Stranded

If you are a fan of Lost (the television series) you may just notice a few similarities between that and the mobile game Stranded.

Set with quite a mystery and with cut-away dream scenes as well as some basic problem solving you play the part of one man in a team of survivors from a shipwreck. You start out with next to nothing but your bare hands and have to do speak with the other survivors (who seem all but helpless) to do some missions and get rewarded for your trouble. For example, speaking with one character you’ll be asked to explore the island and pick up some driftwood for a fire and another will ask you to search for some fishing line and hooks to make a fishing rod to catch your next meal.

The tasks are all pretty self explanatory, i.e. get this to do that and you’ll be rewarded. To be honest, the mystery element is only kept alive by the odd dreams you seem to have intermittently throughout the game. There’s no mystery from the game itself in terms of the tasks and objectives set. Rather than having to remember where things are, you’ll be told where to go and what to do e.g. some snakes are in the north of the island, you’re told by the friendly villagers that if you kill them and bring their meat to them you’ll be rewarded.

Oddly enough the currency of the island is shells and you can negotiate with the villagers to barter for food, wood, equipment and so on to accomplish missions. Generally by exploring the environment and picking up everything that you possibly can and putting it in your backpack, you’ll end up solving the riddle of the island and complete all the tasks set - even before they are set!

By purchasing an axe for example you can chop down trees and recover fruit which can either be eaten or bartered for shells and therefore traded for better items. By collecting the wood from the trees you’ll inadvertently end up completing the mission to build a raft when speaking with another of your survivors.

Controls are straight forward, up, down, left and right all do what they’re meant to and the action button will do something whenever it’s highlighted. For example you can chop a tree down with the axe by tapping the button, you can also pick up fruit and other items by pressing it when near the item. When hunting, you automatically lock onto the target and must gauge the power of the shot to cover the distance.

In the end then, rather than a proper game fuelled with mystery and intrigue, it becomes just a lot of mini-missions threaded together which eventually solve the puzzle of the island! Interestingly though this ends up making the gaming element less important and the plot far more involving so if you can get your head round such simple tasks you’ll actually get quite into it and no doubt spend quite a while playing without even realising it!

Rating 74%

Positives

Very engaging plot with a few twists and turns to keep you occupied for ages

Lots of little missions to do

Striking a balance between eating food to keep healthy, trading it or using it to complete missions makes this quite a good puzzle game

Auto-saves from every screen – meaning you don’t lose your progress easily

Pretty good graphics

Negatives

Very straight forward tasks leave little to the imagination

Very easy game to progress in and won’t offer much challenge for more advanced players