11 Likes
Just yesterday I was having a desire to play something like subnautica again, but I don’t want to play subnautica again. I wanted something that provided that same level of exploration and discovery and so I set out looking up various Open world survival crafting games.
Turns out they are pretty much all still in early access, these games just never get finished do they?
But if anyone have played Subnautica and can recommend another game that might come close to it’s brilliance and isn’t in early access I’d love to hear some suggestions.
No, not Below zero, thanks.
6 Likes
i have not played subnautica sorry i just thought maybe slime rancher would be an okay suggestion i mean it has quite a lot of exploration and some crafting, not much survival but this was the first thing that came to mind
also there is grounded and valheim but those are much more combat focused and i am not sure how the single player experience holds up
5 Likes
I spotted that Planet Crafter had a demo and gave that a shot. 3.3h into it and I had reached the cap of progression. It’s a decent game but there isn’t much that intrigues me to continue, the survival aspect is pretty much sorted straight from the get go there’s ice a plenty to melt for water and enough food picked up in stashes to last me until I could grow my own.
It’s greatest downfall is probably how monotone and boring the landscape is. Sure you’re there to terraform a barren planet so it’s a vast desert wasteland walled off with red brown cliff sides, monotone enough to distort your colour vision for a good while after playing. Even if the idea is that the world will eventually grow lush and interesting, that seems to be the end goal so you’re likely spending the vast majority of the game being an eyesore.
3 Likes
Today I tried out the Aloft demo, a game that has not even been released into early access yet. I wonder if they plan to release a fully finished game all at once, that’d be an interesting approach to take.
In this game you explore a world made up out of tiny little islands floating around in the sky and you get a hang glider thing early on to move around with. This feature alone makes the game a lot of fun quite frankly. You hop around from island to island looking for resources and some weird memory stones that grant you blueprints for buildings. Now I’m not sure how meaningful a home base is really going to be, the world seem vast and you’re going to need to keep moving to progress.
However it does look like you’re going to be able to build yourself airships and probably whole floating castle type stuff and I’m guessing you’re going to end up with a large mobile base at some point.
This one is definitely one to look out for and I could highly recommend the demo.
Edit: oh it seems you’re actually meant to convert the islands into ships by putting sails on the islands themselves, I was hoping to find some hull blueprints somewhere. Well then I’ve got more to try out tomorrow then.
9 Likes
I’ve now spent over 12h with this demo and unlocked everything there is to unlock. I’ve been sailing around through the skies on my giant rock, I’m not sure how much the shape and size of the rock you pick influences it’s handling, but if you’re going to haul a lot of stuff around you’ll need some land mass for it. There were no trips that felt overly tedious as you can aim your rock in a desired direction and leave the helm to take care of livestock, farming and sorting inventory.
I am for sure curious about what more this game will have to offer on full release.
Here’s my lopsided leaky boulder.
Sails are kind of haphazardly spread around the island, not sure their placements really matter, helm on top of my house and a boarding bridge coming out to an angle where I can see it while piloting to dock with other islands as you can’t fly while carrying livestock.
I got little over 12h of good fun out of this demo and I think this might go as an additional recommendation to @carvalho20ptc on how to stop buying games. Go look for demos in a similar genre or style of whatever catches your fancy next time. I’ve scratched the survival crafting itch for now and wont be looking to buy any new titles for the time being.
Edit: Tried one more thing.
Wanted to see if you could build smaller independent vessels but unfortunately it’s still “attached” to the space of the island and while I can fly my island from here, which might be advantageous from a control and visibility perspective it’s not what I had hoped for.
8 Likes