Raft

Raft is an adventure sandbox with survival elements and a first-person view. In the game, you will find yourself on a small raft slowly drifting across the vast ocean waters. Your arsenal includes only a hook and a rope, while sharks swim around hoping for an easy prey. Fortunately for you, various debris such as planks, barrels, and tools float by. From all this, you can build a real floating fortress and fend off ocean predators.

Raft is an adventure indie game from Redbeet Studio, with a first-person view. The action takes place in the ocean, where the player, alone or with a team of friends, is on a fragile raft. You need to survive, find resources, craft useful items from them, and obtain food.

Raft was released in early access on Steam on May 23, 2018, and the developers promise to refine it within a year, adding community suggestions. There was no story mode at the time of early access.

Based on the state of the game world, it can be concluded that the events of Raft take place in modern times. Consider that global warming has occurred, a plane has landed on water, or a cruise liner has been overturned by a storm. The player finds themselves in the middle of an endless ocean on a few connected planks and can move in any direction.

The world and all its contents are randomly generated. Various debris floats in the ocean, which needs to be collected and sorted into resources: plastic, metals, shoes, glass, wood, ropes, and more. You also need to obtain food through fishing or gathering and produce fresh water.

At any moment, you can dive into the ocean to gather the riches of the underwater world. Occasionally, islands full of resources appear on the horizon, both on the surface and around the seabed.

An important part of Raft is research and subsequent item creation. First, the player must study a discovered item, losing it but gaining a recipe (blueprint). Then, you can create copies of any studied items, provided you have enough resources.

Certain actions require specific tools, like a saw for building or a spear for fending off sharks. Development is impossible without upgrading the raft, and over time, you can turn it into a sail-powered aircraft carrier with almost no limits. New menu items will appear, such as ship equipment or navigation.

To make the raft more enjoyable, Raft features decorations—beds and chairs, tables and stools, clocks and lamps, and much more—all useful during the journey. Crafting is not simple; for example, to get clean water, you need to start and maintain a fire, evaporate seawater from one container to another so that the steam collects and condenses through a palm leaf.

At the time of early access, the Raft character had no backstory. It all boils down to surviving, and in Raft, this means maintaining the body. The character is constantly hungry and thirsty, and depleting any gauge will lead to death. There is also a health gauge that is active during encounters with sharks.

If development and resource gathering are periodic events, then having a stock of grilled fish and fresh water is a constant necessity. Being without them is much scarier than getting caught in a storm.

Идея Raft проста — путешествовать по океану, выживать, собирать ресурсы, изучать и крафтить предметы, заниматься подводной охотой, превратить плот в корабль, посещать острова, развиться до предела, чтобы найти самый большой остров в игре. В раннем доступе не было других видов активностей.

Независимо от однопользовательского и многопользовательского режимов, геймплей по большей части одинаков: в одиночке все надо делать самому, в то время как в мультиплеере каждый занят своим делом и развитие идет гораздо быстрее.