Sharks can thankfully be distracted when you want to go for a swim, but I also really hope to see some more interesting ways of dealing with them. That you can catch fish but never see them swimming seems like an update to come. But what there isn't is sea life other than sharks. There's also sand and clay to be found on the submerged parts of islands, which can make bricks. Exploring underwater is another new conceit, and down there you can find copper and, um, "metal", which can then be smelted and used to construct even more elaborate items. There's already loads in there, but there's also the strong sense that there could be so much more. Rather than being buggy, and while there are definitely some glitches here and there this is a remarkably solid build, what Raft currently lacks is stuff. Although, crikey, this really is the only major bug I've contended with over two joyous days of playing. Islands do rather starkly remind you, however, that this is a game in its first week in early access - at the moment they seem to exist as madly floating lumps of land, more often than not physically impossible to get onto, and stacked like mad cakes with tiers you cannot climb. The decorations have dramatically changed since Old-Raft, and now you can mix paints and add colours if you've found flowers on the also-new explorable islands. Plus, there's always the urge to make time to aesthetically improve your home, with perhaps some extra floors, prettier tables, and best of all, mounting shark heads on the walls. Once you've built yourself a research table, you can start sacrificing precious finds to research and unlock a whole new, er, raft of items to craft, if you can scramble together the parts. Later you'll be throwing potatoes overboard because you've so many in storage and are subsisting quite happily on catfish, pineapples and shark meat (oh yeah, motherfucker, you paid). At first you'll just be scratching to survive, trying to find a barrel to haul in that might contain a life-giving potato if you're lucky. There's a great deal of busy-ness here, but all of it feels important, rather than fiddly. And is that an island on the horizon? Quick, deploy the sail and aim for it! But also there's a shark trying to eat a bit of your raft that holds a storage box containing your most precious valuables, so you need to poke it with a pointy stick. At the same time you'll want to gather resources for the next item you've researched and desperately want to make. Your hunger and thirst are manageable, but never ignorable, meaning you'll always need to be keeping an eye on your water filtering, while ensuring there are stocks of fish to cook, potatoes and beetroots to bake, and (as things progress) you'll need to tend to an arboretum of watermelon plants and mango trees (and keep the gulls off it). The reason Raft works so well, despite not featuring the complexity of locations of rival sims, is its combination of a superbly dangled carrot, and the madcap nature of trying to manage everything at once in order to keep going. Fall in the water and you can bet your bum one will take a good chomp out of you, too. They're utter bastards, who at this point in the game's development never stop circling your raft, occasionally charging in to bite chunks of it to destruction. But what's so splendid is how it all stems from that one simple system: gathering the junk from the water.Īll the while, you are plagued by your arch-nemeses: sharks. At first you'll be crafting wood and plastic to make extra tiles for your raft, then weaving ropes from palm fronds, constructing rudimentary cups, axes, fishing rods, water filtration systems, smelters, satellite navigation systems. As you drift aimlessly through the infinite waters, you will encounter extraordinary volumes of plastic, wood, foliage and barrels, gathered by your trusty hook, and quickly used to expand and secure your little home. It's hard to know if Raft is intended to be a commentary on the polluted nature of our oceans, but goodness me, there's a lot of flotsam on the waves. It's from these beginnings that you can, through the daft magic of survival gaming, eventually build yourself a multi-storey luxurious floating condominium of majestic opulence. You are stranded in the middle of the ocean, standing on a 2x2 raft of wood and plastic floats, equipped only with a rudimentary hook on a rope. While the former Itch.io star shares inevitable comparisons with a few other aquatic survival sims - Stranded Deep, Subnautica, Salt - this dramatic overhaul that has recently arrived into Steam's early access is very much its own thing. When the waves build, when the wind gathers, and the briny water sloshes over the deck of your precarious floating home, there is absolutely nothing like Raft.
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