Stranded: Alien Dawn on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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Brave a new world in Stranded: Alien Dawn, a planet survival sim placing the fate of a small marooned group in your hands. Forge your story through compelling and immersive strategic gameplay as you make vital decisions to protect your survivors.
Stranded: Alien Dawn is a survival, base-building and simulation game
developed by Haemimont Games
and published by Paradox Interactive.
Released on April 25th 2023 is available only on Windows
in 10 languages: English, French, German, Spanish - Spain, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian and Simplified Chinese.
It has received 10,014 reviews of which 8,504 were positive and 1,510 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.3 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 34.99€ on Steam, but you can find it for less on Gamivo.
The Steam community has classified Stranded: Alien Dawn into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Stranded: Alien Dawn through various videos and screenshots.
System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 64bit
- Processor: Intel i7-6700 or AMD FX 8370
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Radeon RX 480 or GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
- DirectX: Version 12
- Storage: 15 GB available space
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Elevator Pitch: 3D Rimworld, but with less overall development time, so it's both less crazy and more approachable. Longer version, you can definitely see the same ancestry/inspiration as Rimworld. But whereas Rimworld's lore makes it so everything and everyone you see is in some form derived from Humanity and Earth, S:AD's planet is actually Alien. That means you need to actually Observe flora and fauna to know what to do with them, and the attack waves are usually hostile insects of various size. There is no human attackers, and you certainly won't be gaslighting them in a prison to join your colony. Your humans are going to be the ones you start your scenario with, with maybe 1 or 2 random-event granted random-picks. As such, all the humans in this game are actually named and have distinct likes and dislikes. If you like Jack the military commander, you can bring him with you on future runs. As of this review (with Robots and Guardians being the only DLC), there are 4 scenarios: Crash Landing, where you need to tech up and eventually get your people off planet. Trade Outpost, where a small group of people want to grow stuff, make money, and eventually buy the rights to the whole planet. Military Outpost, where you need to tech up, build, and defend a giant communications relay that will generate constant alien attacks. And finally, the Guardians scenario of the DLC, where some humans steal a developing robot intelligence and you need to protect it from robot attackers while it grows in intelligence until it maxes out. side note, Guardians is the only scenario with robot enemies, so it's a nice combat change to hordes of bugs. There's 3 biomes, each with their own challenges and benefits. Sobrius is a high altitude mountain biome, where grasslands are plenty, the seasons actually get cold and hot, plentiful friendly wildlife, and those darn Shrieker enemies (for reference, they are the scorpion looking things in the images, except the larger ones shoot their tail spikes). Desertum is a desert. Fairly dry, lots of cactus and weather resistant but slow growing plants, camel-equivalents, and plenty of sand you can use the terraforming plants to gradually convert to rich soil, if you want a longer term challenge. Saltu is the 3rd and final region, and it's a Jungle. No winter season to worry about, so plants grow great year round, and there's the coconut and meat-palm (no really, it's a growable meat substitute) trees. However, you have an increased risk of respiratory diseases for your people, the occasionally xeno-blight that will kill some of your crops occasionally, and the local nesting insects are the mantis-like Scissorhands, except their nests are made of far-more common silicon. At least Shrieker nests were made from carbon nanotubes, so when you wiped them out you had a decent payday. The research system of this game is pretty nice and simple, in my opinion. For reference, if you've played Haemimont's game Surviving Mars, the research tree is visually similar. As you discover resources, whether from natural sources or scavenged from ship wrecks that will occasionally spawn around the map, you'll unlock the ability to research that item, or things requiring it. For example, recover a Energy Cell, and you'll get to research the ability to make more of them as well as the ability to farm Energy Crystals which you need to make the Cells. Lastly, let's talk mods. The game's last patch was April 3rd, 2024. I'll get to that part in a moment. But as a result, the game has been very stable for the modding community, and there's some impressive projects. If you want to add elements of water consumption and gathering, there's a mod for that (henceforth abbreviated as TAMFT). Fishing or milking animals? TAMFT. Want custom OP humans that trivialize the game? So, so many mods. There's total overhaul mods, even a mod or two that attempt to make their own biomes. My personal favorite is the mods released by either the Haemimont account itself, or Haemimont devs themselves. When the mod tools first launched, they released a few sample mods of how to use the mod editor, and they are still up to this date. The Meat Plant mod is canon, fite me. If I've got your interest so far, give the game a try. It's well worth it, and since Paradox is now the publisher as opposed to Frontier Foundry, Haemimont might actually be able to continue development. This is the part where I give my guess on why exactly this game wasn't given enough/more dev time. This is entirely impressions I've gotten over time, and nothing directly from the devs, so take everything next with a grain of salt. When this game launched, Haemimont's publisher was Frontier Foundry , which was a subsidiary of Frontier Developments. As a customer, I didn't notice any particularly issues with S:AD's development or release or post-launch support. We got a DLC launch and even patches to that DLC, with the last patch being on April 3rd, 2024. But in June of 2023, Frontier Developments decided to shut down Frontier Foundry in order to focus on their own IPs, and thus I don't think Haemimont had the ability and/or funding to continue development further. The Haemimont devs still seemed to be doing their best to support the game. They still seemed to have access to bug-report tools, and their people were actually fairly active in the steam mod section, adding mods with new features, still talking to folks in mod comments. But that was essentially the limit of what they could do. And then we get to April 16th, 2025. Good News Everyone! Haemimont has gotten Paradox to become their publisher now, who they've worked with in the past. I dearly sincerely hope this means Paradox might let Haemimont put some more dev time into this game as either updates or DLC or something. Heck, if you still think of S:AD as 3D Rimworld, just look at how successful Rimworld's Oddyssey DLC has been, and consider how much S:AD could possibly grow. Now, to be fair, early today (literally, I got the email announcing it this mornign) Haemimont and Paradox announced a Remastered version of their other game Surviving Mars. Even as much as I love that game, we'll see how that goes. And the remaster will probably take time and attention from any potential S:AD development. But I still have hope that Paradox will help this game fly further than it has, to develop its own identity as more than just "3D Rimworld". After all, Paradox want sto make money, and they stepped in as publisher very late. a DLC would be great way to bring attention back to this game, make new sales. Paradox, glad to see you onboard. Haemimont, keep being awesome. Here's hoping this review becomes outdated in the future, cause we'll have more DLC that means I'll have to come back and update it.
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One thing I took away from the preview was that the game is basically The Sims in space as it is far more than just a city building title, you get the overwhelming feeling that you are more playing God as you juggle the feelings of your village folk along with the structural side of things. So not only do you have to keep yourself prepared for the random Alien mammals that will appear and either damage your village or more importantly cause harm to the villagers you also have to keep an eye on the well being of your villages both physically and mentally meaning that although this game is very chilled you really can’t switch off as there are alot of plates to keep spinning. To survive and thrive in this game you must keep your villagers busy, you need to build, you need to scavenge for both materials and food and then you must develop – develop your skills but also develop and research weapons and new materials. The game seems to centre around more life styles rather than your standard RTS city building game, the emotions and well being of your villagers make a key part of the actual game and it’s something you really need to keep an eye on a you progress through the game. I found the overall game of Stranded Alien Dawn to be enlightening and engaging but also very fun, the combat is good when it happens but it really is more of a kick back and relax type of game as it feels pretty laid back as you can just sit back and enjoy looking over your new settlement, you do get a genuine sense of satisfaction seeing your settlement grow from straw beds to structured buildings and into an actual thriving village. The graphics of Stranded Alien Dawn are of a high quality, the game world is very well animated and looks great. Beautiful and Immersive 3D World - Lauded for detailed environments, seasonal shifts, and day/night cycles. Accessible Introduction - A decent tutorial and moderated complexity make it more approachable than RimWorld If you're into survival‑colony sims and appreciate a 3D visual experience with accessible complexity, yes, it’s worth it—especially with its current price and all updates. While it won't satisfy those craving the depth and modability of a fully-fledged RimWorld, it does a great job of giving you a polished, story‑driven survival experience. 9/10 DISASTER | BAD | MEDIOCRE | OKAY | GOOD | GREAT | AMAZING | MASTERPIECE Reviewed on: Win11 Home 64-bit, Intel i5-11600K, GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB TUF, 32GB DDR4-3600 RAM, 2 x Kingston NV1 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD, Internet Broadband 1000/1000 Mbit If you like this review, then please consider giving it a thumbs up. I've also reviewed other games that you might find interesting. If so please follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/27418263/] Top of the Chart.
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This game is a lot of fun for the first 20 hours or so, but once you've researched everything and built everything, it quickly becomes a tedious process of struggling to keep all of your electric equipment functioning and all of your survivors fed and clothed until the next rescue pod is available. It's slightly annoying that you strive for so long to find more survivors to grow your settlement, only to later realize the only way to win is to send them away in rescue pods one at a time. A far more rewarding end-game would be having more research and more technological discovery and advancement until finally reaching the ability to build your own rocket so all of your survivors can leave the planet together. In this way players could enjoy an ever growing population and an ever expanding settlement while simultaneously advancing research and technologies far beyond the current scope of the game. An annoying imbalance is that all of the electrical equipment malfunctions very rapidly, to such an extent that even after a modest expansion, you'll quickly realize you're spending all of your time manufacturing circuit boards merely to repair the equipment you've already built, effectively stagnating (or dramatically slowing) any further settlement expansion. There are other less consequential bugs such as hostile animals clipping through defensive walls and having the ability to damage your survivors or their mechs even with walls between them, and survivors choosing to perform various tasks with extreme inefficiency like mindless idiots totally lacking any ability to think rationally. For example, there might be an equally important and equally weighted task that could be accomplished 2 feet away, but for whatever reason your survivor may choose to perform a different task that happens to be a mile away. Finally, the biggest killer in this game is its lack of end game content. There's really not as much content in the game as you might anticipate upon first starting the game. The developers created a very fun and addicting foundation here but failed to add the content necessary to keep me interested. For me it means there's very little replayability and finishing the game feels more like a chore than an adventure. In fairness, I should point out that there might be a thriving modding community here and it would not surprise me if there were a lot of really great mods that dramatically improve the game. This hastily written review is based solely on my own experience having played only one vanilla campaign. I also understand there are other campaign modes available that might not require survivor rescues as an end goal and therefore might offer a more rewarding late-game experience. To summarize, I think the game was definitely worth playing once, but I'm not interested in playing it again. From a cost perspective, I'd say it's worth picking up if you enjoy single player real-time strategy games and you can also find it on sale. I wouldn't advise paying more than $40 for it though as there are better options available at higher prices.
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I like it. A lot of people say it's very similar to Rimworld. I've been in Rimworld since Alpha 8 in 2013 and I there's no doubt a lot of inspiration was taken from Rimworld, especially with the UI. In fact, the work menu is almost a carbon copy, but it was a great idea and I can't blame them - why reinvent the wheel? I think it pulls some inspiration from Kenshi as well because of the sheer scope of the map and how tiny everything feels; and it shares the jankiness of Kenshi to a degree but I think it is more polished. They did a really solid job on this game, there's plenty of content (not as much as Rimworld, but come on, it's 2D and almost infinitely modular so it's not a fair comparison), and it's fun to automate and manage. Best game of this genre I've tried in a while.
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On my first playthrough one of my survivors was a vegetarian soldier who was my designated combat and hunting specialist. Winter came and all sources of plant-based food withered and died, and my stockpile of berries and grain quickly got depleted. The vegetarian refused to eat any of the meat from the animals SHE HERSELF hunted and butchered, so she went into starvation and then flew into a psychotic meltdown, wrecking everything in the base. I sent people to try and knock her out, but since she was my combat specialist and the strongest by far she knocked out every challenger. Eventually she calmed down and proceeded to starve to death next to a fridge full of her own hunted game. 10/10 for realistic depiction of vegetarians.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Stranded: Alien Dawn is currently priced at 34.99€ on Steam.
Stranded: Alien Dawn is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 34.99€ on Steam.
Stranded: Alien Dawn received 8,504 positive votes out of a total of 10,014 achieving a rating of 8.27.
😎
Stranded: Alien Dawn was developed by Haemimont Games and published by Paradox Interactive.
Stranded: Alien Dawn is playable and fully supported on Windows.
Stranded: Alien Dawn is not playable on MacOS.
Stranded: Alien Dawn is not playable on Linux.
Stranded: Alien Dawn is a single-player game.
There are 2 DLCs available for Stranded: Alien Dawn. Explore additional content available for Stranded: Alien Dawn on Steam.
Stranded: Alien Dawn is fully integrated with Steam Workshop. Visit Steam Workshop.
Stranded: Alien Dawn does not support Steam Remote Play.
Stranded: Alien Dawn is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for Stranded: Alien Dawn.
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Last Updates| Steam data | 23 October 2025 00:04 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 15 October 2025 09:01 |
| Steam price | 24 October 2025 04:37 |
| Steam reviews | 23 October 2025 23:50 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Stranded: Alien Dawn, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Stranded: Alien Dawn
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- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Stranded: Alien Dawn compatibility
Game modes
Features
Online players
602
Developer
Haemimont Games
Publisher
Paradox Interactive
Release
25 Apr 2023
Platforms
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