Ocean survival adventure Raft leaves Steam early access
Bringing "biggest update ever".
After more than five years of development, Redbeet Interactive's enormously enjoyable open water survival adventure Raft has just received its full version 1.0 release, bringing, among other things, the final chunk of its exploratory story campaign.
Raft, if you're unfamiliar, first started to attract attention as a free prototype on itch.io back in 2016. Redbeet steadily expanded on that version's core survival loop - in which players start out on a tiny wooden raft in the middle of the ocean, hooking up foods, supplies, and building materials until their tiny vessel is a veritable sea-faring palace - in preparation for a commercial early access release on Steam, which finally arrived in 2018.
Since then, Redbeet has continued to build on that early feature set, introducing the likes of online co-op, explorable islands, underwater reefs, crop growing, cooking, animal care, and even a full story campaign in which players can learn more about the flooded world.
Redbeet calls Raft's 1.0 release its "biggest update ever", and its patch notes are certainly sizeable - as well as spoiler-y, so you might want to avoid them if you intend to come in fresh now that early access is over.
To summarise though, Raft's story now has a proper concluding chapter (alongside a fairly substantial rework for earlier portions to improve the narrative flow), plus new locations, new enemies, new characters, new clothing options, new items, trading posts, and more.
Raft's version 1.0 release is available now on Steam and costs £14.99, but there's a 15% launch discount until 7th July, meaning you can pick it up for £12.74 until then.