Have you imagined what life would be like if you were stranded on a raft in the middle of the ocean?
Well, no, neither had I – but I found out regardless when I played Raft, by Redbeet Interactive.
The game begins with you waking up on a small wooden raft. You have no food, no water, and the only tool you have is a plastic hook on some rope. Guess you need to get more tools to expand your raft, and then get to exploring.
If you don’t starve to death first, of course.
Because – SURPRISE – this is an Early Access survival game. It has been available on Steam since May 2018, but only received a hint of a story line in December 2019. So far, only the first part of this episodic story has been released, with chapter two suposedly on its way in summer 2020 – no official date has been announced yet.
Like I said, this is a survival game and has many mechanics and tropes of the genre. Resource collection, for example. Finding the resources isn’t all that hard. In fact, they come to you! Isn’t that nice of them? Naturally, you’ll find planks of wood, plastic bottles, and even entire barrels of miscillaneous goods drifitng through the waters.
Seriously, where were these barrels being transported to and/or from? Why is someone transporting stones, palm leaves and potatoes in the same unlabelled barrel?
Because the resources come to you, it removes one of the more annoying features of survival games which is actually finding resources which aren’t 30 miles away from your base. But Raft keeps the most irritating aspect. You need to eat about 8000 times a day, and drink 36 litres of water each day. In other words, this survival game expects you to survive. I know, the audacity of it all!
Once you have the food and water sorted out, you have the other health hazard to contend with.
The Shark.
Your new neighbour isn’t a fan of you living, but he does admit that you and your raft look pretty tasty. Try to get off the raft to explore an island or find materials under the surface, and you become a snack. But remember, you’re starving and he’s a very big fish… you can solve these problems with one stone very pointy stick. If you manage to kill the shark, you can use his head as a trophy, or wear it like a very dashing hat.
If dying and shark-hunting is a turn off for you, maybe try out the game’s other difficulty settings. Creative allows you to build up your raft without hunger, thirst, or attacks without even having to find your resources. Build up the most beautiful raft you can with no issues whatsoever. Just don’t expect it to move. No matter how many engines you attach, it won’t budge. If you’d like to collect and explore, try Peaceful (no shark, reduced hunger) or Easy (reduced hunger and you can keep your inventory if you die).
For anyone who likes a challenge, give Hard a try. Increased thirst and hunger issues, plus tougher and more frequent shark attacks.
You could argue that the game is trying to make a comment on polution. There should, by no means, be that amount of liter in the ocean. There are valid questions to be asked regarding the lack of varied sealife, large land masses and people. Maybe we should preaise the notion of creatively recycling these reclaimed materials into lifesaving apparatus. Someone concerned with the current state of the environment may say that Raft is attempting to start an important conversation.
And you could say those things. But I’m pretty sure you’d be wrong.
I keep saying it, but Raft is an Early Access survival game. The market is oversaturated with zombies and scary forests. A chill survival game on the ocean? That’s different, but it needs to work out somehow. Sometimes, games are just cool ideas with no deeper meaning to them.
While survival games don’t exactly float my boat (I’m not sorry for the pun), I find Raft to be really enjoyable. It has its hiccups and issues, like sometimes items won’t work from your inventory and it’s not exactly a pretty game, but it is still in development. It’s hard to be picky when the game is still being made, and I’m just playing it early.
Given that I’ve already bought the game, it’s reassuring to know that it is actively being worked on. There are frequent updates adding new crafting materials and decorative items into the game, plus the continuing story line – I’m excited to see what gets added next! But would I be as eager had I played alone, or not already bought the game in 2018? Probably not. I’d maybe wait until full release, or it went on sail sale.
Just give me one fine day of plain sailing weather
If you would like to give Raft a go, it’s available on PC! Compatible with Windows and Linux – so grab some shipmates and get aboard.
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