My latest co-op multiplayer obsession is Raft, the game where you build a raft

My co-op gaming group logged hundreds of extra hours deep rock galactic Since I wrote this a year and a half ago, we’re always looking for another game to get hooked on.

We tried a lot last year, guided by a mix of positive reviews and ‘whatever was on sale on Steam at the time’. back 4 brad, payday 2, Warhammer: Vermintide 2, sea ​​of ​​thieves, Diablo III, rain danger 2and Borderlands 3, each has its own charm.But what struck me most was rafta raft building game.

raft It entered early access in 2018 and officially released 1.0 this past June. The Pitch: Start the game on a small wooden raft paved with flotsam and jetsam as you drift through the endless sea. Armed with nothing but your trusty throwable plastic hook, you must comb the ocean for planks, plastic, and other scrap that you can use to spread your raft and stay alive. And once you’re no longer in constant danger of starving to death (and able to starve to death) Steer Not only can you drift your raft, but you can also start sailing to the rest of the world’s islands to figure out what happened to others.

The surest sign that you’re in love raft if you like Mine Craft (or you I want Start to like Mine Craft But instead of releasing it, you find its general purposelessness frustrating).The building is all done on a grid system, constantly combining and recombining materials to build and improve tools, and the way the game gradually progresses from an early survival-horror phase to a more free-form building and exploration phase. clearly Mine Craft-y. The game contains combat. many Better than clunky and boring combat sea ​​of ​​thieves), but it all depends on building, exploring, and resource gathering.

Expanding / The crafting UI and inventory management are (mostly) adorable, Mine Craft-encounter-animal crossing kind of way.

Andrew Cunningham

In the early game you are driven only by hunger and thirst. 2 meters is always ticking, starvation or dehydration will slow you down and rob you of your health until you eventually die (you can revive or respawn at any time, but the former means that a teammate can throw you off the raft). Take it to bed, the latter of which costs 2/3 of your inventory on normal difficulty). To make things even more complicated, they surround you in the form of aggressive, ubiquitous sharks. Jump into the water and it’s always ready to bite you (or if you’re out of reach, ready to bite you off the raft).

you can I play solo, but this game is less intimidating with friends. That means you have more mouths to feed, but you also don’t have to stop collecting precious planks and palm leaves, so you can take breaks to fish or refill your desalinator. There are no specific character classes, but enough that you and up to three friends can find different lanes depending on what they like most. While I’m mostly focused on building the actual raft and taking care of my steadily growing livestock, the rest of the group is more focused on locomotion, gathering food and materials, and progressing through the game’s tech tree. I like it.