I recommend this game to anyone that wants to be wowed with a fantastically immersive, intriguing, highly original content environment, story line, and a sandbox environment letting you progress through the story at your own pace, or just mull around and try not to perish. Following the story line does help you discover new ways to overcome challenges that are much more difficult to overcome in early stages, but as you grow and learn new skills, get new blueprints for better gear, build them, you find you can ease of the intensity without a constant grind. But you will not get there easy, and sometimes you have to be imaginative and creative and think about how to use newly learned recipes in a new place to overcome issues you face in the new place. There are puzzles to solve, items to find, materials you can only find a few times and then those have a limited lifetime, so learning alternatives will help you adapt. Sure, there are some bugs here and there, it is early access at the time I write this, but for the money spent, I already feel I derived a ton of value from the game, with moments of terror, thrill, accomplishment, fun, and awe were worth it! I have no history with the game, did not even get the demo, just came across it a few weeks earlier, tried it out, and then proceeded to spend over a hundred hours playing it, longing for it when I slept, thinking about it while working, just unable to not play when I faced a particular unsolved challenge. I even made up my own goals long after finishing the game, from building, to challenges in making one of every possible thing, like all armor sets, or maxing out food drying skill, figuring out which armor was best in which situations, learning which medicines would heal in the right way and how many I needed on hand when I adventure out, climbing structures I bypassed early game to find treats laying about I would never have found, swimming through underwater rocks, mapping other non-storyline critical areas of a map, and so much more. The last thing, I've been wanting to be on a beach for a long time, and this is the closest way for me to feel like I've really been there. Try it, you won't regret it if you like the things I mentioned above and get a kick out of playing a game solo, no one else is needed for me to really get the best from the game and survive on my own wits and work.

I would have loved to play this game in early access, since it looks amazing and the reviews talk about a great crafting system- but, sadly, it crashes for me at the exact same point every time: In the loading sequence directly after picking the starter-items. I got a refund.

Maybe I'll play the full version.

LOve the game and it is very playable in Early excess. PLayed for 45 hours and not a single crash or bug experienced.