Stranded: Alien Dawn is an intriguing city builder which reminds me of various other indie projects. Which necessarily isn’t a bad thing. Haemimont Games brought their knowledge from past games to create a great survival sim, introducing some handy features and other game genres to the mix.
One Giant Step for The Mankind in Stranded: Alien Dawn
The story is simple and is presented through scenarios, with the current offering giving a single scenario. After Humanity sends a passenger ship New Dawn to the outer world, things go. With the passenger ship on a crash course to an unknown planet, four passengers board a pod and land on said planet. Their fate, from here on, lies in the hands of players.
Stranded: Alien Dawn offers a very concise, no-nonsense storyline, synonymous with current pop-culture sci-fi media. Fortunately, the game does not decide on the survivors. Instead, it gives the players the choice of picking the survivors.
Each of these survivors has a respective skill they are great at performing. Some excel in science and research. Others are great at combat and more. These skills come into play later on when survivors land on the ground. The only gripe I have with the current build is the lack of options for scenarios. Granted, it is in early access, but the options are still inadequate.
The Early Days Of Survival
Once on the ground, players need to start their planning to survive on the unknown planet. The crashed ship can get salvaged for materials to build, and one of the colonists can get sent to scout plants and areas. One of the intriguing features of the title is the modular base building. Even bullets and weapons need to be built individually.
Nearly every shed, table and building can be built, allowing players to customize and make their colony. Of course, the usual base building features like research tables to learn new crafting items and skills, beds and shelters for colonists to rest and more are there.
Of course, to spice up the gameplay, hostile lifeforms like alien bugs and such. Each cycles the bugs attack the base, where the game turns into base defence. This is also where the character skill becomes useful. The person with good stats in combat will naturally work at protecting the base. Similarly, a person adept at healing individuals will be able to treat patients more quickly.
These little additions essentially turn the title into a colony-sim like Rimworld. I’ll go out of my way and call Stranded: Alien Dawn a 3D Rimworld. Of course, caveats are there, such as minor bugs. However, this is a very stable early-access release.
In conclusion
Stranded: Alien Dawn feels refreshing amidst the colony-sim, base-building titles. While the game requires some more content, and as of writing this, the developer is releasing new content via an update in two days, Stranded: Alien Dawn seems to be a promising title, that nurtured well throughout its early access can become a solid title.
Of course, it won’t replace the more intricate and well-established titles like Rimworld and others, but it surely will stand side-by-side with the existing titles.
