One of the more popular survival games out there is a ‘simple concept’ called ‘RAFT‘. You wake up on a two-by-two piece of woodpallets with only a scrap hook in your hand, floating in an endless ocean of water, trash and with one angry son-of-a-b**tch shark that wants your legs for breakfast. Cozy, eh?
Raft was released in early access in 2018, and it was divided into chapters, where it went gold when the third and last chapter was released in 2022. Yes, it got a storyline (!) More of that later.
The concept is quite simple, and it follows most of the other survival games out there in way of find supplies, get food and water, and expand your base (aka your Raft). In RAFT you gain the supplies by fishing trash out of the ocean around you with a grapling-hook (made of trash ofcourse) as your raft drift along the currents and wind. The usual stuff is here like a work bench, water-purifier (salt-water is not drinkable, duh..) grill (for the fish) and various other familiar survival gadgets you might know from other games. Crafting recipies unlocks by researching items you drag out of the ocean in the workbench (you need ot make it first) and by time you unlock a ton of different recipies like sails, steam engines, better equipment, weapons (kinda) and other useful stuff.
Cozy little hut on the sea…
Building your raft
One of the cool thing to do in this game is building/expanding the raft to your own version of a floating mega-base. or maybe you want to build a streamliner,? Titanic?, floating oasis?`Its mostly your imagination that sets the limit of how it will turn out in the end 🙂 (Make a seach on youtube for ‘awesome raft bases’ and you will see what I mean).
After ‘a couple hours’ more… it might look like this… erm…
So, did I mention it has a multiplayer feature? AND a storyline to follow?
Yes, thats true. You and up to seven of your best friends (or enemies) can embark on a journey together to try to surive and learn of the fate of the world through clues left behind from ‘earlier times’. I would suggest though that one or two of you start out the raft first, and build it to a 3×3 or 4×4 before inviting the rest of the gang onboard (but if you like chaotic ‘thats not my elbow’ type of gameplay, be my guest 🙂 ).
Merry bunch of players…
The multiplayer works a little bit different than most survival games though, since there is no server settings / dedicated servers in this game. Its more along the lines of ‘one savegame’ rules them all. You make a new world with a password, make sure the ‘friends can join’ option is activated, and your friends then can find that world in their menu by choosing ‘join world’. A little snag though is that they can not play on the world if your not online. (read more about it on the wiki https://raft.fandom.com/wiki/Multiplayer )
The Storyline
The storyline is the part that drives the players forwards through the wast ocean, and its also a way to connect bigger upgrades for the crafting thats needed for later part of the story to unfold. The first clue is about ‘The Radio Tower’ that is the first destination you will aim to get to. Once there… everything will be explained….or not… but ya might find a clue or two to push you further along the path to salvation….
I will not say much about the story due to spoiler-alerts, but its there and quite…yes, it is 🙂
Recap
So, if your looking for a fun, cozy little survival game to play with your friends this is a good choice, so stock up on those shark baits and let the hook fly and maybe you will get enough resources to craft yourself a fishing-pole 🙂
Klubba 