By Brad Russell
Stranded
is a brilliant little game about surviving as long as you can with limited
resources and knowledge of what to do supposedly there is a back-story. You
are put on an island and have a simple interface of bag, search, create, and
status tabs. You walk around and find that anything you have selected on the
search tab will notify you and be placed in your bag. Through the create tab you
can put to use those items you have found, be it on the ground or in your bag.
The major issue is that you have to have the items in your possession in
order to know what they can make. The biggest example is finding out that most
items require twine, but only by having six reeds can you make twine and very
few players will figure to pick up reeds. It's understandable that this can be
seen as an attempt at realism, but not when you are required to have certain
items to make things. The other issue being the interface, but that is also part
of the hardware's making. In other words, if this game was on a bigger screen
and came with a booklet of all the items to make, there would be no issues.
But if you approach the game for what it is, which is surviving on a desert
island, it's possible to get lost in this fun and challenging near simulation of
the scenario. It would not be hard to imagine that a game like this for the iPad
with better graphics as being much more addictive.
Final Rating: 90%
