Zen on a vast ocean. For a survival game, this is one of the most fun and relaxing titles we have played in a long time.

With an ever growing list of sandbox survival games on the market, where most of these seem to be rip offs from other games or just plain boring, it is truly amazing to see a game like Raft. It truly brings hope to the genre for it hit early access as a solid title with just a small handful of bugs, and you can build one hell of a raft to survive the open ocean. The developers are continuously updating the player base with upcoming information and releasing updates to stabilize the game.

 

The game itself is brilliant, and whilst it can improve in regards to content, there is still a lot to do. The water effects are just great, the storms are scary and there is a wild shark stalking you throughout your journey. You begin on a small 4x4 raft, and whilst there is no tutorial to get you going, you catch up to the mechanics pretty fast. Garbage in the form of wooden planks, plastic, leaves, etc float around you, and using your trusty hook you begin collecting these materials to craft new items and expand the size of your raft. You have various addons to your raft, from sails to help you direct your raft, anchors to bring your raft to a halt and equipment to help gather water and cook food.

 

The first hiccup we encountered is related to the physics of the raft. Whilst it floats quite smoothly on the open sea, I expected the height of the raft to cause problems and maybe even topple the whole raft over. This was not the case, and after seeing some other community builds, it was quite apparent that such a mechanic was not in place. Secondly, the only 2 real threats to your raft are a single shark and an occasional seagull, but I expected more evil on the open sea.... think raiders in Waterworld.

 

Throughout your journey you will also come across various islands and rocks which are a great source of materials for your raft. There are also abandoned rafts with a chest containing some useful items for advanced construction products like bolts, hinges, etc.

 

On the whole, we spent a substantial amount of the weekend playing through the game, got quite a big raft going and reached the current end goal (no spoilers!) in no time at all. The game just needs more things to do.... more things that want to kill you... and maybe even some NPCs and bigger islands to explore.