You wake from cryostatis, a lone astronaut on a singular planet. Crash landed an unspecified amount of time ago, you exit your chamber of technologically induced slumber.
Do you go left or right? Right brings you to a beautifully rendered cliff side, starring off into a cavernous abyss. Like the game’s title suggests, you are Stranded.
And really, that’s about it. Eschewing any form of dialogue, characterization or traditional gameplay elements, Stranded can be best described as a self-contained walking simulator. Depending on how you define games, or even how you experience them, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
When walking from area to area, all accessible by clicking on the astronaut to pull up a rudimentary mini-map, Stranded allows for you to experience something in between Stanley Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and a Harlan Ellison short story - all in under an hour of playing time.
Isolation and question of purpose is key here. All you know is that you have crash landed on this planet, and you have a very limited amount of oxygen tanks. You need to survive, if that’s what you choose to do, and in doing so, you need to interact with the intelligent life on the planet, if they can even be considered that.
After looking at the cliff side, contemplating the vast emptiness of this foreign world, you head back into the ship and go left. Out here, there’s a bit more to do, but ultimately not much. You head straight, or go down through a cave, which allows you to go left or right outside of it.
In your travels, you encounter aliens - if they can even be called that. Like our lone astronaut, overwrought breathing animations convey their singularity. They stand around and contemplate. They don’t move, at least not much. You also discover ancient temples, leftovers from some long-forgotten civilization. Ultimately this is the purpose of the game - to find strands of familiarity between these shrines, and subsequently, connect these temples to your survival, relying on a robotic race to keep you alive a little longer.
Stranded is a game of elegant simplicity. It does one thing, has one singular purpose - and this is exploration and the subsequent meaningless that goes into that exploration.
What is survival? In this scenario, does that even matter? Or is the vastness of the planet, and the galaxy, too, just too much to comprehend for our lone astronaut?
There is no one here to fix your ship. No help is on the way, so where other games would have you perhaps seeking out spare parts and conducting repairs, or finding a way to contact home and call for help, in Stranded you’re simply left to wander an alien landscape by yourself. Ultimately, there is no purpose, this adventure is entirely self-directed, and if that’s something that sounds exciting, or even thrilling to you, then Stranded might be of interest.
But for me, Stranded is not a game so much as a concept or feeling. There is no sense of reward or completion. Even though it has an ending, it doesn’t feel as though much is accomplished. And perhaps that’s the point - the highlight the meaninglessness of life and how inconsequential we, as individuals, are in the cosmic scheme of things. The ruins you discover are a sober reminder that everything has to die eventually.
What Stranded really feels like is that you’re playing - and I use that term loosely - an isolation simulator. Stranded works in the way that you discover a feeling and hold on to it, but as a game it doesn’t incorporate anything that would define it as such except in the most reductive requirement that it’s interactive.
I could launch into a greater discussion of “are games art?” at this point, but I think that is best served for another venue. Stranded, like any indie game of similar ambition, is purposely artistic. It knows exactly what mood it is trying to convey, and does so with unbounded sincerity. With minimalist visuals that in their striking pixelation create a barren world, and a lo-fi soundtrack that feels as singular in tone as it sounds, Stranded has all the elements of a moody sci-fi lesson in introspection.
But as a game - with controls, plot, and characters, I found it to be a bit monotonous. If the goal of a game is to entertain you, to provide an escape from the doldrums of reality-based existence, then Stranded is unsuccessful. But if what you are looking for is an unadulterated look at the feeling of isolation and the purposelessness of existence, if you believe that games can in fact convey artistic ideas using the unique strengths of the medium and don’t always have to have clearly defined goals or gameplay systems, then Stranded might be just the type of game you are looking for.
Daniel Horowitz
@horowitzcentral
Latest posts by Daniel Horowitz (see all)
- Super Smash Flash is kind of more enjoyable than regular Smash Bros - 24 July 2024
- Pokémon Honest Trailer Keeps Things Honest - 23 July 2024
- Stranded Review - 21 July 2024
