I’m a big survival game fan. I love punching trees or picking up rocks and sticks to make tools. However, these games often discount the greatest tools humans were ever gifted with: your own two hands. Fortunately, Bootstrap Island makes full use of them.
At Gamescom, I played the latest version of this early access SteamVR game from Maru VR Productions. The studio recently added a simple building mechanic, though you can only make fences and gates right now. There are plans to expand this mechanic while adding features like food spoilage, boots, and new bosses this fall.
Like many survival games, I find myself stranded on a desert island. I love pirates, so I like to think I'm one who got blasted overboard during a ship capture gone awry. Unlike most survival games, rather than gathering resources to build tools, I can use my hands to do everything I want.
If I need to drink, I can smash a coconut against a boulder and rip its rind off if I need to drink. Then I'll bash it into the boulder again to split the coconut in two, drinking the sweet water within by holding it up to my face. I could also poke holes in the top with a knife I found in a locked chest. This method stopped any water from spilling out when it cracked open. I could also eat the flesh, piece-by-piece with my hands, by holding it up to my gob.
Opening the locked chest involves finding a rock to whack it open. Seeing the sparks flying off the metal gave me an idea. I gathered the spent coconut rind and placed some nearby sticks and planks on top of it, then got the rock in one hand, locked chest in another, and created sparks until I had a roaring bonfire going. That’s the beauty of creating intuitive systems like this.
The island quickly shifts from friend to foe when day turns to night. Luckily, my fire keeps the nasty critters that come out during the dark at bay, and the next day, I found guns and a water bottle in more chests scattered along the shore. These required manual reloading, and I accidentally broke my bottle when I dropped something on it.
There aren’t a ton of things you can do in Bootstrap Island yet as an early access game, so I’m looking forward to the fall update. Venturing further into the island’s jungle, fighting bosses, and keeping an eye on the very active volcano, all while managing my health and needs, sounds like a fun expansion on some already solid gameplay systems. This survival game feels for what VR is best at: putting you and your two hands into a new world.
Bootstrap Island is available now on Steam Early Access, and the full release targets the end of 2025.
