Osiris: New Dawn - A Survival Game Done Differently

Silver

Silver

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@GamePressure Osiris: New Dawn recently arrived on Steam early access and is said to be different from the standard survival game formula.

Osiris: New Dawn, a sci-fi survival game for those bored of classic survivals - or at least that's what the developers at Fenix Fire Entertainment claim. The overall premise seems pretty standard, though: after crash-landing on an alien planet, you get to build a colony together with friends, fight off local fauna at day and survive attacks of aggressive monsters at night. On the other hand, your typical survival mechanics - like eating and drinking - will be limited to venturing far off your base. Besides, you will be able to task droids with tedious work, such as gathering resources, thus letting you focus on what's real fun: combat and exploration.

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Wait, what exactly is different from existing MMOs?
Kill me, but there's nothing I haven't seen in MMOs before just reshuffled.
 
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It is different from other survival games but it is the same thing. Hey, they need to somehow convince consumers to play their game. Might as well lie about it.
 
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It seems more like an iterative change to me. Allow the player to focus not on endless gathering of resources but exploration instead. Factorio allows the player to automate some things and is what the survival genre should try to emulate more imo. I think this is a good first baby step in that direction.
 
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Maybe "Survival Games" have run their course, with No Man's Sky being the end...?

If a game mechanic is considered tedious, in this case gathering minerals, then why even have it in the game? Task a droid to do it? Ok, but what is the point? Maybe they should just skip the survival aspect and make an RPG with combat and exploration.

On a related note, it's weird, but watching a bit of Minecraft years ago, I have a somewhat small but definitely is there appreciation for resource gathering in that game. Maybe because it was the first "big" survival game, but it had a certain charm to it (even if it was mostly pointless, i.e. build some giant structure just to look at it).
 
Fluent said:
Maybe "Survival Games" have run their course, with No Man's Sky being the end…?

If a game mechanic is considered tedious, in this case gathering minerals, then why even have it in the game? Task a droid to do it? Ok, but what is the point? Maybe they should just skip the survival aspect and make an RPG with combat and exploration.
Click to expand...

The point is that you want to focus on building more advanced things after a while so getting to the stage where you can automate the basic things (if you wish) is an achievement and can require some ingenuity itself. Check out factorio and you will know what I mean by that.
 
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joxer said:
Wait, what exactly is different from existing MMOs?
Kill me, but there's nothing I haven't seen in MMOs before just reshuffled.
Click to expand...

It's different from other MMO's in that it's not an MMO.
 
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It is so different from other MP survival games that it also came out on Early Access and it will stay there forever...
 
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It is hard for the survival genre to have run its own course since it barely started.
That craze for the survival label was born out of the economical fears in the late 2000s when people thought that society could collapse and they would have to face survival situations.

Other than the marketing trick, few products are focused on survival. What is called survival like gathering, crafting, building could be found in games like Morrowind or The Sims. Back in the days, very few people called them survival games.

So far, and in general, devs failed to provide what is specific to a survival situation: the survival pressure.


Silver said:
It seems more like an iterative change to me. Allow the player to focus not on endless gathering of resources but exploration instead. Factorio allows the player to automate some things and is what the survival genre should try to emulate more imo. I think this is a good first baby step in that direction.
Click to expand...

Nope. In Factorio, everything is supposed to be automated. Factorio is the emulation of a self sustaining process of mass consumption of the environment.
Once plants are achieved, no input is required from the player.
The attempt to introduce a survival pressure comes as a second thought. The gameplay does not tick in Factorio and players focus on the essential: automation of the process of mass consumption of an environment by ticking on infinite resources and off indigenous life.
 
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Silver said:
The point is that you want to focus on building more advanced things after a while so getting to the stage where you can automate the basic things (if you wish) is an achievement and can require some ingenuity itself. Check out factorio and you will know what I mean by that.
Click to expand...

I've heard of Factorio and how you can automate/build plants, etc. Minecraft and a few others have been pretty neat at times, but a lot of the newer games in that genre just seem to recycle the same formula and not have any real point or goal to the game.

Even that recent Fallout 4 DLC where you build factories, etc., I don't get what the point of it is. But I guess that sort of stuff just isn't really my thing.

ChienAboyeur said:
It is hard for the survival genre to have run its own course since it barely started.
That craze for the survival label was born out of the economical fears in the late 2000s when people thought that society could collapse and they would have to face survival situations.

Other than the marketing trick, few products are focused on survival. What is called survival like gathering, crafting, building could be found in games like Morrowind or The Sims. Back in the days, very few people called them survival games.

So far, and in general, devs failed to provide what is specific to a survival situation: the survival pressure.
Click to expand...

Well, IMO, these are basically "Survival, Minecraft-style" games. You'd never confuse Morrowind or The Sims with Minecraft, but Minecraft was the huge hit that got everyone making their own "survival games" that are very similar to it.
 
Minecraft did not started as a survival game. It was intended to be a lego like builder game.

Minecraft possibilities are huge and what is called survival or RPG are mods using Minecraft as a game engine.
 
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ChienAboyeur said:
Minecraft did not started as a survival game. It was intended to be a lego like builder game.

Minecraft possibilities are huge and what is called survival or RPG are mods using Minecraft as a game engine.
Click to expand...

I know it didn't start as that, but Minecraft added survival elements fairly early on in the form of hunger and thirst.

What I mean by what I said is that the "Survival Genre" of games borrows heavily from Minecraft - the building techniques (build via blocks/real time building in the environment), the resource gathering/mining/breaking down elements (punching a tree to get wood to craft a club or axe, etc.), the crafting (put very basic elements together to form somewhat mundane-type items) often the procedural generated world (large world full of minerals to mine and areas to build, etc.) and yes, even the survival elements such as hunger, thirst, etc.
 
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