Stranded Sails - Explorers of the Cursed Islands Reviews
Touted as a seafaring Stardew Valley, Stranded Sails combines farming, exploration, and survival in a neat yet flawed package. It’s fun and rewarding in parts but doesn’t hold a light to Stardew or Harvest Moon in terms of charm or depth.
Stranded Sails: Explorers of the Cursed Islands is an absolute wannabe that only hardcore fans of this genre could possibly enjoy. Tedious exploration full of repetitive tasks.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
I want to like Stranded Sails, I am intrigued by a few of the artefacts I have stumbled across during my exploration and I am suitably invested in seeing the story through, however at present the game is unplayable.
Stranded Sails - Explorers of the Cursed Islands at its best feels soulless, and at its worst it doesn't even function. If this is targeted towards young children, it's an insult to their intelligence. This is easily one of the worst games I have ever played.
Even though we ran into the occasional bug (nothing that couldn’t be fixed by rebooting), this is a fun game if you just want to relax with something nice and easy.
At its surface, Stranded Sails: Explorers of the Cursed Islands looks like an adorable and endearing addition to this genre, and though I so badly wanted to love it, I’d have difficulty recommending it to almost anyone other than young children. There is certainly a place in the gaming world for peaceful, low-pressure exploration and farming games, but unfortunately, I’m not convinced that Stranded Sails is one that belongs.
In summation, Stranded Sails feels like a lot of potentially interesting combinations of systems and ideas that, in execution, is just too shallow and tedious to be all that much fun.
Games like Stardew Valley and Minecraft can provide players with hundreds of hours of entertainment with their farming survival gameplay. Yet, it's sometimes nice to be able to play a game in the genre that leans into the more relaxing aspects that it can provide. Stranded Sails never feels overwhelming, and the pirate aesthetic is welcoming and unique while still pushing forward that sense of adventure.
Stranded Sails offers some terrific farming simulation which does the majority of the game's heavy lifting, but it's held up by middling RPG-esque mechanics. Mixing things up and throwing a selection of genres into a pot to see what comes out is arguably commendable, and there's an awful lot to like about Stranded Sails, but some frustrating and bizarre choices in regards to recipes and the energy meter system hamstring the game for those hoping for a less taxing castaway experience.
Simulation & farming fans will likely want to skip this title, unless they are dying for something new to play until a notable game in the genre is released.
Stranded Sails doesn't earn its widespread comparisons to Stardew Valley.
Stranded Sails: Explorers of the Cursed Islands is an interesting adventure RPG with plenty of mechanics that involve resource-gathering, cooking and exploration and which features a world with a soul of its own. Where Stranded Sails disappoints is in what regards its rather shallow combat and repetitiveness of some objectives, as well as the technical bugs that affect the experience. A work that's aimed at those who are very much into gathering and production of resources.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Stranded Sails - Explorers of the Cursed Islands is a wonderfully colorful and relaxing experience for a more casual audience.
Stranded Sails is a great survival experience for young gamers or people new to the genre, but experienced players will find little in the way of appreciable challenge.
Stranded Sails is the perfect game for those who enjoy learning and structured game play. I found every new discovery exciting, cooking food for my crew rewarding and fishing as always put me in my zen zone but unfortunately I did not get the adventuring survival I was hoping for which is a shame really because it is also obvious that a lot of hard work has gone into this title as a studio and I look forward to watching Lemondrop evolve.
Stranded Sails will be too simple for most players, yet kindly welcoming for those new to the survival/crafting genre
Stranded Sails: Explorers of the Cursed Islands is a solid entry into the farming and exploration space, and a perfect entry level title for younger gamers or those new to the genre. Its simplicity helps it stand out in the crowd, but not always for the best reasons.
Though it's a bit more survival-focused than other games of its kind, Stranded Sails is still a mostly quaint and worthwhile farm life sim any genre fan will enjoy.
I preferred playing this game docked rather than in handheld mode. A peaceful adventure game like this begs to be played while relaxing on the couch and enjoying the vibrant colors on a big screen. While it isn't the most gripping adventure, fans of Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing will probably enjoy it.
While the experience is not an entirely negative one, it leaves little to enjoy when problems start coming up. The charming atmosphere and stylization lends itself well to being a sort of survival-lite adventure for a younger audience; the quests are straightforward; and, finally, the difficulty is forgiving. Those looking for an exploration game will find frustrations abound in this title, and unfortunately the design choices lead to a rather disappointing experience as a whole.