Turn-based tactical, hardcore survival with stories. Spoiler-free review. Early access.

The game is announced for the Windows platform.

Interesting and confusing. In short, a catastrophe occurred in the world with the spread of a strange fog. It had an extremely negative impact on the life of organisms. Mutants began to appear. And our hero supposedly came from some parallel world, where there are no such problems. For what? How to get back? The answers to these questions remain to be found.

The gameplay is a mixture of role-playing game, survival, turn-based tactical battles, text events and exploration of the big world.

First, we create a hero whose properties will determine our capabilities. We choose from several archetypes (some properties of the hero are strictly defined) and add positive or negative qualities to them. Perk points will be spent on positive properties, and added for negative ones. As far as I understand, there is no further pumping, but this is not certain. At least there is no experience gain scale.

Selecting the difficulty level. The game is intense in any case, but in the easiest mode the protagonist will not be able to die from the consequences of fatal decisions in dialogues and text events.

The hero finds himself in a starting situation depending on the chosen archetype and the adventure begins.

We find ourselves on a randomly generated (each game will be different) global world map, divided into hexes, along which we will run. The overall look is very, very gloomy, creating an atmosphere. There are weather effects and time of day changes.

The world around is not empty. Monsters and surviving people roam around it. There are settlements where you can take part in various events, take on quests, chat with people.

Often something like text events happens, the actions in which are determined by our perks. As a rule, the plot is presented through them.

In general, according to the tutorial they say that you shouldn’t get involved in fights and practice shows that this is so – a wound or two is practically guaranteed if you manage to win at all. But if the battle has already begun, then it happens step by step on the field, where we can approach the enemy or move away (it’s no longer possible to run away), deliver our blows (various) or defend ourselves, do preparatory and auxiliary actions. Has a stamina system.

When exploring the world we have a whole bunch of activities.

You can search each hex for useful items, and the loot will depend on the type of terrain.

You can build shelters of varying https://bettingsitesnogamstop.co.uk/golf/ degrees of comfort for relaxation (based on current capabilities), and once built, they remain if for some reason we wander into this cell again. There is a possibility that maybe the fog will destroy them after some time, I haven’t checked.

Crafting available. There is a large list of recipes that we can use to create a variety of things. Some are very simple, some are very complex.

The game has a large number of types of resources and equipment. Interesting interaction with objects. The hero can take the found loot into a small number of cells of the bag or pockets, otherwise it is considered lying on the floor and will not be transferred when moving from the cell. This adds a lot of complexity.

The hero constantly needs to monitor his health, for this there is a special medicine window. Our protagonist dies from almost any sneeze. Gets wounds all the time.

The survival part is detailed, powerful (more on this in the final part and conclusions, but here I’m just stating that a lot of work has really been done).

There are many types of food and cooking methods, water must be boiled. Eating everything can lead to health problems. We tried “realism”. In the upper left corner you can see with a detailed explanation how the hero is doing with hunger, thirst, radiation and other important moments for life.

GALLOP THROUGH EUROPE

Almost immediately and then as needed, they show fairly detailed training with video inserts.

Upon leaving early access, they promise new biomes, equipment, enemies, etc. It is stated that the current content filling is 50%.

Let’s look at the pros and cons of the game and summarize.

+ Excellent music and sound accompaniment.

+ Interesting plot and atmosphere of the world as a whole.

+ Good role-playing system, perks greatly influence what happens.

+ Many types of useful resources. Good craft.

+ Good, detailed explanations of various things, appearing as pop-up captions.

+ Excellent Russian localization. Moreover, the starting video is also beautifully voiced.

THINGS THAT CAN BE BOTH A PLUS AND A MINUS:

+- I have mixed feelings about the survival system. On the one hand, indeed, a cruel world has been created that tests one’s strength, a lot of all sorts of rubbish and useful resources. On the other hand, in my opinion, they still go a little overboard with hunger/thirst (as if we came to this game to eat) and wounds. There is a feeling that you are playing as a half-dead disabled person dying from every sneeze. Do you think I’m exaggerating?? Judge for yourself:

– Explicit ones (except for the balance in survival, as for me – they were too sophisticated) were not found.

CONCLUSIONS OBJECTIVE

The game is hardcore, serious survival. At the same time, there is a good plot and an interesting exploration of the world. Those who like things simpler can experience a lot of pain even on easy difficulty. Those who are not afraid of difficulties may really like it. While the project is in early access, if subsequent content is of the same quality, it could turn out to be a great game.

CONCLUSIONS ARE SUBJECTIVE

In my opinion, the game is very good, atmospheric. But the balance of the survival part spoils the raspberry. The hero eats and drinks like a wounded man, he is constantly sick or wounded. Of the analogues, I remember Stoneshard (by the way, it appeared in early access on Steam exactly two years ago, a cool coincidence), the entire inventory is filled (a big word – you can put five items in there) with bandages, food and water, and there is not enough space even for the minimum set of vital things. You should forget about crafting materials or, especially, equipment – they don’t fit. In my opinion, there is no need to do this. I just don’t see the point, the game has a lot of resources and equipment, but you can’t use it or take it with you.

If realism is so important, then a couple of days of fasting is nothing at all. And with such wounds and diseases that await him here at every step, the hero can in reality only die under the nearest bush, and not bandage his wounds for the twentieth time.

Let me summarize. As for me, it’s worth shifting the emphasis from constant and demanding survival to adventure – reducing the constant needs and “fragility” of the hero by a factor of three. Moreover, this world is simply delightful and interesting to explore.

PS: I probably didn’t cover all the aspects, I might have missed something. I will be glad to add/correct the review or answer questions along the way in the comments.