Indie developers Redbeet Interactive announced today that they will be partnering with Axolot Games (Scrap Mechanic) to publish Raft on Steam. The game’s alpha build is currently available for free on indie games store itch.io, where it quickly gained popularity among streamers and shot up to five million downloads. Raft is currently scheduled to hit Steam Early Access in 2018 and will introduce support for co-op multiplayer.
Raft puts a spin on the popular survival genre by putting them alone or with friends on a raft in a vast ocean. Players are forced to fish out debris that floats by and dive into the reefs to increase the size of their raft and turn it into a floating outpost, complete with farms and housing. But beware, hungry, human eating sharks swim circles around the raft, waiting to catch survivors unaware for a quick snack.
Sentenced to ten years in prison, Kiryu serves his time until he is released only to find that the world of the yakuza as well as the city of Kamurocho has changed immensely during his time in jail. Officially banished from the Tojo Clan, Kiryu is considered a free man but thanks to the events that he learns about shortly after leaving prison and the young girl Haruka he soon dives deep into the criminal underworld once again in an effort to uncover the truth.
Thankfully it doesn’t take long for Kiryu to get back his combat skills as players can continue to swap between the same fast, medium, and slow styles of combat that were introduced in Yakuza 0 as well as an all new Dragon of Dojima style at any time during a fight. Thanks to a “heat gauge” that can be used to take down opponents, players will feel quite powerful more often than not, though be prepared for some rather annoying boss fights to appear throughout the game.
Plus whenever you happen to defeat Majima you will unlock a new skill in the Dragon of Dojima fighting style. Unfortunately this is can be a bit of a negative at times since there are story elements that don’t match up with Majima’s appearances at times and if you get unlucky there may be times you will not come across Majima for quite some time, leaving the Dragon of Dojima style underpowered until you search him out.
There are a wide array of subquests that are flat out hilarious, purposely so, and it is great to see a game that can be so serious at times not be afraid to let players laugh now and then. Players will also find that alongside the aforementioned subquests that there are plenty of other activities to spend their time on in Kamurocho though a few of these modes are simply copied from Yakuza 0 but even with these repeats players will find plenty of side activities outside of combat.
It is interesting to note that when the original Yakuza was released on the PlayStation 2 it contained an English dub that, looking back, was extremely rough around the edges despite having some great actors taking part in it. As such Sega has opted to avoid trying to re-record the English voice track and have instead released Yakuza Kiwami with only the Japanese voice track. Fans of the series are more than familiar with the Japanese voice actors for the series and all of them have returned to reprise their roles here so although some may be disappointed by the missing English dub, the Japanese track more than makes up for it.
