The world is underwater, your neighbors are gone, and your only hope is a floating rock retrofitted with tech that’s barely holding on. Oceaneers is a colony management survival game that tasks you with building a life on floating islands in a flooded apocalypse.
In this article we’ll be giving a full review of the game and ranking it from decaf to fully caffeinated.
story:
The journey starts on a tiny island with three survivors of an apocalypse where everything has sunk, leaving only floating islands behind. It turns out a company called FloatTec was ahead of the curve by retrofitting islands with tech to keep them above the waves. FloatTec is no longer around, but their tech remains, and your survivors find themselves stranded on one of these stable islands. This is the perfect spot to finally put down roots. Right away, you’ll find a scrap of paper with a clue and a hatch that won’t open, kicking off a whole lot of mystery about the former resident of the island. This game has a decent storyline that you can uncover at whatever pace you like. You’ll need to explore far and wide by sending out expeditions to different areas to uncover more secrets.
Even though this is an early access game, one of the coolest things about it is that the story side is actually fully complete. You aren’t waiting on updates for more story content. I haven’t made it through the full story yet, but what I’ve played of it has been great. I love that the story gives you a purpose. Rather than just exploring randomly, you actually have a good goal to work toward. It’s one of those stories that you can almost ignore and play the game without, but it adds so much character and mystery to the experience. It’s a new take on the apocalyptic, flooded world concept that is implemented in a way that actually drives the gameplay.
For its engaging hook and complete narrative, the story is Fully Caffeinated.
gameplay:
A colony management survival game has to be strong in the gameplay department, and Oceaneers definitely hits that mark. You’ll find a lot of familiar elements to most games in this genre like survival, crafting, scavenging, and exploration, but it takes a slightly different twist by combining those with almost dungeon-crawler-like bunkers to explore. You’ll start by setting up your island with the basics you need to keep your survivors happy: food, water, somewhere to sleep and somewhere to take care of business. After that, you’ll need to set up your research table to unlock new buildings and build yourself a raft to explore.
Each new thing you build needs different resources, so you’ll need to scavenge the ocean for wreckages to salvage and build tools to harvest resources on your island and the mini islands surrounding your own. Crafting becomes important with lots of different crafting benches and workstations that you’re able to research, adding more and more items for you to make. The big differentiator here is the exploration. You don’t just sail to a nearby area. Instead, you have to schedule expeditions, choosing which survivors you want to send and what food, water, or resources they’ll take with them. After a traveling period, you’re able to join your survivor in the new location to uncover new islands, resources, and the occasional secret.
One of the cool parts of the FloatTec story is that you get access to devices that make islands float. If you see one of the bases for them, you can make the island float again and access all its resources. Many of these islands can also be explored underneath if you can find and open the hatch, and they’re full of different resources, story items, blueprints, and tech. Later in the game, you can even unlock the ability to tow islands. This means you can actually take entire islands back to your base to expand your area and collect resources easily. You can even upgrade your raft at a dedicated station to make it bigger and add more storage and comfort for longer trips.
This is a game where you’ll start playing, look up, and realize four hours have passed. It’s got that “just one more thing” addictive quality and is very easy to get lost in. I will say the tutorial is a bit lacking on information about different resource items. It’d be great to see a handbook where you can look up where to find things. I also found the research tree a bit janky. It feels like it’s not quite in the right order with some early unlocks requiring items you can’t make until much later. But overall, the gameplay is very decent. Just be prepared to sink a ton of hours into this one.
For gameplay, I’m rating it Fully Caffeinated.
design:
The visual appeal here is immediate. The game has a really colourful cartoon style that is almost reminiscent of Don’t Starve, but happy? It manages to take a potentially bleak setting and turn it into something vibrant and inviting. The characters each have their own distinct looks, making it easy to keep track of your team as they move about the island. Every item is easily distinguishable, which is a massive win for a game that relies so heavily on resource gathering. I really loved the clanky way all the tech looks. It has this makeshift, retrofitted charm that fits the FloatTec narrative perfectly. It’s got a really nice vibe to it with some cool design choices, and you can see a lot of love has been put into how every building and tool looks.
The soundscape is great company for the gameplay as well. It’s not one you really pay that much attention to, but it adequately sets the mood and keeps the atmosphere from feeling empty. I especially loved the addition of the sound effects, particularly the ones that give you information about the world without you even noticing. You’ll hear the birds chirping at dawn to signal the start of a new day or the specific crab digging noises when they’re active nearby. These small auditory cues make the world feel alive and reactive. It’s a solid design that lifts the gameplay and shows off the story well.
For design, I’m rating it Fully Caffeinated.
originality:
This is one of those games that looks and feels familiar at first, but the deeper you go, the more you notice it’s unlike any other games in the genre. Usually, in colony sims, you’re stuck in one place, but the combination of a survival colony sim with expedition-based exploration really adds a whole other layer to the game. You aren’t just surviving; you’re actively pushing out into the unknown. When you top that off with the almost dungeon-crawler-like bunkers that require a totally different approach to loot, you have a game with so many different elements you can’t help but get hooked.
I’d say it’s got similar notes to games like Don’t Starve and Oxygen Not Included in terms of managing survivors and resources. Thematically, if you enjoyed games like Raft or Subnautica, you’ll enjoy the aquatic setting, but the core hook is managing a group of people instead of just yourself. The ability to tow entire islands back to your base is a mechanic I haven’t really seen executed this way before. It changes how you think about “territory” in a survival game. This is a game that looks and sounds like a duck, but underneath it’s definitely a swan.
For originality, I’m rating it Fully Caffeinated.
The Final Brew:
Oceaneers is a game that has no right to be as good as it is, especially considering it’s a game made by a team of two and it’s in early access. It will have you hook, line, and sinker with a story that packs a punch and gameplay that will sink its teeth into you and leave you dreaming about the next island you’ll haul back home.
We’ve ground the beans, we’ve carefully weighed and pressed the grinds, and brewed this game down. Now it’s time for a taste test….
Oceaneers is Fully Caffeinated!
Oceaneers is available on Steam now. Check it out here!