My friends and I have been getting really deep with our gaming conversations, so much so that I’ve been contemplating setting up a podcast. I thought it would be interesting to bring my favorite little gaming forum into the mix… that’s you guys!
Right now it seems like everyone is making a survival sandbox game. The early access is completely filled with them:
Rust, 7 days to die, stomping lands, life is feudal, dayz… etc. I can see what the draw is, I absolutely love the genre myself. I am the type of guy who keeps the TV on in the background constantly watching shows like Dual Survival, Survivorman, Naked and Afraid… etc so the genre is very interesting to me all around. These games are legitimately thrilling, there is an urgency in your decisions and survival and when you throw in some PvP it literally becomes an adrenal roller coaster ride of fun.
I do however feel like the genre is cursed. It seems every one of these developers are taking advantage of early access and many of the games seem to be nightmares which development has slowed, ceased, or players are kept in the dark. This gets me wondering is this another fad genre which is piggybacking on early access and kickstarter or are these games so huge that they need AAA dev teams, giant pockets, and a few good years of development? I think it may be a combination of both.
I’ve bought two of these games Rust, and DayZ.
Rust:
The existing incarnation of rust that exists now and did before they scrapped the engine and started rebuilding the game was actually quite fun. It wasn’t worth the price I paid mind you but I enjoyed hundreds of hours on that archaic version which felt like it was a game from the late 90s more than one from the present. Rust suffers from a few problems it is essentially two games now… the classic which is the old incarnation, and the experiment version currently being worked on. The old version is a basic game, it isn’t much but it functions as a game and can be quite fun. The new version is pretty far from a game at this point but has potential. The issue comes with the new version, they basically started from zero all over again so the official release is easily years away… To me it seems like these games that come out on early access and still have such a long period of time before release fail. They seem to stay in a constant state of development and the moment interest drops the devs walk away from the project. I have hope for rust, but I am not putting my eggs in one basket.
DayZ:
I can’t stand this game. I can’t really even give an honest review of it because I’ve yet to have a good experience with it. I do feel this will be another perpetual development game though and the most likely outcome of this game will be that the minute interest in it drifts, and people stop streaming it etc… the dev team will slap a 1.0 sticker on it in whatever state it is in and call for the full release.
That’s two reviews which aren’t that great. These games turned me off from early access but, and this is a big but, I am still easily seduced by this genre and others seem to be as well. Every time a game like this comes out I immediately check it out and research it… the big one right now is “Life is Feudal” its another game which in my head sounds amazing and something I want to be a part of. I am resisting. The games always look and seem too good to be true, and then they are and it just seems like the genre is completely cursed. Here I am though watching youtube videos and questioning my decision because I am drawn to these games. Perhaps it is just my secret off the grid fantasies coming alive on the screen, or some other deep instinctual draw but for me and many others right now … these games are like crack.
So lets talk survival sandbox… recommendations, thoughts, criticisms, etc! go nuts.