Raft

You wake on a few planks lashed together in the middle of an ocean, holding a hook. Debris floats past. You throw the hook, pull in a plank, and build a slightly bigger raft. That is the first ten minutes and, mechanically, it never stops being the game.

What changes is scale and direction. The raft becomes a multi-storey base with farms, purifiers, engines and a sail, and the drifting becomes navigation: there are real islands out there with a real story on them, and eventually you decide where you are going instead of where the current takes you.

• Thirst and hunger are the clock, and both have craftable answers within the first hour.
• A shark called Bruce bites your raft on a schedule. Learning to handle him is the first skill.
• Everything is built from salvaged junk: planks, plastic, palm leaves, scrap.
• The story is real, sequenced, and worth playing rather than a sandbox excuse.

1. 1

   Hook everything

   Planks, palm leaves, plastic, barrels. Barrels are the good ones, they hold materials you cannot fish loose.

2. 2

   Build a foundation and a collection net

   Widen the raft, then place collection nets on the leading edge so debris gathers itself while you work.

3. 3

   Solve water and food

   A simple purifier turns salt water into drinking water, a grill cooks. Both are cheap, both are urgent.

4. 4

   Deal with the shark

   Bruce eats your foundations. Three hits with a spear drives him off, and a shark bait post buys you time. Do not swim while he is circling.

5. 5

   Plant a garden

   Palm saplings and crop plots make you self-sufficient. Skipping this means fishing forever.

6. 6

   Build a receiver and a sail

   The radio receiver is what turns aimless drifting into a journey. This is where the game actually opens up.

• The receiver plus antennas gives you a bearing. The sail plus engines gives you the means. That combination is the mid-game unlock.
• Islands come in flavours: small resource islands to strip, and large story islands with real locations on them.
• Better tools, wetsuits, oxygen tanks and biofuel engines each remove a limit you have been living with.
• Advanced purifiers, sprinklers and animal husbandry turn survival into infrastructure, and then into decoration.

The story islands are hand-built locations: an abandoned ship, a vertical city, a research station, a resort. Each one is a small exploration level with notes, keys, puzzles and a piece of the plot.

• Follow the receiver bearings in order. The islands are sequenced and later ones assume gear from earlier ones.
• Bring building materials, food, and something to fight with. Some islands have hostile wildlife and locked areas.
• Read the notes. The whole backstory is in them and none of it is narrated at you.
• Save often before a story island, because they are the only genuinely dangerous places in the game.

The ocean is not a natural disaster. The world flooded, and some people saw it coming: the story islands are the remains of their attempts to survive it, each one a different answer to the same question and each one a failure in its own way.

• Utopia, the resorts and the research stations each represent a different theory about how to outlast the water.
• The notes track individual people across locations, and their arcs are the most affecting part of the game.
• You are following someone. Working out who, and why, is the plot.
• The ending is a real ending, which is rare in this genre.

• Up to eight share a raft, and it is the best way to play. Division of labour is immediate and obvious.
• Assign jobs: one on the hook, one cooking and watering, one building, one on shark duty.
• Story islands are far easier and far funnier with a crew.
• Agree on a build plan. Two people extending the same raft in different directions produces something unusable.

• Collection nets on the front edge. Free materials, permanently.
• Keep a spare plank stack for shark repairs at all times.
• Anchor before you swim, or your raft will drift away while you are underwater.
• Build a second storey for storage and keep the ground floor for work.
• Carry an axe, a spear, a hook and food to every island. You will need all four.
• Do not sell yourself short on water. Two purifiers early is not overkill.

• The official site and Steam page for the current version and DLC.
• The community wiki for island walkthroughs and recipe trees, though the story is better unspoiled.
• Ask in our Discord. It goes on sale constantly and fills a co-op evening perfectly.