It looks so good! It sounded like the survival game I'd been wanting for YEARS! But after scavenging only 2 abandoned towns I was shot at and constantly stunned until I died. I was Tough and had clothes on, not sure if that improves my defense or not, and I was behind cover. Infact getting behind cover was the one single action I was able to pull off.

In my many playthroughs since I have never been able to find another frying pan or torch, and things were even harder. Finding a lighter is so damn hard that I usually starve to death. Or if I just try waiting it out and eating mushrooms in forests, I end up dying of sickness. This isn't a game about surviving, it's a game about taking a while to die. 2 days is my usual record.

This game relies so incredibly heavily on luck that it just isn't fun. But survival is all about strategy, so this works out horribly. I've tried building a great shelter, but died of sickness. Tried never staying in one spot, but got mauled. There are only ways to lose and no ways to win. Also with the very small amount of recipes available, you'd think the game would give you hints on when you need just 1 more item to make something. Dragging the skills into the crafting table is just really monotonous. It should be doing this itself! It's the Minecraft crafting table all over again, with no user-friendliness.

And the skills, they were a selling point for me, but now that I've gotten to play it I only pick the same skills each time. They are just not at all balanced. This is what I'd expect from a game still in beta. I thought I'd be avoiding these huge flaws in a finished game. Incredibly dissapointing. I've tried other survival roguelikes and they were pretty bad too in there own ways.

Starting to wonder if this genre combo simply can never work.

UPDATE: Same day I post this, a wonderful person tells me about a free game in beta called Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. It's got more content than I can handle! And despite it's wonky controls, it has a very clear crafting system, and loads of methods for getting materials. It's also far more immersive with you actually exploring the areas yourself. Just hope you don't need graphics, because that's the game's only flaw. To play it like Neo Scavenger, just turn zombies off and NPCs on. And finally, when you die in it, you learn from it. You play better next time. Something I sadly can't say about Neo Scavenger, where it's difficulty is based on a dice roll.