I played Raft with my nephew, and we've just finished the final story island. The game is probably more survival focused when not playing it on the Easy difficulty setting*, because that takes out the punishment of dying, i.e. no inventory is lost upon respawning in the game world. Hunger and thirst are staved off longer, making the exploration of the islands less ardous. Overall, this is an okay survival game, even though the raft design becomes far out there relatively quickly once you start smelting ore in your smelter made of unbaked bricks put on plastic and wood foundations and fired by driftwood.
Making fire is never a problem with driftwood pulled directly from the sea and once the smelter is active, a bit of plastic, some scrap and copper ingot will produce circuit boards. I guess whoever the player character is, they're brilliant engineers that would make MacGyver envious. There are story islands that one locates by setting up a triangulation system on your raft and building a radar out of trash and metal ore (which one gathers with a plastic hook, initially). It's just a perfunctory way to progress, although I appreciate having an ultimate goal. The game itself is fun enough in co-op, the aftermath of finishing it wasn't. My nephew was supremely unhappy to find out that there's nothing new to discover now.
So, next week, we'll be trying a Team 17 multiplayer mini-golf game. God help me. Maybe I can get him to play Worms with me.
*Thank god for the easy setting, really. I don't like open world survival games, like, at all.