Only played for a couple of hours with pals, dipping in and out for a steam refund. I've enjoyed crafting and survival games so I get the overall appeal, but after two hours we just felt kind of exhausted. It was an endless grind of fishing to scrape together enough food not to starve, hovering between three water purifiers trying to manage thirst, and then shoveling plastic out of the sea of garbage to build another fishing rod. Things that ought to be fun, like exploring unknown islands, instead felt tense and frustrating as we staggered around, famished, and got eaten by sharks on the way back to the raft. Even as we started to get on top of the resource game, there was still no view to automating anything. Progress would be hours and hours of necessary chores, with only a much smaller amount of time and resources available for luxuries like building a bigger raft or 'having fun'.

Maybe it's better single player (or just without five people crowded onto one 2x2 raft), or maybe it evens out later on.

There was one transcendental moment of humour in the game. We were adrift at sea, trying desperately to boil salt water so that we could get something to drink, watching our raft get swallowed up piece by piece by a shark, and then my friend announced "I've built a research table". Ah, perfect. We might be starving to death, but at least the march of science continues.