Sunkenland
by Aethyna
Oct 13, 2023 |
1
Votes |
95
Played |
0
Reviews
9
rate
Genres:
SimulationGraphics:
3DLabels:
Survival , Co-op , Building , Post Apocalyptic , Exploration , Underwater , CraftingPlatforms:
Publishers:
Vector3 Studio Sunkenland is a sandbox-style survival game where you’ll not only have to survive in a submerged world filled with hostiles, but you’ll also need to build a base and defend it against enemies. Aside from being able to play with friends or even strangers if you so wish to, there are plenty to craft and gather, upgrades to unlock, and new blueprints to discover here. Will you be able to survive in this brave new world? Play Now Similar Games Played
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Summary
Sunkenland is a sandbox-style survival game where you’ll not only have to survive in a submerged world filled with hostiles, but you’ll also need to build a base to call your own and defend it against enemies. Aside from being able to play with friends or even strangers if you so wish to, there are plenty to craft and gather, upgrades to unlock, and new blueprints to discover here. Will you be able to survive in this brave new world?
Plotline
You found yourself adrift near an island. With no memory of what had happened, your survival instincts kicked in and you decided to make the most of the situation you’re in while slowly rediscovering yourself and the new world you now live in…
At the moment, the game doesn’t really have much of a story going for it. However, fleshing out the storyline is part of the game’s roadmap, and well, Sunkenland is still in its alpha phase, so there is still plenty of time to add a story in. However, the “bones” of the story are already there. It seems like the story will be revealed in a journal-like form, with your character adding in new memories as he/she remembers them.
Gameplay
As a Rust-like survival game, Sunkenland has plenty of gameplay aspects, each equally important as the next. However, the very first thing you’ll probably want to do when you start is to gather everything and anything you can lay your hands on. Scavenging is as easy as pressing the interact button – the “F” key in this case - and waiting for the process to complete. You can do this for almost every gatherable pile in the game, be it a scrap metal pile or a rusty car.
However, there are times when you’ll need to chop down a tree, hack away at some old furniture, or mine a stone for some precious ores. For these actions, you just need to press and hold the left mouse button to spend stamina to gather these resources.
For food, aside from gathering mushrooms and strawberries, you can hunt down simple critters like crabs, fish for… well, fish, or even go into the water to take on larger sea creatures like marlins, sharks, or even sea turtles. There are even scallops that you can gather from certain stones underwater. Naturally, these raw ingredients don’t really provide much satiety, so it’s always good to cook them first. You can do so at the grill, once you have it built, that is!
Note that for strawberries, you can sometimes get their seeds by consuming the fruits. These seeds can then be grown in planters to produce more strawberries. The same goes for trees on your starter island. You’ll get some pinecone-like seeds, which you can then grow in planters to get wood once the trees mature. There’s no need to water them, though, which I’m eternally thankful for.
Crafting is also another important aspect of the game. You’ll start the game with a sizeable list of items that you can craft from scratch, including useful tools to gather even more materials, advanced materials like rope from cloth, or simple armor that can, hopefully, keep you safe from attacks. However, as you progress, you’ll need to build various crafting stations that will allow you to craft a variety of more complex tools, armor, weapons, and even food!
There are several ways you can increase your list of crafting recipes. You could buy or find blueprints in the game world, or you could perform research via the research table to discover new blueprints. Note that blueprints that are discoverable at the research table aren’t findable in the “wild”, so they aren't mutually exclusive.
Exploration is definitely one of the highlights in Sunkenland. There are lots of points-of-interest on the map that you can explore, with the game giving you a percentage, indicating how much lootable stuff remained at each location. There’s no need to painstakingly swim to each location either. The game has many different kinds of boats that you can craft then drive, cutting travelling time pretty drastically. Plus, these boats often come with extra onboard storage, which is always a useful thing to have.
Sunkenland has a really fun base-building aspect as well, allowing you to easily snap together pieces of your base to create an in-game home to call your own. In a way, it reminds me of Fallout 4’s base-building feature, which is pretty mind-blowing for its time, but there’s a catch – you can’t “build” any decorations. That being said, the game has plenty of collectible decorations that you can find and then place in your base while exploring the game world.
It's also great that, unlike most survival games, there are multiple storages for storing different kinds of items you may have, whether it is to store wood planks or food. It does make it much easier to differentiate between which storage contains which items, rather than having the plain old storage boxes for everything from clothes to scrap metal.
As you might have already guessed as well, you can build your base using a variety of building materials. Of course, better materials typically grant your base more durability, and stuff that is built from these materials is usually tougher to destroy. Take scrap metal vs wood, for instance. A wooden storage box has a much lower durability than a scrap metal box, even more so when compared to a safe, which uses iron bars to build. This is important because once your notoriety increases, you’ll get more frequent attacks at your base, and a more durable base is definitely a good thing here.
Enemies in this game range from hostile underwater sea creatures like sharks to hostile humanoids like mutants. Aside from traders who are neutral, there are also many different factions in this game. They are all hostile to you right from the start, and there seems to be no way to improve relationships with them.
Last but not least, as a survival game, Sunkenland has a pretty robust, though not at all unforgiving, survival aspect. This means that you’ll need to keep an eye on the hunger and thirst bars, making sure that you have enough supplies during your excursions from your base to keep your character’s needs fulfilled.
As mentioned before, you can easily get food in this game, and cooking the ingredients will get you better quality food that will restore more satiety and hydration. For water, since you’re surrounded by the ocean, it’s simple enough to haul buckets of saltwater to your water purifier, which you’ll need to build first, so it can convert the salty water into drinkable water.
There’s also the health bar, which is obviously crucial to your survival. There are several ways you can restore your health, but there are equally many ways to lose health, whether you ran out of breath while diving or getting attacked by an enemy. There are even statuses like bleeding, which requires the use of a bandage a.s.a.p. lest you bleed out, and freezing when you decide to take a dip in the ocean at night.
As far as content goes, Sunkenland has an impressive amount of them, enough to easily get you to rack up tens of hours of playtime, despite still being in early access. The game even has a roadmap where the developers have outlined future additions to the game, be it a story-driven campaign or more building and crafting options. However, as an EA title, the game does have its fair share of glitches and bugs, with some of them more annoying than most. They aren’t as prevalent as I’d expect, though, and they tend to get fixed pretty fast once you’ve reported the issues to the devs.
Community
Although you can play Sunkenland entirely in single-player, the game is designed with co-op in mind. Here, you can choose between hosting a server or joining one. Hosting is easy enough, and you get plenty of customization options, so you could, for instance, restrict how many players can join you in the game.
Graphics/ Sound
Sunkenland has some pretty decent graphics that remind me of Rust. It can sometimes be a bit hard to differentiate between ore-laden stones and decorative ones on the sea floor, but that’s probably the only major qualm I have. In terms of sound, the game has a mix of sound effects and music to help bring to your attention important events or activities. For instance, I’ve quickly learned that when the music changes, even when you don’t see the enemies yet, it’s probably a good idea to shut the door and prepare yourself for a fight!
Conclusion
Needless to say, for a survival game fan, Sunkenland is a truly delightful discovery. Despite being in early access, the game already has plenty of content to keep you and your pals occupied, whether it is exploring the massive world, battling other factions, or simply base-building. Considering the hours you can sink into the game, the price tag is very reasonable as well. So, if you’re hankering for a unique survival game to play, Sunkenland is one game you don’t want to miss!
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