Recent reviews by Jake

God's gift to man.

I bought this game on sale for $14. After a few hours a game-play I think that is a good price point, ill explain why.

The audio, graphical, and atmospheric design is absolutely top notch and on point.

The PvE aspect doesn't seem to matter to much. There is a boss or two in each round that has to be killed and its bounty collected. The bosses seem to be limited to their "rooms" and can be cheesed. The other mobs in the map are pretty much just ignored, or only serve as a minor inconvenience. This was evident from my first round onward. Its a shame because the NPCs that fill the map just don't add anything and are literally everywhere.

The PvP aspect is brutal and unforgiving, lots of one-shots. Lots of camping, lots of waiting for audio cues from other players. The hit-boxes feel large for a game of such scarcity of PvP combat, it feels too easy to down other players or be downed. Don't miss understand, you *will* encounter other people, and typically from the start of the round that doesn't take too long - but one shot and its over, win or lose. The most tit for tat it gets is with two teams going at, maybe getting some friendly revives in. Its possible to deny an enemy their revive mechanic but, its sort of clunky and involves waiting around, burning a player corpses after they are killed to make sure they can't get be revived.

Would I buy it again for $15? Ehhh maybe.

In my opinion, this game could be drastically improved by:

- Making the trash mobs more consequential (harder to dispatch, better AI, increased detection ranges, maybe add some more mechanics meant to cause the player grief, or at least respect its existence).

- Examining the hit-boxes and lowering the damage, or possibly adding items to increase the length of player interaction. Smoke grenades would be perfect for cover.

- Update the boss mechanics and AI. Agitate a boss? Now its free roam.

- Make traps more viable, and usable. (It's cool to be able to pick up bear traps, but if you switch weapons the trap is dropped, limiting its desirability).

- A spreading fire element would add a whole new dimension to the game. Dry fields, hay, shanty's, and barn houses should go up in flame when exposed to fire.

This game can't hold my interest.

It looks generic.
It feels uninspired.
The characters are forgettable.
The combat is flaccid and unrewarding.

Its been 72 Hours. The servers are still not up/stable.

My hardware and how the game runs. Listed hardware so you can have something to go off of.

- MSI 980TI
- i5-9600k
- 32gb trident Z
- SSD

I run the game on mostly medium/low settings at 1440 with below average frame rates. Optimization is not perfect but the game still looks gorgeous, and I am still able to enjoy it with my fps. Understandably in my situation Is 100% GPU bottle-necked. Frames take a hit with weather and especially snow effects. Load times are significant, but not bad. Considering my eight year old GPU and anticipating the likelihood that this game will be further optimized in the future, i'm already impressed.

Firstly, there are some quality of life things unavailable (probably because this is alpha). Assigning stuff to hotkeys, etc. So be prepared for that.

Secondly, I haven't experienced everything so take this review for its worth.

Have only played single player thus far - 12 hours in. I imagine/get the feeling that I am in mid-game (just now getting items to craft armor, encountering harder enemies, venturing deeper into caves, etc)

The survival aspect is well done. Early game its a struggle. Food/water/sleep maintenance system, which in most games is very tedious, but this has enough depth, is done well enough and isn't terribly demanding. Once you are able to prioritize needs it gets a bit easier. Easy to learn, but important to do it quickly. There are items that will make necessities are little more convenient to maintain and gather, which lets you spend more time exploring. Still important to weigh items by use as they can be hard to come by (ex: Do I use cloth for Molotov cocktails, or save it for armor?)

Environment is gorgeous and immersive. Very large. This is one of the best woodland/island area environments in a game I've ever seen. Snow effects are phenomenal. The caves are creepy, dark and dangerous to fight in. Despite all this, I imagine it would be possible critique the environment sparse in terms of richness/content, which is probably due to the game being in early alpha. It takes quite a long time to travel to points of interests, and sometimes as a player I wasn't rewarded with either quality/quantity/progression of items I would of liked. In hindsight I feel this was a good design choice. It made me spread out my traveling to discover new locations, and assigned a sense of depth and importance to acquiring new stuff, as well as coming across more ideal locations for a home base a long the way.

The AI is not the most challenging. Enemies hit hard. Some of the more medium difficulty enemies got me quite a few times. However, once I learned their behavior/attack patterns I fared much better. The AI will harass the player. I had a dude jump my fence and it was either him or me swinging wildly smashing some of my stored items. I think I witnessed a dude steal some food off my drying rack.

The AI the accompanies the player isn't good for much except gathering basic items, which actually makes life a bit easier. I imagine he will be added to in future updates.

Audio is par. The effects are well enough done, but some of them are too loud. (I do like when a windstorm blows in, and it becomes very hard to hear anything). Enemies can howl and scream which gives off a false sense of proximity, and its very startling. There is this one asthmatic enemy encountered near enemy camps, its possible hear him wheezing from a quarter mile away. So audio may need a little tweaking.

Overall I think this game has enormous potential - I think for an alpha release this is pretty phenomenal. In my opinion, a little more progression, items, build-able stuff, locations, and a little more variety in terms of AI and its behavior and this will be a very complete game.

Things that I think could be added/tweaked that would add value and really make this game stand out. Just ideas and opinion.

- Exponentially increase the danger of traveling at night.
- Add more effigy's (skull on sticks etc) and fires. Add an effect to hostile AI where effigy's and fires add hesitation to enemy attacks. Where an increasing number/strength of enemies becomes more bold and willing to attack. I couldn't tell if it effected AI behavior or not, but it didn't appear so. If it's already a thing, it could be developed.
- Add more and develop harassing, hit and run AI.
- More recipes involving bones - spears, arrows etc.
- Remove the cloth requirement for *some* of the sets of armor. At the point where I finally got enough cloth, i'm nearly able to craft a full suit of high tier armor. So in my experience it went from no armor - to high tier armor, without any progression. It would of been nice to craft a set of leather armor for all this hide I'd been carrying around. I had no inclination to craft leaf armor (first tier armor) for example, even wondering if it could add a degree of stealth to the game, I choose to voluntarily skip finding out.

To new players, 3 tips that I think are invaluable.

- Always carry a tarp to save progress whenever.
- Spears are you best friend for hunting and against enemies, carry as many as you can and learn to throw them effectively.
- Plan a base around running water, and preferably a deer population (they are the easiest to hunt).

Immediate bugs I would fix.
- There is an exploit where a player can loot boxes / save / exit / reload and re loot the boxes all over again. Definitely has the potential to take away from the experience..

Good game with friends. Takes effort and management to stay alive on an island with hostile tribal people. Not really a bare bones game, but could use additional content. Hope the devolper is incintivized to add more content, given their inital success.