Stranded Sails - Explorers of the Cursed Islands Reviews
Stranded Sails: Explorers of the Cursed Islands is a solid entry into the farming and exploration space, and a perfect entry level title for younger gamers or those new to the genre. Its simplicity helps it stand out in the crowd, but not always for the best reasons.
Stranded Sails is an okay exploration game that rewards you for adventuring into the nooks and crannies of its tropical islands.
If you can get past the somewhat slow returns on quite a bit of grind, it has some survival appeal
In its current state, Stranded Sails is best left marooned on its island of sadness.
Developers of the game were inspired by Harvest Moon and many similar games, but they created something different, yet familiar. The game offers nice graphics, relaxing gameplay with plenty of survival and base building mechanics.
Review in Polish | Read full review
Stranded Sails: Explorers of the Cursed Islands is a fun and relaxing title that allows hours to simply tick past as you walk / run or row your boat from one island to the next. Exploring sandy shores is just as relaxing as going into caves or fishing underneath a stone outcrop. There’s nothing really hard about it as everything will come to you in time, you just need to get there first.
Despite some of the non-enthralling parts of the farming and cooking, they are still fun enough to keep me repeating them over and over and continuing through the game, even if the plot lost my interest pretty quickly after the excessively long prologue and first few days getting oriented on the island.
Once you have some meals to take with you, cooked using the things you grow, you can venture out in your rowboat (rowing devours your energy, especially with big waves) and explore the other islands for materials, crew, secrets and other plants/food that you can bring back with you and use in camp. This gameplay loop is fun, marred a little by the quick drain on your energy. Exploration is going to take you a long time, many repeated trips across the ocean and in some cases you'll only get a handful of materials for your troubles.
MEDIOCRE - A farming sim adventure on a deserted archipelago certainly has a great ring to it, and the setting is ripe for a lot of exploration, discovery, and some clever mechanics. Stranded Sails however falls a bit short in nearly every department. A heavy over-use of a convoluted cooking mechanic and other issues prevented the game from reaching that addictive quality that is required for games like these.
It doesn't drastically change the genre, but Stranded Sails is enjoyable. The stamina bar can be very annoying, but don't let it stop you from enjoying what the game has to offer. The straightforward approach to task completion is a benefit for those who need more guidance in their sim games. If you are looking to try out a simulation game, then Stranded Sails might be a good jumping-off point.
Stranded Sails is one of the weakest titles released this year. A game lost in the search for its identity with the combination of survival and agriculture themes has created a boring and repetitive title. Despite all the bugs, you have to experience this gameplay again and again. No one is advised to experience this title with its current state. Even if we ignore the bugs, the whole game is not really worth the time.
Review in Persian | Read full review
Stranded Sails I would say fits just right in the genre with its own take. If the intro hours were a little quicker I think the pacing would feel much better and I worry some folks will stop before getting there. It reminded me of the first time I played Harvest Moon 64. I had no idea what I was doing, but slowly and surely I came away feeling accomplished and satisfied. Stranded Sails gave me that feeling of heart and charm with a pirate twist.
I can’t find the entertainment in Stranded Sails. The quests aren’t fun, what little progression that exists is there to help ease the tedium of completing the repetitive fetch quests in the first place. I can’t even say it is a relaxing game because the energy bar is frustrating and the sole means of combating it lacks any kind of interesting engagement. Yet if it was removed the game’s existence would be that much more mindless bordering on an idle game.