Recommend/discuss survival games (aka Hi crpgnut!)

Shagnak

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I see crpgnut is right into his survival games, so I thought - maybe some others are, too. Or maybe some people want opinions? Anyway, here's a thread.

I've tried some survival games (e.g. 7 Days to Die, Ark, Subnautica). Some have been great (Subnautica, Salt), but none of the "grittier" ones have been fully satisfying.
Basically I want something gritty, first- or third-person, preferably with an enemy (e.g. zombies) - but not enough to make exploration totally annoying, and combat that is not utterly clunky. Also, the ability to play optionally single player.

I've tried:
7 Days to Die - utterly clunky combat. I hate that zombies are super excavating machines or something. However, there is something there, and I intend to return with reinforcements (a co-op friend) sometime.
Mist Survival - utterly clunky combat (seriously, does it share some code with 7 Days to Die?). Utterly dull, bog-standard affair. I have no idea why it has a Very Positive rating.
Hurt World - like Rust with stylized graphics. Online only, with servers full of fuckwits (I guess that's the point of games like this). Meh.

I've been contemplating Green Hell. I know it doesn't have zombies etc, but if it's well done enough… Though it does look micro-manage-ish in the extreme.
Was also looking at The Forest, but I've heard it isn't a proper open world (?).
Scum looks like an option also. (How's the combat?)

Anyway, any opinions?
 
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Scum is mmo. And is currently in beta till doomsday.
 
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Scum is mmo. And is currently in beta till doomsday.
I got the impression you could play it single player if you wanted. i.e. same content, but no annoying arseholes everywhere.
 
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No Man's Sky on a higher difficulty level, maybe?
 
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No Man's Sky on a higher difficulty level, maybe?
I said gritty! I guess there's space grit when you blow those rocks up... :p

I played NMS when it first came out. It was a disappointment and I regretted spending the money, but still sunk some hours in it in a bloody-minded fashion. Honestly, it just makes me sick thinking about it.
I know there have been some major updates, but I'll be waiting a bit longer before I check it out again.
 
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In every game I'll mention I only play SP mode.

SCUM 85 hours--You're a prisoner that gets dropped on a maximum security planet. You are on a large landmass that is surrounded my 100 meter walls.

This is the game with the amazing nutrition mechanic. You have hunger and thirst but also nutrition. SCUM tracks about 40 different vitamin and mineral needs along with body biological functions. You need to empty your bowels every so often. In fact, not urinating enough will cause you to start storing sodium which can cause heart failure as you age.

An amusing mechanic is intelligence and endowment. If you massive junk, you have a tiny brain. If you have huge tatas, the same :) Moderation is the key. You don't want to be at the far end of anything. Too strong and you'll need 4000 calories a day just to walk around. Too weak and you won't be able to carry much.

SCUM is decent except for the boring combat. Tons of stuff to find, you need to move around to get food. Farming isn't a thing, so far. Tons of crops in the field though, so finding food is just time consuming. Mushrooms are great for balancing your vitamin and mineral needs. Hunting is scarce. Sometimes I don't see anything bigger than a bird for days.
 
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CrossWorlds: Escape 45 hours--Steam Review

TLDR; I'm playing it for now, but I don't think you should.

Well this game is a mixed bag for me. There are some nice elements but nearly all of them are tied up behind way too much of a time sink. A couple examples: Let's say you've just started the game and you want to place a couple chests to store your gear. Okay, chests are made from planks and those come from wood which comes from trees, bushes and the ground. To chop down one tree takes about 30 seconds. Let's say you were lucky and got enough wood (16 pieces) to make the planks. The planks are made one at a time and each plank takes 15 seconds to make. That's 4 minutes of your real life wasted while watching a timer. Not only that, planks aren't the only item needed to make a chest. You'll need clay too. Clay may or may not be found by your trees, so you may need to walk to a nearby lake/pond/river.

If you add up all the time consuming tasks it takes about 23 real-time hours to build a complete base. The game could be fun if the developer ever massively streamlines all of the processes. You do eventually build items that makes some of the tasks a little easier, but I find the game to be way too frustrating, at this time, to recommend.

The game world is supposedly huge, but there really isn't much to it; at least at this time. You've got a few monsters, several wildlife predators and game animals. There is the occasional walled town of monsters, caves, houses, etc but all of them just contain the same stuff you can find or make yourself. No reason to ever enter one of these unless you just want to fight. There are no levels or skill increases so there is no incentive to ever fight anything unless you just want to make food or relieve boredom. The game needs loot that isn't tied to crafting. If there is a story to the game, it is so vague as to be meaningless. The whole goal of the game seems too be build a structure to survive the seasons, repeat, repeat, repeat.

All of that said, I'm still playing it even with all of the negatives. Right now the game just isn't accessible to the average player. It requires too much of a time commitment for the amount of fun in return.
 
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Delivery from the Pain:

This is a zombie apocalypse game in isometric or top down perspective. More urban in tone, you'll scavenge buildings as you try to move from the southern half of ruined city to an area of shelter that has been established.

You do not want to be outside at night. The idea is to scavenge during the day, and then build/craft and sleep at night. Zombies are quite kill-able but making too much noise will get you overwhelmed fast. I've only played this one about an hour as SCUM grabbed me more.
 
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The Forest/Green Hell:

Ok, Green Hell 3 hours is basically a clone of The Forest. Many similar themes and it's a small game land area wise. I'd skip it for now, even though it has some decent wound mechanics.

The Forest (48 hours) is more filled out. You're an airplane crash survivor and your son is kidnapped by Natives. These guys are cannibalistic, so you have a limited time to find sonny. Lots of building, medical crafting, weapon making, etc. This game has a mild horror theme to it, that I didn't get into. It was okay-ish
 
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Judgement: Apocalypse--played this one an hour. Demonic invasion instead of zombies. I stopped when I realized it had community building. I'm not into games that have you saving others and keeping them happy. Everyone but me can bite it :)
 
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KRAI MIRA: This looks like Fallout 1. I bought it, but haven't really done much in it yet. Somebody else may pop in and say whether it has survival elements.
 
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Kenshi: This is very popular, but it bored me to death. Not enough loot to keep my inner greedy pig happy enough to play.
 
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LifeZ - Survival(16 hours). Zombie game where the idea is to escape the quarantine zone that you were accidentally left inside when the zombie outbreak happened. There are several possible places that might lead to an escape route, but you'll need to "fort up" for storage and a safe place to rest. This is top down/isometric too, so I don't typically play these as long. Decent crafting and the zombies are good at swarming tactics, so you need to plan your route through them on some of the maps. Melee to guns are common. Bullets are somewhat scarce.
 
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The Long Dark (350 hours)--This is an amazing game, but it has almost no combat. The occasional wolf or bear, but you are very much better off avoiding them if possible. Later volumes will likely have you fighting a few humans. This is an episodic story game or a pure survival game. This game can be very unforgiving. It is very easy to freeze to death, starve, get killed by infection, etc. I play on the easiest mode most of the time and still find ways to die :) This is all about finding just enough stuff to live to see another day.
 
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Mist Survival: Like Shagnak, I just couldn't get into this. Bought it, played 61 minutes, and uninstalled. The biggest downer for me, was the loot is exactly the same in every game and the play area is just too small for that.
 
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Project Zomboid. Top down again and too many zombies and not enough variety in the loot or environs. I played 3 hours before boredom set in. Very low level graphics. I'm a g-whore and I vastly prefer first person. For me to play iso, the graphics need to be very detailed. These aren't.
 
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Rising World. Very aggressive beasties and a decent building/crafting game, but the terrain generator in this game sucks badly. I gave it 21 hours of my life, but the game seeds were just too random and too vertical about 90% of the time.
 
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The various STALKER games are all decent, but not truly survival games as I think of them. All of them are worth a play. I have about 50 hours in the series.
 
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Salt (54 hours)--Posted my steam review

I'm still on my survival/crafting kick so I picked up a game called Salt. I guess it's called that because this game is full of islands and pirates; well land based pirates at least. Though there are a variety of ships, I've never seen another soul on the water.

This game has a lot more loot variety than most of the others; not including 7D2D. You have several types of armor, weapons, and accessories. I haven't needed to build a base yet, so I'm not sure if that's a thing.

Unlike the other games, Salt is populated. There are merchants, pirates, inns, etc. However, they are spread out amongst hundreds of islands, so you might not see anyone at all or a small handful depending on the island size and the resources.

Combat is with other humans/ mostly pirates and cultists. There are no wolves, bears, etc. You can swim a long ways too, though even a raft is much faster. I found an abandoned pirate ship, repaired it, and now I ply the waters in style. It seems weird to control a 60' long ship by myself though….

Food has to be scavenged and is always low. Trees bear fruit and deer are plentiful but shy easy so killing one takes patience. It is unlikely that you will make a clean kill with one shot, so you'll be chasing them down. A head/neck shot does massive damage though so you might get lucky. The flee AI for deer is great. You won't guess which way they'll run unless you box them in somewhere.

The map has to be populated by you. It's just a blank sheet of graph paper with longitude and latitude marks. You can find or make a sextant and compass to help with this and you can also WRITE NOTES on it. How nice that someone finally got this. It's so nice to be able to write stuff down. Things like "chest I couldn't open in nw corner of the island at 5E 12N, etc. I don't mind maps that hold your hand but sometimes it is quite fun to do your own. Note that there are several markers ready made for the islands too.

There are lots of chests, buried treasure, ancient ruins, etc. Exploration is HUGE in this game.

While there is no multiplayer just yet, it is in the workings. The author wants some form of multiplayer because they're going to add cannon to the bigger ships and then you'll be able to have ship to ship battles in multiplayer. For us single-player folks the cannon can take out shore-wandering pirates and deer.
 
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Force of Nature-100 hours-posted Steam review:

Force of Nature is a laid back survival game that starts off slowly and never reaches the hectic pace of its competitors. This is a great game to relax with and just build yourself a life. The campaign mode is quite linear. You'll build a rope, a campfire, a knife, etc. After a few days you may wander from your beach home and encounter a monster or two and some natural predators. Don't expand too fast or get too far from your base at first. Build first, then explore. Stock up so that you can build later too. Fun game
 
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