Stranded Deep

 Xbox One
User Score
6.3

Mixed or average reviews- based on 12 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 12
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 12
  3. Negative: 2 out of 12

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  1. Xbox_Alive
    Apr 23, 2020
    9
    Stranded Deep is a First-Person Sandbox Survival Game. The start of the game plays out similar to the Movie Castaway, You're alone on a private jet that meets some catastrophe and crashes in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. You come to and find the plane sinking, and as you swim from the husk you find a lifeboat, then BOOM, and you're unconscious again. When you wake up, you find you'veStranded Deep is a First-Person Sandbox Survival Game. The start of the game plays out similar to the Movie Castaway, You're alone on a private jet that meets some catastrophe and crashes in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. You come to and find the plane sinking, and as you swim from the husk you find a lifeboat, then BOOM, and you're unconscious again. When you wake up, you find you've drifted to a small island. With nothing but your Life Raft, and the few rations aboard you must survive long enough to escape this watery prison before it becomes your grave. There are several small islands around the one you land on, each with items you can use to survive. There are several ways of escaping the islands, from repairing a plane to finding a radio and calling for help. The Ocean is a dangerous place, full of Sharks and other deadly creatures, and the islands aren't much safer with Crown of Thorns Starfish in the shallows and snakes hiding in the grass. Fish, Hunt, Explore It's a sandbox game, so how you go about living in this tropical paradise is up to you. Don't want to be rescued? Then don't be, live your days on the islands and enjoy the blazing sunsets. The graphics are beautiful! With some of the most dynamic water that I've ever seen. Look carefully, and you might find Wollie, Wilson's cousin. Easily one of the best sandbox survival games I've played!… Expand
  2. DGB
    Mar 3, 2023
    7
    Realistic. I love how open the game is, and how each time you play it feels like a different story. It isn't easy, but that makes a change from most games. My biggest problem is that the controls seem extremely clunky. Unless I am doing something wrong, it takes me over 10 button presses to pick a coconut and drink it. I can't be bothered to craft lots and use the game to the fullRealistic. I love how open the game is, and how each time you play it feels like a different story. It isn't easy, but that makes a change from most games. My biggest problem is that the controls seem extremely clunky. Unless I am doing something wrong, it takes me over 10 button presses to pick a coconut and drink it. I can't be bothered to craft lots and use the game to the full potential because picking up and using items is just so difficult. Id love to see this on psvr2 one day - maybe that would also make picking items up easier.… Expand
  3. Meeleepit
    Jan 14, 2022
    7
    Love the environment and survival mechanics.

    Graphics is a bit outdated but that is not an issue as I had a lot of fun playing this and the boss fights made it even better.
  4. Austacker
    Aug 16, 2020
    6
    Stranded Deep was delayed a good year after the previous publisher (Telltale) went bankrupt at the 11th hour just before launch on Xbox. So how many improvements were made in the following year until launch in 2020? Answer - not many. This game has a good foundation, really neat idea and has a fun atmosphere for sure but it's still horribly buggy, laggy and barely makes 30fps at theStranded Deep was delayed a good year after the previous publisher (Telltale) went bankrupt at the 11th hour just before launch on Xbox. So how many improvements were made in the following year until launch in 2020? Answer - not many. This game has a good foundation, really neat idea and has a fun atmosphere for sure but it's still horribly buggy, laggy and barely makes 30fps at the best of times with tonnes of pop in. It's really not really well optimized at all (even on the Xbox One X) atm & the content isn't even on par with PC at launch.

    The survival genre is a really great one, but far too many developers do the bear minimum shoving it into early access on as many platforms at they can in a bare bones state to rake in the early $$ and then take forever to flesh the game out. Sometimes they make a great, complete experience (like Subnautica, Minecraft or The Long Dark) and the rest just fade away into development hell.

    Stranded Deep has work to do. It's a sound basic concept with a fun game loop. Realtime day / night cycles, dynamic weather & decent survival mechanics give it a typical and solid foundation, but it's still not on par with the more mature games already on the platform.

    If you ever watched the movie 'Cast Away' with Tom Hanks or you're REALLY old school like me and remember the old 'Johnny Castaway' screensaver of Windows 3.11, this game is pretty much the modern version of that.

    The Xbox release DOES have an end game that oddly isn't available on PC yet - but there's game mechanics on PC that are not actually on the Xbox version yet (what's up with that?).

    Whether you want to 'finish' the game or not is completely up to you. No spoilers for the process to escape back to civilization other than to say it involves some fairly tedious 'boss battles' with bullet sponge battle experiences that felt really out of place in a survival game and pretty unnecessary.

    I own nearly every survival game on Xbox to date, it's one of my favourite genres on the platform and I've got great survival games and really bad ones.

    Where does Stranded Deep lie and is it worth your coin?

    I'd put this one in the 'mid range' position at the moment. It's not on par with the best in genre on the platform, but it's also far from the worst. It has content that really needs to be put on Xbox asap and optimisation also really needs to be looked at (the game is seriously janky, buggy with loads of popin and unacceptable frame rate stutter when approaching islands) + some very strangely short draw distance issues. ie it's a fairly typical 'early access / still in development' level experience.

    As of the writing of this review (16th August 2020) this game still has a fair way to go. It's a decent experience for what it is and worth getting if you can find it on sale.

    This game is a little under a AA experience that's in constant development. The dev team is well known for taking a very long time to release new content / updates (the dev team is small).

    Bear that in mind if you want to shell out coin for this release.

    If you're chasing your first Survival Game experience on Xbox, I'd recommend the games mentioned at the start of this review rather than Stranded Deep.

    But if you just love the idea of island survival or just looking for a new survival game experience, this game isn't too bad.

    It's not 'great', but it's not a disaster either. Here's hoping the game only continues to improve with further content and optimization releases in the near future.    … Expand

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  1. TheXboxHub
    May 3, 2020
    80
    Stranded Deep represents a survival videogame in one of the purest forms: desert island life. It is certainly not a difficult concept to conceive, but Stranded Deep is an excellent example of a notion done countless times in other media.
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