Stranded: Alien Dawn review (my expeirence and thoughts)

[PizzaDeliveryBoy]

I've spent ~90 hours in the game and I REALLY liked it. It's somewhat rough around the edges, but the overall experience imo is very positive. I rarely do reviews like that, but I had so much fun with the game, that I wanted to share some thoughts and experience with whoever is going to be interested.

A couple of things beforehand:
1. I found the game accidentally, saw the trailer and gave it a shot. Didn't regret it.
2. I haven't had experience in such genre. I haven't played RimWorld, so this is a first for me.

Let's go through the experience first and make up some conclusions afterwards.

I've played 2 sessions, both around ~40+ hours. First session was an exploration one, because I went in pretty much blindfolded, without knowing how exactly characters work, how priorities function, what is better to research first and how things work and so on (that said I finished tutorials beforehand, that gave me basics, but they were not enough to know all the details)... I ended up being attacked over and over, getting stuck in a cycle of fight->heal from injuries->try to restock as much as you can->fight again->heal from injuries->and again and again and again... unending loop of getting attacked, healing and restocking. It was frustrating, but I saw that there were problems with my management and some decisions that I made prior and I've decided to restart a new. Let's concentrate on the 2nd play, because on my 2nd time I was playing WAY more optimized and ended up automating almost 100% of the entire life cycle.

2nd playthrough:

Started with the crew.
Tbh, I'm not a fan that you can pick who is going - you can cherry pick the best survivors and have the easiest time of you life or you can do the opposite... imo the problem is that you're given the choice at all. When you can choose your destiny, you will try to pick the best options by default and I can't help but to think that I'm cheatin in a way. I guess what I'm trying to say is if there was a "blind random" option, I would use it for the purpose of fun and random experience.
I've stopped myself on choosing Quin, Emily, Nova and Simon. 2 dudes, 2 dudettes to maybe get them going inbetween, sounds balanced in theory.
Then I understood that I was generating map due to map seed and I had a pretty clear idea of the base I wanted to make, which was a huge rectangle-shaped base with minimum 2 straight entrances for defense, that meant that I requried a huge open plato with a lot of space... and so I started generating maps. I've found out that maps might not be generated, but rather your position on those maps are? I've been inputting various names I had in my head like "VALHALLA" or "AZEROTH" in the map seed and I found out that 2 completely different names gave me the same map, but I landed in different parts of it... anyway I stopped on the map "FOR-THE-ALLIANCE" (lol), where I had a very nifty location not far from the crash site, with all the resources required and a giant plato space for base building.

Game experience:

Everything went well, resources are flowing, pre-base is building, enemies are fought, energy weapons are stored until flying bugs arrive. And everything would be well, if not Nova deciding to get herself brain worms... She gave me a chocie of healing herself or with a slight chance dealing herself brain damage, so I didn't risk it and left her brain up to the insects, giving her slight debuff. In a day a thunderstorm happend, but since I didn't have lightning rods just yet, I found out that ligthning CAN and WILL hunt you down. Nova was on her salvage mission and so was thunderstorm, striking her down THRICE. Thus after brainworms Nova got herself a PERMANENT NEURAL DAMAGE. From a strong and capable warrior, Nova has become a slow, wandering, always-in-pain, brainwormy vegetable that couldn't even cook, since her cooking was at minimum and even after some time she was cooking 3x times longer what Emily could. Nova was in pain and so was I until the very end of the session.

The rest of the game went pretty much... okay-ish, nothing extraodinary, except for the extra frost day, where temperature fell down lower extra 20 grad, which was lethal for anybody, because crafting clothes in this game is pure pain and agony due to the crafting time. If you have 1 person 24/7 crafting clothes, you can have yourself winter/summer jacket+trousers+boots timesx 4(people) plus melee and ranged weapons (pikes and arbalets), but you need to pretty much sacrifice 1 person to craft 24/7 and not to do anything else at all - this person is THE CRAFTER. It's not as easy when you have 3 people and 1 living vegetable though, so I was short both on sticks and furcoats and I haven't built any heaters yet. So staying in the house and ONLY in some places in house that had furnaces was paramount to survive... Unfortunately characters are not as smart and they REALLY love to take a walk outside... life threatening walks were their jam it seems, because going out to -30 when you can handle only -14 is something only suiciders would decide. I didn't understand that at first and got 3/4 people going on suicidal walks from which they didn't come back in a single day. After reloading the autosave I had to maket hem all wander around the house manually, making sure they wouldn't suicide themselves because they wanted to "have a walk" in -30. For 3 days I had to tell them to go to bed and sleep 12+ hours a day and the rest of the time to play, eat and just wander around the main building. Well that was fun. Such a thing hasn't ever happend again.
One time I hade pretty frustrating experience with the electricity because the game hasn't told you anything about charging/disharging mechanic. And unless you're an engineer, you won't even expect that your electrical gadgets must not exceed batterie's 100/200 charge rate even if they are full on electricity, or you will get an entire grid shut down... during an enemy attack... over and over... and the game won't tell you about it, you just need to know that yourself... somehow. I got that information only on the forums, because myself I am an artist and I have 0 understanding of the engineering/electiricty. It was frustrating as hell to not know why my entire grid fell apart when I was attacked by mutant mosquitos. Back then I thought that they had some electro-magnetic powers that were shutting down the entire thing and that it was a game design to fight the most ANNOYING and OVERPOWERED enemy by hands... by hands of 3 people, don't forget, because one of 4 was a walking pillow of pain that was eating my resources and without giving anything in return.

After figuring out how charge/discharge thing works everything went back to normal and the game pretty much went normally from this point on.
Simon has become a lone wolf, pretty much annoying literally everyone. Meanwhile Quin out of all people was the stallion everybody wanted it seemed... At first he and Nova became lovers and engaged, which gave Nova reason to live - she has always been in pain even though she periodically smoked painrelievers and has always had 0 happiness, being on the brink of meltdowns (but not ever having them, which was strange). After the engagement and putting their beds together, she finally had enough happiness that hold somewhere in the middle of the avatar-meter. After 3 years though I suddenly saw that Emily and Quin have become lovers despite him and Nova were still a thing (?). I realised that I created either a harem, or there's some intricate things going. Unfortuantely game doesn't have enough depth to show off lovers fighting or something and later on Quin and Emily started dating, while Nova went back to a lone room, loosing her only reason to be happy again. Oh, Nova, you and your brainworms... I was sad for her, but I hoped that brainworms gave her some rest later, because she was able to keep being happy afterwards... or was it mist that gave her an insight bonus that she constantly was flying to? We will never know...

I've spent 15 in-game-years on this session and haven't found a single new survior, which made me very sad and when the time came to leaving the planet, I've decided to throw away the idea of a non-stop automated colony and just leave. Out of all people BRAINWORMED, NEURAL-DAMAGED Nova volunteered to be the last one standing... I sent her away the first space voyage that came by. In the next 2 years I've sent away the rest of the team, ending their adventures (and Nova's endless suffering, I hope she got treated somewhere).

[PizzaDeliveryBoy]

I was satisfied with the overall experience, but there are still problems that I'm sure will be fixed. Still, let me share some pluses and cons that I have encountered.

Pluses (+):

- Deep management mechanics;
you can control almost everything, it allows to automate almost the entire life cycle);
- Crafting is not to deep, but it's pretty wide
a lot of things to get yourself into;
- Game cycle is very well thought out;
farm, craft, explore, build, fight, repair and so on - there's always something to do, always something to improve upon;
- Pretty neat world to see;
though not too different from ours, some more alien-ish things that go out of our usual concepts would be cool;
- Nice visual designs;
the game is just pretty to look at - ncie rendering, nice colors, nice models. I was enjoying autumn more times than one;
- Good balance between automation and hand-management requirements;
even though its an early access, the game is well balanced in what it already has. It's far from perfect though;
- There's not too much music, but what there is works well.
Would be great to have more variations, because it might get annoying after dozens of hours played;
- Unique stories during air baloon adventures is a great idea.
Make much more of them, give them more consequences that would influence characters (their characteristics or maybe even behaviour).

Negatives (-):

- AI is somewhat questionable.
Characters can do some weird stuff that could kill them despite being illogical (like walking out to build a snow man in cold -30 when they can handle only -17). I had a refrigerator with mushrooms that couldn't ever spoil and they wouldn't empty this fridge for a YEAR despite me disabling all of the options. I had to wait for a year for them to USE those mushrooms in dishes before they actually emptied the fridge. Why there is no task to "empty the object" boggles my mind. When they hunt if attacked they run away(?).
This aspect is very specific, so I suspect that devs could improve AI more, but they would need some specifics. AI needs some further work though.
p.s. I see a lot of feedback on steam where people say that scheduling or adjusting priorities don't work and I disagree. After I have manually established priorities to everyone, they all worked exactly as I wanted them to. The problem lies within some specifics, and players should just manage priorities more carefully.
- World exploration is non-existent.
Migrating from your base to another place could take you YEARS even if your other base is like 15 meters to the south. It's minblowing how long it takes characters to relocate all of their stuff. Because of this players are demotivated to look and explore around the map. It's easier to just re-sample the world until you finally get crashed very near to the spot of your choice.
Despite world being filled with plants and animals, the lack of truly unique objects is one more reason why the world has no reason to be so big - if you build a farm near your base, you pretty much dont have any reason to explore the rest of the map.
Relocating to another place is madness, map is big, filled with stuff, yet completely empty.
Imo air baloon discoveries require more dialogue and more story driven dialogues. Make adventures there like what planet adventures in Space Rangers 2 were - highly variable text-based adventures with consequences. This game already has such things, but make them longer and much more variable.
- Melee combat is detrumental, you will only get hurt.
Boost melee combat, give any reasons to use it, because right now kiting and shooting is the best way to fight anything at all times. Getting in melee will only get you hurt, you want to avoid it at all times. Shields maybe (personal generated fields even)?
- Hostile Hummingflies are way too overpowered.
1 - they don't care about the walls;
2- they are way too fast to care about the automated defense system, turrets are not fast enough to start shooting them, hummingflies just ignore them and fly to kill characters too quickly;
3 - they are insanely fast, you can't kite them, but you can only shoot them, and I had waves of 50 of them - unless you have a working defense system and a bunker near it - it's a death sentence;
4 - in the endgame I started having them non-stop, like, only hummingflies and no other enemies. It was absurd.
- Crafting time to clothes life time ratio is absurd.
It takes 1 full day or 2 working days for a 10/10 craftsman to sew a part of the clothes -> you have 4 characters -> you need at least a jacket, pants, boots times 2 (for summer and winter) and a weapon to survive (preferrably with a spear) - 7 items (minimum) for a person, thus you need to craft at least 28 items per year to live through standard year (without abnormal events) -> it takes around 2 normal working days for crafter to craft 1 thing, so 28x2=56 days to craft minimum to exist without stressing out a crafter and since clothes die out, by the time you end up doing these 28 items, your old items would have already died, thus you equip new ones and you are left with nothing again, thus you start crafting all of them from 0. And don't even get me going about adding hats and shirts to this... Does it work? Yes. Is that fun? Hell no. -1 person who needs to craft weapons and clothes and nothing else. Annoying.
- Crafting balance in the late game is absurd.
By the late game you will most likely have around 20 lamps, 6 freezers, 12 turrets, 10 sensors, 9 windmills, 15 sun energy mirrors and 5 energy batteries plus ~10-15 additional electronics for crafting etc - and they all will breaking down periodically, requiring constant flow of metals and electronics. It's insanity. In a single day you could lose up to 10 electronics, because you had several things break. The flow-in of the metals and electronics should be on the constant level and if you're not lucky on ship dropping events, you're pretty much failed. Got no luck during scavenge and no electronics? 1 of your teammates will have to spend their entire life crafting electronics, because a crafter that has 10/10 crafting can craft ~2 electronics per day. You will need luck to make it sustainable, lots of it. If you add up a dude who needs to make clothes on constant basis, you will have 2 people who need to ONLY craft day and night. So basically -2 people, doing only 1 job.
This is not fun imo. It's not fun to sit and check whether you have "this one resource or object" in order to keep doing what you're doing on constant basis. It's pretty obnoxious.
Imo balance of crafting should be adjusted. Either make lifecycles/break chances longer or make crafting time 1,5 times faster.
I want my guys to do something other than "stand behind desk all day long".
- Metal is insanely requried in the late game, but the resources for it are limited.
If you're not lucky enough to get enough meteor rains or crashed ships near your base, you will be done. Give some kind of ability to mine ore where you are, some kind of machine that requires a lot of energy, but allows you to fill up at the very least metall resource, making it unlimited as long as you have electricity for it (maybe allow to build unlimited ore mines or something).
- Relations between characters right now are extremly limited.
They will be represented mostly in stat change or in text above their heads. It's extremely basic. Add some actions to them, make them fight, give them some discussion animations, anything that would make them do more than just exist. My 2 engaged people have never even kissed. Right now I dont really believe that they are alive, they kind of are there, but if you wont read what they do, you will never know if something is even happening there.
- Permanent damage is fun in concept but is a total sh****ck when experienced.
Having Nova neural damaged with brain worms throughout the entire game was a nightmare to sustain - she was useless as hell and a pain for me. Allow some sort of surgery on high levels in endgame to fix such problems that would require a lot of resources.

- Personal wishes to see in the future:

- We need 2+ storey building;
Allow people to build 2nd floor and make undergrounds for storing puprposes. It will make building much more flexible and fun. What is there right now is already good, but it would be awesome to have multy-layered buidling system.
- Also bridges to build between different buidlngs that would allow characters to traverse udner them without the need to change their paths.
- More enemy variety.
So far all enemie waves that I had were: ticks, little scorpions, little mantises, and bugflies. 3/4 are being stopped by just flamethrowers. Giant mantis, scorpions that shoot ranged and hornhead animal are unqiues that I havent ever seen again in wave attacks and I had played 15 in-game-years.
Keep adding more variety or rng to it. Maybe mix waves inbetween?
- More turret variety would be also good.
Imo rockets are pretty much useless, since flamethrowers do the same job, but without friendly fiering buildings. Laser and minigun is ok, but not enough, especially since 4 turrets can't deal with 160 bugs wave, so you need flamethrowers even in the late game (its kind of sad that turrents are not enough by themselves to deal with hordes, I had 6 of them, still not even close).
Minefield artillery ie? When enemy is in range it fires mines in their location.
- Laser mines? Like what Resident Evil film had that would be cutting eneimies when they go through it.
- More weapons variety.
Automated rifles for example? Hand grenade launchers? Simple grenades even? Double pistols? Shotguns? Miniguns? Revolvers?
- Farming automation of sorts.
Something that would plant and harvest automatically.
- Crafting automation maybe?
Leave the crafting balance as it is, but make an automated sewing machine that crafts clothes by itself, allowing you to use characters somewehre else. Same goes for electronics.
- Some kind of personalised vehicle that would allow to transoprt resources from point A to B faster than on foot (which takes years).
Bikes? Buggy cars? Maybe some sorts of trains even? A trolley?
- Some use of water would be cool.
I had a lake not far from me, but game has nothing to do with it so far. Kind of sad that my characters can't use water for anything.
- Maybe changing main priority?
When getting to a certain part of the game with certain achievements, instead of escaping characters could be willing to stay and continue colonising the planet further? Maybe the diffculty after such a decision could become higher, more difficult waves etc, in some way a more hardcore-ish mode initiator.
- More music variety.
As I mentioned before - what there is works, but it gets annoying at some point. Having more compositions would be cool.

So far these are all of my thoughts.

I know that there seem to be al ot of negatives, but when playing those can be dealt with, so even now game can be enjoyed a lot. I surely have enjoyed it and I think I will again, because I already have new ideas for base building.
Game is a lot of fun and I'm really happy to find such a little jewel out of nowhere. I will play and happily await new content from developers.

All of the luck to them! In a few years with updates this game will be insane!

[PizzaDeliveryBoy]

P.s. I know that potentially there are much more insane wishes that I could've mentioned like add human enemies, raiders or thugs... Add traders, trade mechanics, outposts, quests and events on the map to deal with, etc. There are dozens of cool ideas on the forums, much cooler than what I have mentioned. But I used to be a game developer and I understand that such mechanics would require a tremendous amount of additional work, that would have to be developed from 0. Adding an entire faction mechanic with other humans would require insane amount of work and looks to me as some sort of DLC rather than an updated version of the game that we already have, that leads us to 1.0.
Right now I think that game requires improvements of mechanics that are already there or that could be developed upon and further.

Of course having humanoid enemies and relations with such would be awesome in the future though.
This game has insane potential, I'm really interested to see in what way it will be developed.