14 DAY TRIAL // Although I’m not very fond of griding in games, I have been longing for a sci-fi themed game where I could build my own colony of survivors. Stranded: Alien Dawn is not The 100, but it does have many things in common and I really love it.
For starters, I get to micro-manage my survivors. Although they’re far less than 100, they’re just as important because they are building the foundation of what (hopefully) will turn into a massive colony on a previously uninhabited planet.
Stranded: Alien Dawn starts quite abruptly as your spaceship heading to another galaxy crashes on an unmapped alien planet. Before that though, you’ll have to choose four survivors from a few dozens. Each is specialized in different skills like farming, construction, combat, research and so on. You’ll not be able to cover all these important aspects of building and running a colony right from the get-go, but having skilled people in research, construction and combat could prove incredibly useful in the beginning of the game.
Balancing each survivor’s strengths and weaknesses, along with upgrading their skills as quickly as possible is definitely a recipe for success. Stranded: Alien Dawn throws you right into the action with almost no tutorial and definitely no hand holding. This is a sandbox experience in which you learn by simply playing and testing various aspects of the game.
The good news is you are given some time to get your bearings and decide how to build your colony. Your survivors can scavenge spaceship debris to find crucial provisions and materials needed for construction. The rest you’ll find on the alien planet you just crashed.
The first major test the game puts you through is the winter. You’ll need clothes, heating and food to survive the cold weather, so if you didn’t think to make enough stockpiles to get you through the winter, you’ll have a tough time surviving.
I thought I’d rather start small and then expand after the first winter, but a wave of alien bugs attacked my colony a few months before and completely trashed my stockpiles before I could eliminate them with the only two survivors armed with ranged weapons that I could afford. This was a real setback for my small colony, especially that all my survivors were wounded in the attack and needed some time to recover.
But I have learned my lesson, I know that I now have to actually build defenses around my stockpiles to avoid losing them to surprise attacks. Every setback in Stranded: Alien Dawn is a lesson learned, so even if my current colony fails to survive the winter, I consider the experience a step forward. My next colony will be bigger and better and my survivors happier.
Yes, you need to keep your survivors happy by cultivating their hobbies. A happy survivor is more productive and completely removes that chance of one of them melting down. One of the best things about Stranded: Alien Dawn is that you can automate the activities for your survivors. You can tell them to focus on the activities they are trained for and prevent them from doing anything that they either dislike or aren’t skilled in.
Conclusion
Events and dynamic weather spice up your experience and make the journey unpredictable. What I do like most though is the fact that you don’t just try to survive a deadly alien world, you’re also writing your own sci-fi story that could either be very short and interesting or long and boring. It’s all up to you.
Preview code provided by the publisher.
