Godspeed, little doodle
It’s not the first island survival game, and it won’t be the last, but Stranded Deep – a mix of Pacific Ocean island hopping and underwater scavenging – sounds tantalizing while I’m stuck indoors.
After getting its start on Steam Early Access five years ago, Stranded Deep is ready to test PlayStation 4 and Xbox One players’ survival skills on April 21, 2020. The console ports are finally finished.
“Following the closure of the previous publisher we had been partnering with, we bought back the console rights so that we could publish it ourselves, along with the support of industry friends and the community,” Beam Team co-founder Sam Edwards explained in a post on the PlayStation Blog.
“It’s been an incredible, crazy journey to finish what we started,” he said.
Beyond the usual survival mechanics (hunting, fishing, farming, cooking, crafting), Stranded Deep has a few less common survival game hooks. You can swim and freedive – probably the biggest selling point for me – and you can build rafts and even a gyrocopter. I’d like to see a shark get me from up here.
The Brisbane-based developer says Stranded Deep will be priced “around the $20 USD mark” and it’ll go live at 8:00 a.m. Pacific on April 21 in North America and “midnight in your local timezone” in the rest of the world” on PlayStation 4. The Xbox One version will launch at “1:00 a.m. in your local timezone.”
As with any Early Access-to-console ports – especially survival titles – I just hope the performance is up to snuff. I’m getting old-school Far Cry vibes from the sunny setting and roaming sharks, and I dig it.
Something tells me I’ll be way too preoccupied chasing boars to stay hydrated. It’s inevitable.
