Version 1.0 represents that Stranded Deep is feature complete. We’ve achieved our high-level goals and are now focusing on stability and quality-of-life fixes. We have some remaining multiplayer issues to fix across PC and PS4/XB1 platforms and we have a dedicated team working on fixing these.
We’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who has supported us. The game and community has grown far beyond anything we ever could have expected. Ben and I originally started this project out of our back rooms. We had no previous industry experience, we were just two kids with a cool idea who wanted to make their first game. I remember the Steam Greenlight concept with the little raft on the ocean… we never could have guessed the community would get behind it the way they did. It has grown beyond our wildest dreams.
We’ve met some amazing people along the way. We’ve made friends with the teams at Funlabs and Abstraction who worked hard to bring the game to consoles. It’s also been a great experience working with the big first parties and the people behind them. Everyone at Steam, Epic, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo has been great to work with and they’ve given us opportunities that we never would have dreamed of. And of course, our publishing brothers at North Beach Games who have been with us since 2015 and supported us every step of the way. All of you have helped grow Stranded Deep into something bigger than the two of us ever could have expected. You’ve enabled us to secure our future as a studio and we’re looking forward to taking everything we’ve learned from this experience and using it to grow bigger and better. We’re forever grateful.
Thanks so much again to everyone who has been a part of the journey.
Stay Alive!
— Beam Team
Bug Fixes
Fixed host and/or client crashing when returning to the main menu after completing the endgame scene.
Fixed Creative and Passive game modes resetting when loading saved game.
Fixed Watch not showing correctly on Apple M1 silicon.
Fixed ‘Steam not initialized’ errors when launching macOS app outside Steam.
Fixed ‘null’ session id displaying for client.
Fixed some German and Russian localizations.
Fixed missing localization terms.
Changes
Added native Apple M1 silicon builds.
Added Metal graphics API support for macOS builds.
Changed Crafting Menu required crafting level label color to red to make it clearer that it is a missing requirement.
Well damn! That was unexpected! I had expected an October release for cristmas in the states, but I welcome ANY bug fixes. I am sad there won’t be any new features, but it is what it is.
This sounds more like a farewell letter to Stranded Deep than an update.
So, What’s next for you then? Stranded Deeper? Stranded Wide?
As a fellow commercial game dev (20y+), I have to disagree with what you’re doing here. You’re saying this is your 1.0, your “release” version, because you’re feature-complete, though you need to finish with stability and QoL issues.
That is NOT what a “release version” is.
That is exactly the definition of the “beta phase”: feature-complete with bugs yet to fix.
And after “beta phase” you start creating “release candidates” to see if you’ve truly hammered out all of the bugs. When it seems like you have, you release your final, clean, “release candidate” as your actual “release version”.
This muddying of terminology is NOT good for our industry. It’s not friendly to the players/consumers. Please don’t do it this way.
Your game has always intrigued me and I look forward to playing it eventually when people stop giving it negative reviews on Steam, but this is not encouraging.
EDIT: If I’m going to be fair to you, I should suggest that you re-brand this version as your “Release Candidate”. That informs the consumer that this is not a finished game quite yet, but it is on the cusp.
Hey, several users on Discord have reported negative & positive changes regarding network connectivity in online co-op, post-1.0. Were there some changes made that are not detailed here?
Well that was a disappointment and I’m not alone. Just read the comments on Steam. This is a very underwhelming 1.0 release, especially after this many months since the previous update. It’s also disappointing that even before this release, you don’t ever seem to listen to suggestions, for example improving the underwater visuals to make them more realistic. If you didn’t listen during the early access period, I’m sure you won’t listen now. Anyway, I checked out the 1.0 release, didn’t see any improvements that mattered to me, and decided to finally uninstall the game and move on.
