Stranded: Alien Dawn is a colony builder in the style of Rimworld that just left Early Access for its 1.0 release. It’s made by Haemimont Games and published by Frontier Foundry. This is far from a review since I have only clocked in about three hours of the game before I asked for a refund on Steam. I will explain why.
3D Rimworld
The game itself seems fine, and overall it seems well-made, especially the visuals and the accompanying animations of humans and flora. However, the problem I have with it stems from what it takes inspiration from, namely Rimworld. After about three hours of gameplay, I got a really strange sense of déjà vu. I have played this game before, and lots of it – around nine hundred hours to be exact. And that’s the thing, too much feels and looks like Rimworld, almost all of the menus are designed the same way. The format is almost the same, survive on an alien world with an increasing threat to the colony, except, from what I know, the only threat here comes from the weird alien wildlife – that includes dogs for some bizarre reason.
That sinking feeling of threading old ground hit me hard, and it’s a shame, because a 3D Rimworld seems like a really great idea, and something I would enjoy – if it came with substantial new or different stuff. As it is, the only real thing Stranded has to go for it comparable, is the graphics. It has fewer features otherwise, but that is understandable, yet, when you copy stuff like this, you better have something more to make it stand out. Unfortunately, the game does not, however, I once more got to say that Stranded seems pretty good otherwise. But if you have played Rimworld, or similar titles before for a substantial amount of time, it might become a little too familiar…
Thanks for reading.
/Thomas
Tom's Gaming Blog 