Raft

Overview

I did not like this game, and I wasted a good part of Christmas day playing this in co-op. Most of my Christmases have been spent playing FUN video games. Granted, it was memorable, but in the worst way.

Review

Some time ago, there was an image meme floating around /v/ of the "Four Horsemen" of tags you should avoid, specifically all of them--"Early Access", "Survival", "Open World", and "Crafting"...and Raft, a title by Redbeet Interactive and Axolot Games, does all four. It's not technically Early Access, not since June of 2022, but it might as well be.

When it comes to something like Factorio or Stardew Valley it feels polished. With Raft, it's incredibly slow going as you use your basic hook to get raw materials to build out your floating vessel and have some control over where you go, and by nearly four hours (in real time) in you might have enough to finally make a kiln and kill that shark that's been munching parts off your vessel (made of scrap plastic and wood scraps)...and I think another shark shows up later anyway like all of these video game enemies do. But that's it. There's something about the thrill of progress in these sorts of games, like in Factorio when you finally have a stable system that churns out electrical circuits and green science, or in Stardew Valley when the first round of crops becomes ripe and money starts to flow in...but I just don't see that with Raft, even after hours of playing. Instead, everything is a struggle. It starts as a struggle and continues as a struggle. You have to use a plastic grappling hook to collect junk to make stuff (wood, plastic, etc.) and that has a limited lifetime (meaning you'll have to reach and grab stuff manually). Even if you manage to kill the shark another one will show up shortly after. You can access islands and get a few food items like watermelons or pineapple (thankfully food doesn't rot) but the boat needs to be anchored, which is more resources (and early anchors aren't reusable), and the shark will STILL keep eating the boat while you're out. Moreover, some of this stuff isn't intuitive. Flowers grow on islands, and I initially collected them thinking that they might be useful to make helpful medicine items, but that's not true either, turns out they're used for dye when you decorate your boat later...and if you die, you lose most of your inventory. There's sandbox-style difficulty modes, of course, with no items lost, but that's no way to play (and this was the default mode).

There's apparently a story early on but I'm not really interested in it as usually the stories of these things are the worst part and I don't even want to get into the comparatively minor issues to the big issues. I still haven't really gotten into Subnautica but here, you need food and water constantly or you die. It's fine a lot of games do this, but not to the point where you have to collect seawater, boil it, then use a cup to drink the water. And all your items, even the standard ones, decay constantly. With stuff like this I'm surprised they're not trying to force me to squat over the water when it comes time to use the bathroom.

Part of this is my fault for telling my companion who I was doing co-op with "this sucks, let's play something else" but at the same time I found it WASN'T getting better.

Player Notes

I played this in December 2025. I haven't touched it since. Would give it my worst rating on the site. The review you see here went up July 1, 2026, but I had been tinkering with this review for months prior.

Port & Rerelease Notes

The PS5 and Xbox X/S versions were released on December 4, 2024, but not Switch port for some reason.