Stranded review

[Administrator]

For as long as I can remember, my greatest fear has been some variant of death by suffocation: drowning, being trapped in a burning building or just about everything relating to space and space travel. To me, it's the most horrific way to go. That's a bit odd, considering how much I loved space as a kid; I grew up with Star Trek, Stargate and Star Wars. Even as an adult I regularly fantasise about being an explorer of the cosmos... before the crippling fear of asphyxiation kicks in.
I went into the slim indie exploration game Stranded thinking that it would force me to face that omnipresent dread. Instead I found a curious cocktail of distant, tenuous empathy as I watched someone steadily inch towards death on the harsh landscape of an unknown planet.
Superficially, Stranded seems fairly similar to Proteus. Both are games built on exploration and both eschew most of the conventions to which gamers have become accustomed. Those links quickly fall away, however. Where Proteus is intimate, personal and impressionistic, Stranded is cold, secluded and expressionistic. Stranded is Proteus' emotive foil, and that distinction can be seen at every level.
Read more…


More...