Review: Raft
At a Glance
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How to Save and Pause:Each world is saved separately as if it was its own profile. In single player, you can pause the game by pressing ESC to bring up the game's menu. This menu is also used to save your game. Time needed per session:Progress can be slow, so give yourself plenty of time to find resources, craft items, and explore. Thirty minutes per session sounds about right.
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Does this game pose issues for Christian players?
 | No - this is a great game for Christians Although players will need to fight hostile wildlife, there's nothing too serious to be found in this game. |
Screenshots
![[view screenshot]](../images/screenshots/raft_0.jpg)
![[view screenshot]](../images/screenshots/raft_1.jpg)
![[view screenshot]](../images/screenshots/raft_2.jpg)
Game Overview
"Raft" was the perfect name for this game, as your makeshift raft is the central hub of everything you do. Unlike other survival games, you can't make a stationary base - no matter how many other places you explore, you'll always return to the raft. That said, the "survival" aspect of this game is remarkably laid back; once you've figured out how to make some basic equipment you'll have plenty of food and water.
When you first begin the game, there isn't much to do other than fish debris out of the water and start finding ways to utilize it. Once you've expanded the raft a bit and built a research table, you can study the different materials for ideas and crafting recipes. Nets, for example, will make gathering floating materials easier - effortless even.
You will, however, need to watch where you step: there's a hungry shark in the water, and it thinks you look like a delicious meal. This shark is the game's primary threat, as it'll either attack you directly or try and eat your raft. If it manages to break off a piece, anything that was supported by it will fall off and be destroyed, so be sure to deal with the shark and repair the damage quickly.
Eventually you'll find blueprints among the salvaged materials. After using them to build the radio and some antennas, you're ready to begin the adventure proper. You see, there is actually a story behind this game; you're not supposed to be aimlessly floating around forever. This equipment helps you locate special story islands that are spread out throughout the world. Using paddles, sails, and other means to pilot the raft, you'll need to seek them out.
Each story island presents you with a puzzle of some sort. The first couple of locations mainly focus on getting you used to exploring beyond your raft, but later you'll need to solve inventory puzzle or perhaps a riddle that needs to be solved. Your reward for completing these tasks are new playable characters, blueprints for more advanced equipment, and the radio signal ID of the next location.
One thing worth remembering is that most of the important locations contain hostile wildlife. Thus, you'll need to defend yourself using whatever weapons and armor you've managed to create. Unfortunately, this is where things begin to go wrong.
Combat in this game works similarly to how it does in say, Minecraft. You'll equip your weapon, then follow a simple dodge-and-strike pattern until your target dies. Normally, this is fine, but for some reason the developers decided to give everybody huge amounts of health, so fighting anything more than a rat feels like a chore. As an example, you'll need to strike a bear (a common mid-game enemy) ten times with the metal spear (a mid-game weapon). Even the titanium sword, the strongest weapon in the game, takes five hits to defeat a single bear. There is an option to make bows for ranged attacks, but they don't fair much better and are significantly slower than the melee weapons.
The combat mechanics seem to be the determining factor in whether or not someone thinks this game is fun. There's a lot of things to do here aside from the story, so if you're just interested in surviving, exploring, treasuring hunting, and so on, you're going to have a fun time. But if you're the kind of person who prefers to follow the story and save the day, you'll need to put up with some of the most tedious gameplay I've seen in ages. But, once you've finished the story, you'll never need to do any of that again for that saved game.
If you couldn't tell, I'm on the fence about recommending this game, as I took the story route while reviewing it and found the grind annoying. That said, I can see why people enjoy it, and since less than 12% of the playerbase has the achievement for finishing the story, it's pretty clear that it's not the story that's attracting people.
When you first begin the game, there isn't much to do other than fish debris out of the water and start finding ways to utilize it. Once you've expanded the raft a bit and built a research table, you can study the different materials for ideas and crafting recipes. Nets, for example, will make gathering floating materials easier - effortless even.
You will, however, need to watch where you step: there's a hungry shark in the water, and it thinks you look like a delicious meal. This shark is the game's primary threat, as it'll either attack you directly or try and eat your raft. If it manages to break off a piece, anything that was supported by it will fall off and be destroyed, so be sure to deal with the shark and repair the damage quickly.
Eventually you'll find blueprints among the salvaged materials. After using them to build the radio and some antennas, you're ready to begin the adventure proper. You see, there is actually a story behind this game; you're not supposed to be aimlessly floating around forever. This equipment helps you locate special story islands that are spread out throughout the world. Using paddles, sails, and other means to pilot the raft, you'll need to seek them out.
Each story island presents you with a puzzle of some sort. The first couple of locations mainly focus on getting you used to exploring beyond your raft, but later you'll need to solve inventory puzzle or perhaps a riddle that needs to be solved. Your reward for completing these tasks are new playable characters, blueprints for more advanced equipment, and the radio signal ID of the next location.
One thing worth remembering is that most of the important locations contain hostile wildlife. Thus, you'll need to defend yourself using whatever weapons and armor you've managed to create. Unfortunately, this is where things begin to go wrong.
Combat in this game works similarly to how it does in say, Minecraft. You'll equip your weapon, then follow a simple dodge-and-strike pattern until your target dies. Normally, this is fine, but for some reason the developers decided to give everybody huge amounts of health, so fighting anything more than a rat feels like a chore. As an example, you'll need to strike a bear (a common mid-game enemy) ten times with the metal spear (a mid-game weapon). Even the titanium sword, the strongest weapon in the game, takes five hits to defeat a single bear. There is an option to make bows for ranged attacks, but they don't fair much better and are significantly slower than the melee weapons.
The combat mechanics seem to be the determining factor in whether or not someone thinks this game is fun. There's a lot of things to do here aside from the story, so if you're just interested in surviving, exploring, treasuring hunting, and so on, you're going to have a fun time. But if you're the kind of person who prefers to follow the story and save the day, you'll need to put up with some of the most tedious gameplay I've seen in ages. But, once you've finished the story, you'll never need to do any of that again for that saved game.
If you couldn't tell, I'm on the fence about recommending this game, as I took the story route while reviewing it and found the grind annoying. That said, I can see why people enjoy it, and since less than 12% of the playerbase has the achievement for finishing the story, it's pretty clear that it's not the story that's attracting people.
Points of Interest
Playable epilogue
The adventure doesn't end just because you completed the story. After saving the last remnants of humanity, you're free to return to your raft and just explore the world. This would be a good time to travel back to the story locations and find anything you missed, try out some of the other things you can do, or just work on earning the various achievements.
Plenty of customization
There aren't many rules about how to build your raft. The radio and antennas need to be placed far apart and higher than the foundation level, but you're otherwise free to do whatever you want. Aside from the various crafting stations, there are also tons of different furniture items you can build to decorate your raft and make it a little more snug and homey.
Loads of things to do
Aside from tracking down the other survivors, you can hunt for buried treasure, catch rare fish, become a master of trade, raise animals, and generally find other ways to make life in the flooded world more comfortable.
Steam community features
There are a whopping 104 achievements available in this game. Only a few reflect your progress in the story; many seem to be earned by doing the same tasks over and over again. That still leaves a huge number of achievements that are earned by doing something interesting, difficult, or clever, so achievement hunters will have a fun time of it. A few even require trying out the multiplayer mode, so bring a friend along.
Oh, and there's a set of Steam trading cards available if anyone is interested in those.
Oh, and there's a set of Steam trading cards available if anyone is interested in those.
Equipment upgrades aren't permanent
Making and equipping items like an oxygen bottle or flippers will give you several advantages, but they wear out quickly and aren't repairable. They aren't cheap to make either, which means you're basically given the choice between spending extra time gathering resources or just going without.
Helpful aside
On a completely different note, during my game I discovered something that's not well telegraphed to the player but would be useful for anyone interested in playing Raft. Once you've viewed a blueprint (ie, held it and received the little popup explaining that you've learned the recipe), you can discard the blueprint. You don't actually need to keep them around using up precious room in your storage chests.
The exceptions are recipes for food and drinks, which can be pinned to your cook stations for easy access.
The exceptions are recipes for food and drinks, which can be pinned to your cook stations for easy access.
Concerns and Issues
Some violence
Players will need to fight off hostile wildlife throughout the game, though blood is not shown unless you get hurt. When the player's character takes damage, transparent blood splatters appear on the sides of the screen for a few brief moments.
An important thing to note about this game is that you'll never be tasked with harming another human being - only hostile animals like bears, sharks, and hyenas.
An important thing to note about this game is that you'll never be tasked with harming another human being - only hostile animals like bears, sharks, and hyenas.