Stranded: Missing most marks
04 Jun 2016
Stranded is one of those games that looks good at first glance then you beat it and wish you had your money back. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t like writing negative reviews, especially when it’s a small indie company or even one person making the game. But being able to take criticism is one of the most import things when trying to improve your work. With that being said Stranded is not a very good game.
Stranded is a simple point and click adventure game with some beautiful sprite artwork, music, and atmosphere. The game does a good job of motivating you to explore the world around you. It does this by the “Dark Souls” approach of explaining little to keep a sense of wonder in the player. A lot of this might make you pick up the game but while it has hit some marks it misses way more than it hits.
One of the biggest complaints I have about this game is the time to beat it. It take about 30 to 40 minutes to beat this game with no real incentive to get you to play it again. Short games have their place. An example of this is when you are in the middle of schooling or just want to get a quick break from work without having to invest time into a massive story like the Witcher, short games help to get that gaming itch out. But this game will not satisfy that itch, instead it will replace that itch with another one, it will give you an itch to refund the game. 8 dollars base price for less than an hour of game time with no real reason to go back and play the game is a huge black mark.
Even if you are willing to put 8 dollars down on this game for about 30 minutes the gameplay is extremely lack luster. The worst problem with this game is that there is very little to do. This might seem odd as it last for about 30 minutes and your right it is. Really the game only takes about 10 ~ 20 minutes of actually play time. Your character walks and interacts with the world extremely slow and helps pad out the game time on what is already a short game.
The other problem with the game is that the gameplay, is very much lacking. Point and click games are generally not known for there game mechanics. They tend to rely on puzzles and story to drive the game along. The story in this game is bare bones, find out how to become not stranded. The puzzling in this game is fairly nonexistent, literally just pointing and clicking. Might sound silly, but you don’t really pick up any items that allow you to use on different things in the environment. The puzzles come down to figuring out what you need to interact in the environment which isn’t that hard to figure out.
This is just really disappointing, what could be a good game with good atmosphere and an enjoyable soundtrack is hampered with an extremely short story. It feels like the demo to a much bigger game that might be worth the 8 dollar asking price. I got this game for about 1 dollar and felt like maybe for a dollar or less this game would be worth it. If there is any advice I could give it would be to take the world building and atmosphere that you have made in this game and put it into a bigger game. I wanted to like this game, it has beautiful pixel art, good music, and a good reason to make people explore the world, all of these add up to make a good game. But when the adventure only lasts about 30 minutes with a slow moving character, the game isn’t all that fun.
Buy the game on Steam