Analysis of Stranded: Alien Dawn

Stranded: Alien Dawn is the new title developed by Haemimont Games, creators of Survive Mars there Tropic 5 among others. The game is distributed by some old acquaintances in management games like Frontier Developments. From here they We really appreciate you providing us with a digital copy of the game.. The game comes to our consoles with the desire to get addicted to this management and survival game some time after its release on PC. The game shows that it has studio cachet, if you’re a fan of Survive Mars, you will feel familiar. I therefore invite you to accompany me in this analysis, come with me!

Before I begin, I should point out that It is a management game in its own right, that means if you are a fan of this type of game, time will surely pass in your alien colony. Because if there is something that characterizes this type of game, it is its ability to absorb the player and keep him glued to the game without stopping. And that’s something he does particularly well because of the way he poses everything.

Multitude of scenarios, multitude of adventures

When we are going to start our first game, the game offers us a good range of settings. we have available three spawn scenarios, difficulty and game scenarios. encompassing since they are survivors to an accident, founders of a trading post or a military-scientific outpost He has a specific mission to accomplish. Thanks to a wide range of characters that can be chosen randomly or premeditated before starting the game, the game possibilities are very wide. I will detail it throughout the analysis. In addition to these options, the game provides us with the possibility of activating “cheats” such as deactivating hostile animals among others.

There variety of scenarios It expands much more with a very interesting factor to take into account. The game adds a very important feature in games like Minecraft: world generation seeds.. Although only 3 spawn biomes may be rare, seeds greatly expand the variety of scenarios in which to conduct our adventure. Offering high replayability and an extended game life cycle.

Stranded: Alien Dawn: a different management game

Stranded: Alien Dawn combines typical qualities of a management game with a rather particular element. The element in question is none other than the playable characters. Each of them has a series of statistics which specialize them more in different tasks that we will develop in our base. Performing tasks such as researching, collecting materials, or building will increase in level, which will result in better performance in their tasks. There may be characters that cannot develop a certain ability. A specific case can be the “pacifists”, these characters cannot attack any threat that comes their way.

This is one of the aspects that surprised me the most in the game, since they not only have skill stats, but a personality of their own. So we can see that Some find it easier to get along with others, get angry, and even support another partner who is sad.. There will be certain times when messages such as “I’ve shared with X how badly I’m handling the situation” will appear from our characters that will make them feel more human. In addition, there will be times when an event jumps out at us on screen, a common is a character asking to hold a general meeting to share a moment of union between them. In addition to that, We can change the equipment that our characters wear in case it deteriorates by crafting new clothes or equipping them with ranged or melee weapons to defend the Khazars.

An interesting point to note is the the importance of knowing our environment. Observing what surrounds us is the key to rapid progress. For this reason, one of our priorities with our initial small refuge is to “observe” any tree, plant, animal, bush or stone around us. This action allows us to soon unlock very important research such as the construction of housesthe manufacture of weapons, the breeding and preservation and preparation of special foods as well as agriculture. When we discover a new plant, we have the possibility of growing itmaking its raw material accessible in case of depletion of what is found in nature.

The quick search gives us the opportunity to start being more advanced with the implementation of electricity. This represents a turning point and a take-off in our adventure. Allows longer storage of food or medicine, heating and lighting. At this point, the game is already starting to go off on rails, so we’ll soon develop means of transport to send expeditionswhich offer the possibility of saving more people than there are on the planet by increasing our population and our work force.

The construction of the structure is clearly inherited from Surviving Marsand it’s a good mechanic, once the structure is raised, a “specter” of it remains which, depending on the progress, changes color until it is finished. The way to elevate any structure, piece of furniture or fence is simple and easy to get used to. The preparation of the different buildings is just as easy, you can prepare “shanties” with ease and with little material. This allows us to make our own buildings for storage, place our bed, work table, etc. Besides, we can add more structures in any direction to expand the available space. Although once we have investigated the construction of houses, it is more than recommended to build a house in conditions that improve the living conditions of our characters.

Technical section and playability more than improvable

Stranded: Alien Dawn it inherits all the good from the studio’s previous projects and remains timid when it comes to adapting the game to consoles. The game looks great on the console graphicallyDespite this, I encountered problems. During my experience with the game, I encountered frequent performance issues when moving between forests, zooming in close with the accelerated speed of the game. A very curious case is to see that one of the characters ” turns” into a block of straw. This happens when you constantly zoom or zoom into one of them throughout the game.

Despite the ease of proposing new constructions, moving through the construction interface, events or those of our beloved settlers is more than improvable. It’s not easy to move between them due to the way the game is designed to work with more than one tab open. It is difficult to find which tab we are in although we have recently opened one, which leads to confusion and errors. We find it when we want to select one of our characters to check his physical, mental state and that of his equipment; that we mentioned earlier.

The problems mentioned extend to other points in the game as well. By ordering one or more tasks to be performed, any of our settlers will go directly to perform it. Unfortunately, when they order several at the same time, they do not follow an order, as soon as they perform a task when they are going to do another one already marked. This is a problem because it takes a lot of time to complete simple tasks because you can’t direct who does what. This is applicable to cases when hostile animals attack us, they remain unresponsive even with the danger ahead. This ends up causing injuries that can be fatal.

Stranded: Alien Dawn: Conclusions

Not everything is shadow in this game, as in all management games, we can pause and speed up time at will for what we need. Observation of the environment rewards the player with investigations at crucial points in the development of the adventure. We have at our disposal a wide variety of constructions and buildings to create our base in a multitude of different ways. Propose different ways of carrying out certain constructions. IThe idea that each character has a different personality humanizes them and gives depth to the game. The sound section gives us a background music that illuminates our adventure while we develop our base. The technical section looks nice, and its realistic art style brings it closer to us in a direct way.

Unfortunately, poor navigation optimization through some interfaces, frame drops in some environments, visual bugs, and improveable AI and task management mar our passage through alien planets. Nevertheless, I invite you to try this game. Stranded: Alien Dawn It is available for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series, Xbox One and PC. As always, if you want to learn more about scans like these, be sure to stop by your home here in the Xbox Zone.

Student. Lover of video games, motorsport, pop-rock and Brandon Sanderson. Fan of Star Wars, strategy games and any monster.