Tag: survival
Ark: Survival Ascended devs made a ‘Super Steamboat Willie’ platformer in the survival game to demonstrate new mod tools
Fallout and Sons of the Forest have a survival FPS rival, playable now
The hardcore mode in Fallout New Vegas feels even more revolutionary in hindsight. Before Don’t Starve, Rust, or Valheim, Obsidian’s superlative RPG combined your typical running and gunning with the constant, melodramatic pressures of sheer survival. Catch a bullet out in the Mojave, and it was a long limp back to The Strip to get yourself patched up – especially with Cazadors flying around. Sons of the Forest takes it all to the next level, a truly detailed and oftentimes gruesome survival game where you face a constant battle against the wilderness. Harnessing the spirit of Fallout, the mechanics of Sons of the Forest, and some visual style borrowed from BioShock, a new survival shooter, with online co-op, is available to try out right now.
The Half-Life vibes are intense in the free Steam demo for co-op survival game Abiotic Factor
The Rally Point: Dusty survival builder New Cycle struggles for a coherent identity in a busy genre
Calling dusty post-apocalyptic city builders a trend is probably a stretch, but not by much. I suppose it’s a natural extension of the post-2000s explosion of the survival sim from “literally about 3 ever made” to “does your tetris remake really need the hunger meter”. Games like Against The Storm porting over the roguelike element as well certainly suggest it. In my head, that’s probably why New Cycle hangs out more with Endzone Dash A World Apart, and Surviving The Aftermath. It’s more a traditional building game than a punishing test to be retaken, or the intense “survive the ordeal” narrative of Frostpunk, despite the superficial similarity that your town expects to be ravaged by scorching solar flares.
But it might also be because after playing it more than I really wanted to, New Cycle matches those two peers by leaving me with a vague feeling of disappointment. I’m just not sure what it really has to say.
More survival games should adopt Infinite Craft’s haphazard experimentation
In survival games, I leave the building to everyone else, or I build the absolute bare minimum unless I really enjoy the world I’m in. I think that’s a thing inherent in me, as I’ve never taken great pleasure in snapping together pieces of Lego, and would much rather earn killstreaks than decorate a back garden. For me, building in most games is laborious and predictable and does not sate my impatient brain.
But I like Neal Agarwal’s Infinite Craft, a browser game where you slide words on top of each other and see if they generate something new. For instance, “water” and “fire” combine to make “steam”, with what’s practically infinitesimal possibilities. It is immediate, simple, and unpredictable. More games should facilitate haphazard engineering and silliness.
Pacific Drive’s Next Fest demo has good mood but tedious survival scavenging
I’ve long been enamoured with the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, from the Douglas firs and waterfalls of Twin Peaks to the redwoods I once swam beneath on a road trip. Thanks to Pacific Drive‘s Steam Next Fest demo, I have now also barrelled through the woods and backroads of a spooky alt-history PNW in a banged-up car which is itself a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-esque artifact. I’ve had my eye on Pacific Drive for a few years and after playing the demo, I am delighted by parts of it but not entirely sold on its roguelikelike survival scavenge-o-rama structure. Hmm! Give it a go and tell me what you think.
Co-op survival game Nightingale delayed again
Ascent of Ashes is a harsh survival sim born out of a RimWorld mod
I would do anything to protect this humble pig