itch.io

Rating: 7/10   Hours Played: ~5hr
I found this game by chance while looking for simulation games. Keeping in mind that this is still a work in progress, I'd highly recommend keeping an eye on this little gem.  I don't normally write reviews, let alone one as detailed as this one. I'll try to keep it as organized and unbiased as possible, so bear with me.

Pros:
+Simple, but charming graphics and characters
+Crafting and building
+Challenging survival
+Forced to quickly adapt and change strategies when your first attempt fails: With no tutorial, your only way of learning is trial and error which isn't necessarily a bad thing. There's nothing more rewarding than knowing you got a little bit further this time around.
+Dev team seems to be very responsive and updates the game frequently
+Nice Music (although slightly repetitive)

Cons:
-Maybe a little too difficult starting out: I'd like too see either a difficulty setting that you can change whenever, or a steady increase in the difficulty setting.
-Birds and Sharks attack too frequently: It's hard to find a balance between when you should be crafting, expanding, and defending your raft. It seems like every 5 seconds one or all of them are attacking you, making it hard to progress in a way that isn't overly stressful. 
-Drowning persons can't be helped out of the water: An option to have another person help the drowning person out of the water would be nice. The only way I've been able to help them out of the water is to build a raft on their tile, but by that time their health depletes so fast that they usually die.
-Cannot chose what goes into crates: It would be nice to have the option to click and drag items to crates. Upgrading crates to hold more items would be cool too.
-Cannot set priority of actions: If a pawn is eating on a tile that a shark is attacking, you cannot have the pawn stop eating to attack the shark. This could potentially leave the pawn sitting there eating until the shark eventually breaks the raft causing the pawn to fall into the water and drown.
Minor Bugs: Characters getting stuck in objects like the campfire. Sharks getting stuck in the rafts, leaving you unable to attack them or repair the broken rafts


Things I'd like to see in future updates (Please take this with a grain of salt, I don't know where you guys plan on taking this game so it may or may not be relevant):
More crafting items: This is an obvious one and I'm sure I didn't need to say it as  I'm sure the devs are already working on this, I just had to add it to the list.
Leveling: As the survivors last longer on the raft, they should be given the option to level. Every, lets say, five days the survivors could be given a point to put into different stats like strength, crafting speed, fishing/cooking speed, etc. 
Bored Characters: Having characters become bored and stop working would be a nice feature. Sitting on a raft your entire life doing nothing but surviving would take it's own sort of toll on the mind.  Give the pawns something to do, like crafting dice from wood, or a hobby like sculpting to ease the mind.
Small islands: This is a game about surviving on a raft, so I don't expect to see large islands, but maybe small 1x1 to 5x5 islands would be neat. The raft might slowly drift to the islands, or you might have to build your raft outwards to reach it. The islands wouldn't be big enough to build on, but they could have special items like pieces of clothing or other resources to help the players. With little to do on the island, the player would be forced to move on and continue their journey on the raft.


Tips for other players: 
-When you die, and you will die a lot, learn from your mistakes and try different approaches. 
-Get all your basic necessities built as soon as possible: Water, fishing pole, campfire, a few storage boxes, workbench.
-Keep the wood supply flowing: The last thing you want is to accidentally build something and realize you ran out of wood and trees. However, if you run into this situation you can always demolish something to get a few pieces of wood back.
-This one is a given, but attack birds and sharks as soon as possible.
-The pause option (Space bar) is your best friend. Take advantage of it so you don't waste time trying to decide what to do next. That's valuable time that could be spent doing something productive. 
-Hammocks/Meat racks can only be built between two trees.
-To build on additional floors you need to select that floor on the keyboard: Base floor of the raft=1, floor 2=2 and so on.
-Build more floors as quickly as you can


I realize my list of cons outweigh the pros, but don't let that discourage you from playing. I definitely recommend it to anyone looking for something new.  It's definitely worth it. 
I'll try to update this as I play more of the game.  I love what the devs have done with it so far and I look forward to seeing more in the near future!