As soon as I saw the trailers and gameplay footage of Stranded: Alien Dawn I knew I wanted to get hands-on with it. After playing and enjoying games such as Surviving Mars, and Endzone: A World Apart I knew that this survival sim would be my cup of tea. The team at Haemimont Games are no stranger to the genre having worked on several Tropico titles, the already mentioned Surviving Mars and other games such as Victor Vran. Publisher Frontier Developments push some of the most successful games into the limelight so I had a feeling I was going to be consumed by this one. What I like is that this has had a simultaneous launch for Windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and also Playstation 4|5.

Introduction

From the outside looking in, this looked like a cross between Ark Survival Evolved and some of the most established RTS games out there. Stranded: Alien Dawn sets you off in a dangerous and unpredictable predicament where survival is key. Many have likened the game to Rimworld and I would agree with this and whilst the spontaneous nature of happenings isn’t quite as strong here, it isn’t too far off in terms of character and world-building. It probably won’t capture and reel you in for potentially thousands of hours like Rimworld but it has some very solid foundations to become a really exceptional contender if the development team at Haemimont Games decide to pursue further updates down the line. One thing is for sure though and that is that there are many possibilities and opportunities to explore here and it still makes for endless playtime if it clicks with you.

Choose Your Tribe Carefully

The early stages of the game will introduce you to the scenario you’d like to select along with choosing the cast of survivors you’d like to run with during your playthrough. What I liked about this was that each survivor you flick through has an in-depth biography of their characteristics with a few paragraphs of their life story so far. I must have spent a good fifteen minutes just glancing through the ones on offer and seeing their traits and what they can bring to their group. For example, some may have calming measures to bring a sense of relaxation to others whilst others may be a little more entertaining and eccentric. It also highlights whether there are relationships involved with others you may choose, like husband and wife for instance.

Alongside this, there is a breakdown of how they fare in their own personal skills such as combat, crafting, cooking, physicality and more. You really feel personality in the well-illustrated avatars of the people you’re about to play with before you even get going with the game and this is really well done. It shows a premise of longevity in the different clusters of survivors you take and whether you can balance their skills together. You aren’t going to want a bunch of people who can’t cook or fight because the consequences could be catastrophic.

Gameplay

My first run saw me and my survivors in the aftermath of a crash landing and miraculously all still alive. Standing amongst the debris almost like in a scene from Lost, the premise is now to survive. Those who are familiar with survival games such as Ark, Valheim and others will be familiar with the early game and gathering materials, crafting shelters, finding food and just trying to build everything up to be stronger together. Personally, I am a big fan of a tutorial in any game, as much as some like to skip, I like to learn and know exactly what I am letting myself in for, especially in a game with depth like this one. What is also great here is that help can be sought at any stage through the menus of the game and everything is explained step by step if you require it.

You can branch your survivors off to grab resources such as scrap metal, chop down trees and craft. It is satisfying seeing everyone working away to bring everything together for the cause, it reminds me of the first stages of an Age Of Empires run where your villagers are scrambling quickly to get a base together. With nothing more than a few metal shelters and some sleeping spots, you can start to branch out into building something more substantial. What is impressive is how much you can explore and discover both with new discovery resources and also researching technologies to advance in building as well as performing new tasks.

Do Your Research

Researching allows you to lengthen survival by allowing options like the production of antibiotics when someone on camp goes sick. You can also eventually craft useful features like solar panels to generate electricity from sunlight and defence systems in case your base comes under attack with so much more. It obviously costs resources to create all this additional stuff but putting in the research brings so many more options to your base building and it’s fun to have the full arsenal of options at your disposal.

How Long Can You Survive

The most addictive part of the game for me was how different the game becomes once you have a fully-fledged base that functions around the clock. Your crappy metal shelters will be long gone and you’ll have proper dwellings with nice beds instead of a sleeping bag on the floor. I enjoyed managing the piles of stock and resources I had as backup and before I knew it I was three years deep into the game. You’ll want to build defence systems to keep your base safe during attacks because they will absolutely happen. Constantly keeping your wits about you is absolutely paramount. Even the fluctuation of the weather cycle may throw you off guard so always be prepared.

Graphics & Audio

I noticed that there were some performance issues when I first started playing on console with frame drops every so often, especially when moving across the game world at speed. There has been an update or two since starting my review that appears to have smoothed almost all of this over. Visually though, the game presentation is awesome. The illustration of each game world was enjoyable to look at and uncover with brilliant detail on the terrain. How the worlds are designed had me actually thinking about where to build, where to look and how I’d like to explore further down the line.

The UI is not overbearing and blends well with the experience not sacrificing that all-important scene space, I liked how subtle this was. The audio matches the greatness of the graphics with an interesting soundtrack that was relaxing to listen to during those long casual sessions. The sound effects are equally brilliant with everything matching the aura and atmosphere of what was occurring at the time.

In Conclusion

Overall I was pleasantly surprised by Stranded: Alien Dawn as it is a game I hadn’t really paid much attention to until it arrived. I’m happy to report that it has been ported across to consoles fantastically. The control system works really well, this was one of my main concerns since these titles are usually best with mouse and keyboard. This will be still the case but I had no issues navigating and getting around with the Xbox controller.

If you’re into survival-based titles then this game is an absolute must and the potential for endless play seems to be there. The learning curve is quite steep but the tutorial is intuitive and you’ll pick up the basics pretty quickly if you’re into the RTS genre. Aside from a few niggly performance issues here and there, this is a very solid title that is well worthy of the reasonable £29.99 price tag.