It is not easy to make a popular game in 2024; so much has been done before, and often done well, that pushing the genre forward and making a game superior to games already on the market is difficult.
Unfortunately for Mardonpol Inc., Project Castaway is not one of those games.
After playing it for a while, I cannot help but feel it is a worse version of The Forest or Stranded Deep.
Stranded Deep is a disappointingly lackadaisical title compared to much of what the survival genre has to offer. However, compared to Project Castaway, it feels like a game-of-the-year contender, and Project Castaway is unlikely to be able to catch up before to Stranded Deep, let alone ever pass it, and certainly not before the release of Stranded Deep 2, which was announced earlier this year.
Image credit Project Castaway - Published and developed by Mardonpol Inc..
After installing Project Castaway on my very cable gaming rig, which far surpasses [game_titles] recommended system requirements, I was disappointed to see it hung on the loading screen for around 90 seconds even when installed on a high-end NVME drive, in compassion notoriously large slow-loading programs such as heavily modded Ark Survival Ascended, Ark Survival Evolved, and Conan Exiles installed loaded in around 15 seconds or less on the same drive.
When the game finally loaded, I was forced to watch an unskippable in-game cutscene with no voice-over and absurd levels of chromatic aberration, which persisted even after turning off chromatic aberration in settings, as it made the game look even worse than it otherwise would (which still would have been pretty rough).
Image credit Project Castaway - Published and developed by Mardonpol Inc..
Ignoring the lengthy, unskippable cutscene and chromatic aberration fiasco, I was thrown into some of the worst rendered water I had ever seen (it does look drastically better from the surface, however) before being guided towards an island, only to encounter one the worst crafting and inventory interfaces I had encountered in my 30+ years of being a gamer.
While it was a fun idea to allow users to explore the contents of their backpack physically, and the handwritten font used for the journal would have been immersive (if it was not so difficult to read), sometimes the wheel does not need reinventing.
There is a reason so many games use similar-style UI: It works well, and players are used to it.
While I commend Mardonpol Inc. for wanting to try something new, the UI is not intuitive and makes even simple tasks feel like a chore.
Image credit Project Castaway - Published and developed by Mardonpol Inc..
Now, don’t get me wrong. I know some people enjoy survival games in which players are forced to carry tree trunks, branches, and sticks one or two at a time.
I know there is a market for such games, and it is good games are made to cater to that demographic, but just one look at Steam charts will show you that games with a more traditional inventory system that allows players to carry stacks of materials in their inventory are far more popular than games which require players to drag around a handful of leaves at a time.
Image credit Project Castaway - Published and developed by Mardonpol Inc..
There is a market for single-player survival games. It’s not a very big market, and there are much better games that can be enjoyed solo, such as Ark Survival Ascended, Conan Exiles, and 7 Days to Die; however, there is some fun playing to be had Project Castaway gamers still feeling burnt over how Stranded Deep PC port ended up, even if Project Castaway has already taken its first tottering steps in the same erroneous direction.
Image credit Project Castaway - Published and developed by Mardonpol Inc..
Project Castaway is a survival video game developed and published by Mardonpol Inc., it was released on 23 September 2024 and retails for $19.99.
Project Castaway is available exclusively on PC.
The following peripherals are officially supported:
Project Castaway is unrated and contains:
I need to be honest; if I had purchased Project Castaway, I would have refunded it due to the poor performance, unskippable cutscene, and chromatic aberration overload.
However, I received it for free, so I will keep it. Honestly, outside of updating this review, I will not play it again, as there are so many better games on the market that are vying for my time.
Ultimately not a terrible game, but not one that I can recommend at this time.
