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Author Topic: Survivalist - Build a base, kick zombies, find insulin, recruit subdued looters  (Read 2306 times)

Gabeux

  • Bay Watcher
  • Addicted to building stuff.
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So, Steam likes to flood my front page with scammy Early Access titles, anime, puzzle, racing games and even movies I never bought, or simply recommend me enough Minecraft ripoffs to make me wonder what the hell Valve's trying to accomplish with their algorithms.

But these days, somehow I bumped into Survivalist. Search brought me no results here, and I don't think it's possible that no B12er at all would feel interested in this.
Spoiler: Follow me, my minions (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Guarding our sand (click to show/hide)

In this game you're Joe Wheeler, a guy who thought it was a good idea to have a bunker in the middle of the desert just in case he messed with the wrong people.
What he didn't know, though, is that the whole world was going to collapse to some kind of virus, and all that thing you people who love zombies like to fantasize about.
I dislike zombies in general due to its overuse and cheap story-building possibilities. I'm sorry.
But I like fun games.  :P

Having supplies for 1 year to live alone on the bunker, Joe Wheeler gets out on the last day, being forced to scavange for supplies. On his way out, he's greeted by an SOS signal. And that's where the story beings.


The game is an Action-RPG and simple RTS Hybrid. Your actions will change opinions of those in your community, or those in the community you're helping, or even in the whole region. This will make it easier to recruit people and grow your own Community (aka Player Party, Group, etc).
You can assign your people to roles, like Farmer, Builder, Guard or Collector. There's different micromanaging for each role - Farmers are fully automated, Builders require orders and notify you when finished, Guards are fully automated and will cycle through watchtowers on every shift (not sure if they resupply themselves, though), Collectors are trolls and will remain quiet after they loot those 65 wooden planks to the west. It will take long enough to loot all of it, though, so you'll probably notice when they are finished.
Oh, and you can also assume direct control of any character in your party, and reputation with NPCs are tracked individually. So if you are evil, you can have a good-guy companion to better manage recruiting and quests (it's better to have only one person doing all the talking and gifting though, otherwise your rep won't be high enough for some stuff).

The game has food, water and sleep needs. One of the characters has Diabetes and needs insulin, which adds a GREAT survival feeling to the game if you're trying to be a good guy. As a bad guy, you can simply tell her to deal with it and she'll, obviously, die..leaving you free to do your weird survival crap with your evil friends on the desert. How could you?

You can build your base. Wooden or Wire Walls and Gates, Watchtowers, Pillboxes, Wells, Barns, Shacks, that sort of thing. Of course, as a 5 USD game, it's not extensive..but it works great.

There are zombies and there are looters. You can punch and kick people to death or equip yourself with pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, sniper rifle, RPG, molotovs and maybe more stuff I haven't found yet. You can kill anything and anyone, you can throw molotovs in their structures and defenses and steal their crops, you can make shakedowns to raise your respect, you can accidentally overwrite your save after performing a genocide and be forced to stick with that decision because you're a noob. [To prevent yourself from doing that, know that Auto Save and Quick Save in this game are the same thing. Change your Quick Save key and make backup saves often!  ;)].

For a more structured review on the game, you can check my Steam review here, but I think I summarized it pretty well here.
Feel free to add me there, too.


It might not change your life. But is it just me that thinks that 5 USD for this game is a crime? I paid 10-30 bucks for similar hybrid games which were entirely non-functional, crappy, messy or were abandoned.
It was initially made for Xbox Live Games or something, then made [ported?] for the PC. But it doesn't feel like that at all, and I only got to know that because it was mentioned on the game's website. And again, I've played full PC games with terrible controls.
I'm so confused because I never seen this anywhere, and even though it's by no means complex or deep (compared to..er..DF), I'm having great fun with it.
Maybe it's because I ALWAYS wanted to play an Action RPG + RTS with Base Building game - which is why Fallout 4 will probably kill me - but I think it's seriously weird I didn't see this being talked about anywhere else, while freaking Starbase DF-9 keeps popping on my front page and making me want to molotov someone.

I'm halfway through the game/map and I just now thought I could be recruiting looters on their camps instead of instantly exploding their faces. Shooting their legs, making them fly from their watchtowers, feels so satisfying that I ended up forgetting that mankind is in danger of extinction.
« Last Edit: July 11, 2015, 04:55:10 pm by Gabeux »
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It honestly feels like a lot of their problems came from the fact that their entire team was composed of cats, and the people who were supposed to be herding them were also cats.