My son and I were looking for a new game and we decided to pick up Raft on sale. I really didn't know what to expect, but it has great reviews.
At this point, I will only buy games off Steam that have very positive or overwhelmingly positive reviews. There are far too many games in my backlog and most new games are disappointing.
Raft supports up to 8 players, but works great with 2.
Raft is a survival game mostly played out on the open sea but not exclusively. You start out on a 2x2 raft with just a hook you used to collect debris from the ocean. After collecting some floating plastic, leaves, and wood you can start to expand your raft.
A good part of the game is defending yourself against sharks who attempt to attack your raft on a regular basis. Initially you won't have much to fend them off by a wooden spear. Three hits will get them to leave you alone for about five minutes.
While the sharks are fairly easy to fend off, they do come at the worst possible time and they make looking for the more valuable commodities difficult as they are mostly found under water.
After a while, you start getting a foothold in the game and are able to expand your technology and raft size. You will spend a good time fishing, planting, discovering islands, and fighting Bruce. The game has a story told through notes and discovery.
At a certain point you will discover some tools to allow you to focus your attention more on the story and less on random drifting around looking for the basics. At this point you will notice a significant spike in difficulty and excitement of the game.
The story isn't long, but will give you around 10-15 hours of focused entertainment. After that you will find yourself wanting to improve your raft and come up with a functional yet entertaining build.
While most of the game our raft looked like this, a very crowded essentials build. We are mostly still in this position as we approach the end of the main story.
We were doing great, no mishaps and have advanced quite well, then we had a party wipe at the last island and lost all our gear we were carrying. We spent a good a little time visiting some of the larger islands to re-equip ourselves to revisit the final story island.
We have both enjoyed the game and it is an excellent game to play with kids. It is a unique twist on the survival genre and keeps you busy enough you don't get tired with the game loop until you are well past through the story.
We picked up the game on sale for $13 on Steam, but even at it's current $20 price I would give it a big recommendation.
What you build is really up to your imagination.
