Has potential but the latest update is a step back for solo players. Enemy respawn timer is unforgiving. In the middle of taking over an island the number of enemies left grew rather than shrank. Wait until it's no longer in EA and hope for the best.

This is for the v0.6.01 version.

The dev team 'updated' everything for supposedly better graphics (not sure I see any improvement) but in the process they wiped almost everything off the map. Most of the things mentioned in the description (nuke plant, etc) are no longer there; they may be added back in, but what's going back in is a far cry from what was there. One used to be able to go into most buildings in some way, but now there are inaccessible blocks here and there. Gone are the drowned skyscrapers or apartment blocks with more than one open building. The feeling of having a downtown block just loom into focus below you is sadly diminished now, with the POI being smaller and less detailed.

Gone, too, are the more complex underground rooms in various structures; now it's just a box or two with a doorway connecting them. There's not much sense of peril unless you get grenade spammed by AI (or play PVP) but if I want to do that there are a hundred better games. This was about exploring underwater ruins for loot, and until that element comes back, it's not worth the price. Maybe when finished it will restore everything that's lost, but right now it's been a massive step backwards away from what makes Sunkenland special in what seems like an effort to mimic an awful Rust clone.

Even the screenshots are from the pre-overhaul version. If you have faith this will return to what it should be, maybe it's worth getting, otherwise wait for a big sale or just keep it in your news feed. If the game returns to its former glory, I'll revise this, but otherwise I've gotta give it a no in this form.

The game is ok'ish. It needs a lot of love and improvement from current stage, I want to give it a recommendation, but as of now, simply can't. AI for one is so poor and they're spawning inside ground when attacking your base, so they can shoot you, but you can't shoot or see them. Day and night cycle is ridiculous, there needs to be an option to control the day length, every morning in game you go about doing some small task or raid and night catches up. Textures in game are terrible in many places. Items thrown in the ground never despawn. Items floating in the air when destroying supporting structures breaks the immersion big time. The list goes on and on, but those are the main thoughts in my head, I am definately playing this when it gets an update and really wish these things get fixed to make playing enjoyable. Potential is there and the rest is depending on the devs.

Pretty fun. And we enjoyed most of the time in game. Needs work. But I think the backbone is there.
A lot of the sunken buildings can't be entered.
Gun play is okay. Recoil system needs some work.

Here's the real issue. This game is full of security flaws. Don't listen to reviews that state any of this is fixed by password protecting your game.

Passwords on servers can be bypassed.
There is no banning option.
You IP is easily exposed. Attackers can then gain access to your system via unity exploits.
Zero cheat protection. Anyone can run hacks on your server there is no way to disable this.
If you can think of it, someone has a hack for that. Instat-kill even with FF off, god mode, teleport, radar, you name it.

Enjoy this offline for now.

I don't recommend the game because I played a locked coop with a friend and then some troller cheater guy comes, you should directly kick the name like (Admin) and it spawns all the crap and despawns all your stuff

EDIT: I will be trying Sunkenland again as more updates are made. The game is enjoyable, but the early default settings were very problematic. Much of it has been fixed by the developer, and updates keep on coming, so there's no reason to not try it again. Once I do, I'll update the review.


I was going to give this game a positive review until today. Unfortunately every time you log-in you have to "create your server," which is not an issue, except for one thing:

The game never remembers what your previous settings were, so it always defaults to creating a Public server, where anyone can join.

Turns out that someone joined our server and destroyed everything we had built within a matter of minutes, because anyone who joins has access to all your structures. There is no way around it currently, no factions, no clan that they need to join, etc. So if you ever forget to set your "server" as private, anyone can join and grief.

I put 60+ hours in to this game. tldr; It's as fun for a bit, but not ready for early access.

Eventually it just becomes "craft boats, craft weapons, kill dudes"; so I hope to return in the future to a version that has a stronger identity. I felt the same about Raft so my compliments - I had almost as much fun with this as I had with Raft. I also liked the AI, it's pretty good. The base defense is fun at first.

I want to be positive so I'll focus on what I'd like instead of complaining:

I'd love to see:
- more wildlife beyond the basic sharks.
- deeper dives that you can't even do until... *spoilers*
- more dive gear blueprints/etc.
- Much clearer building mechanics; specifically:
-- less penalty for taking down scrap metal. (it's scrap!)
-- rotation, better placement, etc.
-- More pieces, especially roof.
-- set depth when placing things like paintings so they don't end up half in a wall.
-- destructable decorations; that way you are protecting the fancy vase you found.
- The machines must take more than one piece. It's such a grind to cook one piece of meat at a time on a 3D rendered grill that could clearly take more. Maybe early game you just get a little yakitori grill that takes 1 piece and the nicer grill could take more...
- A reason to take specific islands/factions.
- More neutral / friendly NPCs.
- Reworked menus where item descriptions are whole and you get important storage info for containers.
- instead of requiring rubber for wiring, construct wire from rubber/copper.
- Barge / Move the larger floatillas / Towing?
- If you can't own an build on a conquered base - fine. Then let me destroy it all.

I look forward to switching this to a 'recommend'; but right now you'll run into broken descriptions, grindy game loops (food, ingots), and a too fast spiral from fun survival base defense exploration into a basic shooter.

I hope the devs keep at it; so much promise here!

i really want to like this game and it's concepts but at this point in development there's excessive amounts of jank. melee combat is nothing more than walking in a circle and swinging at them. crossbow bolts hit invisible edges all the time. you will regularly be shot through floors and walls and the enemies move like they're on crack. if you do a mission where you have to kill 40 or so enemies on an island be sure to finish it during the day. even if you have 2 to go it'll spawn in another 6 or so just because it's dawn and it's not going to halt that process just because you're on the island.

while most games have a "hold shift and click" to move things into storage, this game has double clicks and holding right clicks to draw out the process. i appreciate the button to 'move similar items into inventory' but it'd be nicer with a mouse click. also the trend for a lot of survival games when crafting is to use what's already in your storage and it'd be nice if this game could too because clumsily interacting with the many storage boxes you'll have all the time gets old quite quickly.

as you build your base and expand it you will want to move things around. rather than have a move option you have to use a bizarre packing box to pack it up which destroys any contents. if you want to upgrade a wooden platform to metal you cannot simply upgrade it. you must destroy the platform which you might think would cause anything on it to break or fall. not to worry, the force of jank will let it float while you place your metal one in it's place.

i just rage quit because while clearing out a level 4 base and killing 50 of the 70 enemies, i walked into a room and discovered an invisible barrier was preventing me from leaving. the room i walked into had no other exits and i am now stuck for eternity. the world, progression and blueprints are really good ideas. i really hope a thorough jank cleanse will happen but there's so much that i'm not sure it'll happen. i will keep an eye on it tho.

A buddy and I started playing this on a dedicated server one of us stood up a few weeks ago.
We very much enjoyed the game but felt like it was a little "empty". We fairly rapidly reached the point where we basically "won" the game and we were basically grinding for mats to build things. Our base was self sufficient in the respect that raids would just be handled with no intervention by us short of a repair hammer post-raid.

We kept seeing things online about people indicating that they would find things like Downtown, Civic Center, Etc. and we could not find any of these things. We also saw videos of people playing where their graphics were very different than ours.

We started looking into where all of these "missing" places were and why our graphics felt so very different and found we could load an old version in steam (0.2. something I think) and there was all of the missing content and the different graphics.

The first thing that struck us when we did this was how "populated" the world felt. Land masses everywhere, islands that felt real - not these waterworld type bases but actual small islands with settlements on them.

I'm not sure why on the most recent release they removed so much content and made the world feel so very empty but that's what it feels like.

I would recommend holding off on purchasing / playing until they re-introduce the content.

There's also no mention in release notes of all of these things being taken out.

I'm marking this as a no for recommendation until the content is re-added.

This game has potential and we really enjoyed the playthrough we did however it felt very empty and small compared to many other open world games.

Here's what you need to know. This game has potential, it really does. But before I could give this a good review with a clear conscience there are a LOT of issues to be resolved. I could do a TLDR post about all of the problems, but instead I'll sum it up with just the two most glaring. #1 - The combat AI is trash and completely unbalanced. The player cannot see the enemies in the dark, but the AI can for DAMN sure see you out to a distance of 2 miles and will put a bullet between your eyes effortlessly. This also applies to all situational awareness combat engagements. Sitting behind cover and still think that enemy guy doesn't know you're there? Pop your head up to look at him and just get blasted dead before you can even aim. #2 - the game becomes boring and without real purpose within 7 hours of dedicated play. There are lots of building pieces and you can design your fortresses any way you like, but there is no purpose in doing so. The enemies will attack your base and will have the same Godlike navy seal skills as the enemies in other bases. You will die 4-8 times and maybe more just trying to kill them off so you can start to figure out what they destroyed and start rebuilding everything you lost. Then, go off to bases you've already beaten and cleared, loot them again and come back to your own base until it gets attacked...again. That's all this game is up to this point. Possibly, in the future, it will become something more. For now, buy it if you want to. Just remember that while it doesn't completely suck, you cannot expect anything really good.