Recent reviews by flamberge

When this game showed up on my Steam queue, the description was one that immediately piqued my interest (that and the beautiful artstyle). The promise of a "thoughtful, exploration-survival experience" was exactly what I'd been looking for since I've had time to pick up gaming as a pasttime once more. While I do have a few gripes with the game thus far, the duration of my experience in the game so far has been with answering a couple of questions that have been floating around since I was first introduced:

Does it live up to what it claims to be (at least in terms of my playstyle)?

Given that I've played the game almost exclusively on hard mode, and have recently reached day 30 on my current run, I'd consider myself at least a bit survivable and able to handle the game's mechanics pretty well. Did it challenge me? That's a given; my first four of five runs, each having been slightly longer than the last, each had their fun and challenging stories, which ultimately ended with my demise (to wolves every time). There seems to be a bit of a rough difficulty curve, as it starts off incredibly difficult and overwhelming, only to become basic knowledge to survive. Perhaps I haven't trying challenging myself, as my intuition within the game has been to reduced to "Gotta find buildings, gotta go fast." Judging from my experience, playing to live exclusively off the land seems impossible. Not that it should be the intended way of playing, but that I think it should be an option for the most daring of players. The game's mechanics do not allow for such a playstyle, as they do not for a lot of playstyles. A decently large game with so much potential ends up being disappointingly shallow at the end of the day. (I suppose that's the cause of Early Access, but I digress) There's a lot of room to expand and add depth. TL;DR: Hell yeah, but could do with some improvements.

Do the game's mechanics work well/properly?

If there's anything I love, it's a game that you can't learn completely just from reading a couple pages on the wiki. A game that not only requires a strong sense of intuition and logic, but also experience to apply your knowledge properly. The only real sense of progression you have throughout the game is synthesized through the pseudo leveling system for repairing and firemaking. The game mechanics work properly, only, they become very predictable and boring over time. They are not, however, without merit. There are some unique mechanics within the game that deserve some credit. Let's start off with the the environment. In my opinion, the environment is very well done and is just naturally a challenging part of the game that is always a breath of fresh air. Air temperature and windchill are both very well done and fun elements of the game to play around. Not to mention how well the environment is aesthetically, though the night time could use a little polishing (snow and breath look awkward in the dark). The environment definitely does a lot better than it's living counterpart: the wolves. On the other end of the spectrum, wolves are what I have the biggest problem with. It's great to have a constantly looming threat, especially in the harder difficulty, but they have become more annoying than threatening at this point. Randomness is a very fickle element of survival games, and should be used only when necessary; ie. wolves should not be dictated by randomness. Being the BIG threat in most playthroughs, they should be challenging and something to think about, not annoying and something you just pray to avoid. I should be praying when I'm making a run for the cabin at midnight because I've run out of supplies, not when I'm leaving in the morning for a fresh expedition. The wolves are a very flawed gameplay mechanic, as they stand right now. With semi-random spawns, arbitrary movement, and aggro radius, they act pretty much exactly like a zombie would. I understand the suspension of disbelief that has to go into playing a videogames, but wolves should act as wolves do. There's very little room to play around the possibilities of wolf attacks, since they are so random, and once they're chasing you, they never let up. Of course, when they DO catch you, there's very little threat unless there are two or more to continuously pounce you, and then you're more than likely dead at that point. TL;DR: The elements are nice, the wolves are a huge pain in the ass

Overall, the game so far has been a fantastic experience with lots of very high points where I've felt sheer awe from the beauty, pure relief from escaping the brink of death, or relaxation from sitting around a fire during a cold night. And, of course, there were some pretty frustrating low points. Wolves randomly become immune to flares, randomly become immune to torches, and randomly show up in packs right outside my door. Fun times in the Canadian wilderness. 8/10