Developer Lemonbomb Entertainment and publisher Merge Games recently announced the successful Steam indie Stranded Sails: Explorers of the Cursed Islands is heading to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in October.
It’ll be available on consoles both digitally and physically, though only the Switch and PS4 are getting the special Signature Edition. What that edition entails hasn’t been revealed, but it’s designed as a collector’s edition.
Stranded Sails is billed as an “open-world exploration farming adventure.” It sounds like SEO cramming, but the game‘s premise actually delivers by blending all those elements together, taking inspiration from Harvest Moon, The Legend of Zelda, and My Time at Portia to deliver a unique take on those styles.
Like any good exploration story, survival is key to Stranded Sails‘ gameplay. Players will have to grow and harvest their own food not just for themselves, but for the others in their island settlements as well; feeding the masses also happens to be an important part of managing each NPC’s happiness. It’s an open-ended cooking system that lets players experiment with new ingredients and develop new recipes too.
The trailer shows off a surprisingly wide variety of crops and resources as well, from the standard food and environmental resources to what looks like herbs and flowers.
There won’t be just one base of operations, though. The islands under exploration are ripe for development, and players will work on expanding their camps into proper settlements while also developing their shipbuilding skills.
All this is centered around a primary plot and dozens of sub-quests as the player tries to uncover the truth behind the curse darkening the island shores. That naturally requires traveling to different islands using said ships and exploring various dungeons that appear to be full of ghost pirates.
We don’t get to see much of the game’s combat just yet, but it’s looking like Stranded Sails has a lot to offer and balances it pretty well.
