I played the demo for The Survivalists

From Escaping to Survival-ing 

Let me tell you one thing about me straight away; I am typically a Minecraft fiend. The amount of hours I put into that build-and-survive simulator is honestly obscene; I would probably burst into tears upon reading that number. (Whilst fully aware of the fact that I've sunk even more hours into the 360 version, which didn't keep track of my play time.) I've also blazed through the console version of Terraria (Back before they mutilated the console's UI) and have beaten 'Starbound' a decent three time all on different versions of the game. Throw 'Stardew Valley' in there for good measure and I think it's safe to say that I'm familiar with, and have played, a vast majority of the resource based survival games on the market. But, as I'm sure you well know, that doesn't mean I've even so much as glanced the surface, let alone scratched it. Pretty much ever since the runaway success of 'Rust' (Although probably even further back to the initial success of Minecraft) there have been survival games popping out of the Steam maternity ward on a near daily basis.

The trend grew so huge that even the big-money titles tried to emulate it, such as Fallout 76. In fact, survival-games began to grow into a problem where their mechanics began to find their way into games in which they did not belong, pretty much proving detrimental to the overall experience. (Looking at you; 'We Happy Few'.) The craze grew to the point where, predictably, a lot of people grew sick of the gimmick and I was chief among them. I hated the constant pressure to maintain resource bars, the need to return to base every few minutes that limited the scope of exploration and the badly optimised drain rates which often had people go from full to starving over the course of 5 minutes. It just rang 'bad design' to me and thus I have a hard time looking at any upcoming survival game with anything less than scorn.

This was the mentality I had when someone first recommended 'The Surivalists', but the devs had a demo for the time so I figured it was bullet-biting time. Developed by Team17, a positively storied developer and publisher who have made or had a hand in numerous titles from the old school worms games to the Overcooked franchise; 'The Survivalists' is a game that is said to take place within the same 'world' as 'The Escapists', only with a focus on surviving the trails of a desert island instead of conspiring to break out of jail. Now, this again is another good omen on the project; because I freaking love 'The Escapists'. For those unaware; 'The Escapists' is a free-form prison escape simulator experience that pits players against increasingly fortified holding facilities whilst tasking them with solving the puzzle of breaking out. It's methodical, taxing and ultimately rewarding when that plan you've spent the past 40 days working towards finally pays off. So if Team17 are willing to invoke that game's name and brand in the marketing of this title; then surely that must mean something special. Right?

Well perhaps it did in their heads, because it's with a heavy heart that I share how, not only did I dislike playing The Survivalists, but I was reminded of everything I hated about the genre by the mere act of partaking. It's a though a thousand repressed thoughts are rose up and shouted at once, before being embodied on screen in pixel detail. My own body started to rebel against me playing and tried to shut down from torpor as time and time I was struck with a desperate struggle to conjure one iota of caring for anything I was going through. Within the hours I lent to this title, I felt as though I'd undergone days of nauseating repetition and sloth to the point where I wanted to dig out my eyes rather than endure another second. So I think it's safe to say that this wasn't the game for me.

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself; 'The Survivalists' takes players to a 2D desert island on which they have just washed up and asks them to take the measures necessary to survive the experience and, importantly, find a way out. Personally, I'm not entirely sure what any of this has to do with 'The Escapists' apart from a vaguely similar art style; but that's the angle they're looking to ride so I guess we just have to presume that this is the island that our ecsapee hit after all those breakouts. Rather than actively maintaining stats, items and all the other things that made 'The Escapists' special, this game puts all of it's eggs behind it's genre-mandatory crafting system which has you cutting down tree and smashing rocks to- yawn-. Oh, what's that? I yawned? Must be because even describing this concept sounds like I'm talking about literally 50 other games and nothing stands out as being special. Gah, I suppose I should scrounge about for some positives!

Visually the game is a treat; similar to 'The Escapists 2', the game makes use of this 2D perspective mixed with a pretty pixelart that just comes to life under their gorgeous lighting engine. It's truly lovely to look at during those evening moments or the early morning, and there's an apt encapsulation of the scenario in those lazy crimson suns that really sells the mood. The team tried their hardest to bring something new to the genre through doubling down on multiplayer mechanics. (Which was entirely lost on me due to me having no friends) They even went so far as to throw in a multiplayer substitute through their 'Monkeys' system which see's you befriend and then training Monkey's to help you around the island with repetitive tasks. Admittedly, I may have found the system tedious and obtuse to the point where I gave up on it entirely, but the intent was there.

Ultimately, however, I just found the game to be a total chore that was lacking in any initial grab. The scenario wasn't interesting enough to hook me in the same way that the weird world of 'Don't Starve' did. The building mechanics weren't extensive enough to spark the throes of my creativity like 'Minecraft' or 'Terraria'. The camera was fixed in one direction for some reason, making it difficult to see where I was in dense forests. The crafting tree was constructed in this oddly linear fashion wherein you are forced to make one thing in order to learn how to craft another, completely robbing progressive freedom from the equation. The fighting mechanics felt notably stiff, even for a 'The Escapists' universe game. I don't know if the world I was in was randomly generated but I sure hope it was because it felt really cumbersome and unintelligibly designed. I saw no direction for the future of this title nor evidence how it could prove to exceed my initial impressions.

Of course, take my opinion with a supreme grain of salt; I only played a short demo of the introductory scenes, but then I did choose to stop playing before the end of that demo because I was so bored. (So take that for what you will.) It had been many years since I'd been gradually weened off of liking, or even respecting, the survival genre so I was curious if this game would be the one to win me back. (Spoilers, it wasn't.) If you've managed to stay aboard the survival train, however, than perhaps you can see some latent potential here that I couldn't, but if you've any reservations about whether or not the Survival genre has anything new to show you, this is not the game to do so. (Look at it more as a celebration of Survival over a revolution to it.) That's my last demo for the Steam event and I'm sorry it ended on such a downer. (I also played Desperadoes 3 but that game just came out so you can look it up for yourself if you're curious.) That being said, I absolutely loved this idea from Steam and feel it's an ingeniously unique way to host a marketing storm; by allowing players to play the games they are seeing trailers for. I look forward to see if the other institutions start taking note. (And I really hope that they do!)