scientists and soldiers who have been sent to an infested planet. There you must construct and defend a communications relay that will allow for interstellar communications throughout the sector.

Next you have the choice of location from two regions - Desertum and Sobrius - and again there is a Random option if you cannot make your mind up. The two regions are very different; Desertum is a dry hot desert region with dry riverbeds, dunes and oases, while Sobrius is a region with large meadows and temperate mountains. Following your choice of location, you then have the choice of choosing one of four moons - Concordia, Jason, Nyx and Chaos - with each adding varying challenges to your game.

You also have six Modifiers to further customise your game: Game Difficulty, Easy, Medium and Hard, Very Hard and Insane. Not only will each difficulty prove to be a bigger challenge, but it will also dictate your starting resources. You also have Game Rules to help tweak your gaming experience.  There are six categories in which you can tweak your game and give yourself some bonus or restriction, such as having no aggressive animals.

Finally, you will have to choose your characters; how many will depend on your earlier choices. I went with the Crash-Landing scenario, so I had to choose four survivors from the thirty-five characters on offer. All the characters have some information about them - their background, age traits and relationships with other characters. The characters all have skills of varying levels.  There are eight different types of skills: Combat, Construction, Cooking, Crafting, Farming, Healing, Intellect and Physical.

Some characters are interested in some of the categories, so doing jobs linked to those skills will help keep your characters content with their current situation. Characters don’t always have skills within each of these categories; some characters are indifferent towards various skills, and others simply will not do jobs associated with certain skills. For example, there are characters who will not engage in combat, so you are unable to even give them a weapon for the protection of themselves, others or your settlement. On the other hand, if someone receives a weapon when they have a low skill level in combat, they can increase their combat level through fighting, which will help greatly when you come under attack, especially towards the beginning of the game. So, make sure you choose a good range of character skills when choosing your survivors.

You’re not going to get far on your initial resources but there are plenty of resources in your surrounding area to help you survive. You will find trees for wood and bushes for sticks, as well as rocks and ore, which you can use to get yourself started.  Building a camp will be high on your list of things to do so that you can survive in this strange new world.

Your camp will need a campfire for light and warmth at night, and also for cooking simple recipes. You are also going to need some shelter and straw beds on which to sleep. To begin with they’ll be basic, but they’re better than nothing at all. The shelters can also be used to protect your stockpile of resources as you collect them. Resources such as foods like grain and berries will eventually rot, so you could cook recipes with them, or pickle them to make them last longer.

Once you have the required resources you can build a workbench, which will allow you to craft new and better items to help you and your group survive. You will also be able to build new desks such as the research, tailoring and soldering desks, which will all provide new technology, weapons and clothes.  You’ll be able to create new and better things to help you expand your base and maybe help to keep you alive that little bit longer.

Creating a research desk will allow you to unlock new technologies. There is plenty of technology to research and unlock, anything from furniture, weapons and equipment to automatic defences, power distribution and even animal training.

It will take one of your characters to work at the various desks in order to produce items, craft equipment, weapons and unlock new technologies. For a character to craft anything, or for them to unlock some new technology, it will take anything from a few hours to a few days of working at the required desk.

The game is divided into days and seasons; your characters will have to work, craft, rest throughout each day while not only trying to build and protect themselves for now but also for the upcoming seasons. It’s no good trying to plant crops in winter when there’s snow on the ground.  Be sure that you have the right clothing for each season, too; running around in your boxers might make you feel alive in the cold breeze of winter, but it can have a serious effect on your health eventually. You can customise your characters for the work they will or won’t do each day. You can also tell them when to sleep and work and when they can have quality time for themselves.

You are not the only beings living on the planets, there are creatures, too. Most creatures are harmless but some will attack you or your camp at some point in time. They will usually attack in larger swarms as time goes by.  But you are not helpless from these attacks; you can craft weapons to help defend yourselves and your camp, and you can also unlock defences such as traps, flamethrowers and even automatic weapons once you have unlocked the technology and have the energy to power such weapons.

You are going to have to make sure your characters are happy and healthy. If they become injured through combat they can bleed out if they don’t get any treatment, or if they become sick, they can die. If a character's mental health takes a hit, they can go on a rampage and start smashing the hell out of things or have a complete breakdown.

If your characters die, then things will start to become harder as you have fewer people in your group to farm, harvest, craft and just generally do anything required to stay alive. There is a chance that you could find new characters when you send one of your group out on explorations. Unlocking the Hot Air Balloon technology will allow you to visit new locations that will become available to you as you progress. You could find various resources as well as new characters at these locations, but you could also find trouble; you just won’t know until you go and investigate.

I have enjoyed playing Stranded: Alien Dawn so far. I have failed miserably a few times at surviving, but it keeps me coming back trying to improve.

I have found that building something or crafting items may take a while. This is generally not much of a problem, but there are those times when you really need your characters to do something there and now. This can be overcome by directing a character to perform or not perform certain actions, allowing them to spend more time doing the things you want them to.

The UI feels a bit clunky, but I can live with that.

The graphics are good, and the developers have been adding new content to the game since I first played it earlier this year. So, I’m looking forward to seeing how things look in the future.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com

Stranded: Alien Dawn Steam Store Page