Sunkenland Gameplay Preview – Ghetto Rust in Waterworld

Sunkenland is the very definition of jank. There are so many quality of life features missing, so many bugs, so many things that are imbalanced, and just overall very rough edges on almost every mechanic you interact with. Yet, I can’t deny after close to nineteen hours into the game, there is definitely something magical about it.

Or it could just be me and I’m a crazy person.

I definitely do love survival crafting games and enjoy almost all of them to some degree. I do look at these types of games more favorably than others would so take everything I say with a grain of salt.

To start with, let me go over some of the rough qualities of this game that may be off-putting, especially to those that don’t like survival crafting games to begin with. Most sane developers will make it so that you can just hold the harvesting button and the character in game will continue that action. For example, in most survival crafting games and even in farming sims, you usually hold down the left mouse button to have the character continue to chop down a tree. Currently in Sunkenland, you must click for EVERY SINGLE SWING of the axe. Talk about a recipe for early carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis.

You have a pretty small backpack to begin with and even after upgrading, you are constantly struggling for space. Every single clothing and decorative item takes up a single slot. Yes, even two identical shirts take up two separate slots. You do have a boat at your disposal but the storage on that is limited as well, with no option to upgrade. Combine this with the fact that stack sizes are pretty darn small.

A full stack of ore is only five ores. A full stack of scrap is only ten scrap. These are actually very small stack sizes relative to the amount of resources you actually need as well as the sheer amount of resources available at each location. For instance, one metal wall uses ten scrap by itself. The small stack sizes results in a very tedious back and forth between your base and the location you are currently scavenging from. The developers did release an update that supposedly increased stack sizes but I didn’t notice much of a difference unless you had to start a new save.

There are other quality of life issues (such as your hot bar only holding six items), general lack of polish, and lack of clear vision and direction but despite the shortcomings I find myself coming back to the game.

There’s a strange sort of appeal and charm that grows as you keep playing the game. Rust manages to capture this feeling quite well, especially when playing with friends. Nothing beats using a midi player to Rick roll the people raiding your base with the in game instruments, all the while spouting obscene nonsense using proximity voice chat. I have some very fond memories in Rust playing with friends.

Now Sunkenland doesn’t quite have the same level of charm presented through the wacky and unpredictable moments created by dealing with other real humans beings but it does come close. Sunkenland doesn’t have pvp per se but it does have a friendly fire option. This enables servers to create the feeling of pvp if so desired.

You don’t have to engage with strangers and the game is totally playable as a solo player. The balancing might be a bit off however, as the game seems to be designed with multiple players in mind. One feature of Sunkenland is that NPC parties will come raid your base, with the raids growing in difficulty as time progresses.

The raiding parties will attack you anywhere by the way. Even if you build your base out in the middle of the sea, these goofy raiders will shoot you with obvious auto aim while swimming in the ocean. If you choose to not take action, they will eventually destroy all of your base so negligence is not an option. There is a very humorous way to skip raids however. If you simply quit and reload the game, the raiders will despawn. There’s no telling when this will be removed so feel free to use it while you still can.

While the raids are quite annoying, the enemies do bring pretty valuable loot in the form of cloth, ammunition, and later on ballistic fiber, which is used to craft high tier armor. If you don’t find the idea of raids appealing, you can simply turn them off completely when starting a new world. I don’t mind them too much but sometimes it is a bit too much to handle when playing solo.

As for the gun play, the crossbow is the weapon that is the most reliable early game and it feels pretty satisfying when you land a shot from far away. I ended up driving my rusty pedal boat a nice distance off of enemy bases and aiming high enough to land headshots from that distance. The enemies won’t react and even if they do, they can’t shoot you from that range. Sometimes it takes a little bit of trial and error but after a while you get the hang of it and some moments later the base is free of enemies.

It feels pretty close to the shooting in Rust but with some moments where you miss a shot that you felt should have hit. Later on you can find or craft guns and guns do become necessary as the raiders and npcs will have higher level armor. The crossbow will take forever to take out enemies later on.

As for the magical part, there’s just something about diving undersea and seeing all the wreckage and hauling back a large amount of loot, and then researching new tech to make harvesting and fighting much easier. You can then take your new upgrades onto land bases held by hostile factions and systematically take down the enemies before stealing everything the base has to offer.

You also have to actually put a little effort into building your base since the enemy raiders will eventually bring guns to the fight. Making a massive base is rather expensive, so it forces you to be creative with your layouts and make efficient use of all the available space. The enemy weapons are no joke as well. Their guns will easily kill you if you have no cover, so some strategic placement of barricades will be necessary.

Between diving under water, raiding bases on land, and building up your own base to defend against raids, something clicked with me and I started to enjoy the game. This isn’t to say some aspects of the game aren’t annoying or without valid criticism as mentioned before. It’s that the game has some magical charm to it.

The unfortunate thing is that with some games you can clearly tell the developers intentionally designed the game with the magic in mind while Sunkenland seems to have stumbled on to the magic by mistake. Here’s to hoping the developers don’t make it a worse experience and rather make it better.

Additional Info

Steam Store Page : https://store.steampowered.com/app/2080690/Sunkenland/
Review Score: 78% positive with a total of 5,397 reviews as of this writing (09/11/23)
Developer: Vector3 Studio
Publisher: Vector3 Studio
Release Date: Aug 25, 2023
MSRP: $19.99

I received a key from keymailer. Thanks to the amazing person for approving my request!
Time spent: 18.9 hours
Achievement Score: N/A