Survivalist is an isometric 3D sandbox RPG zombie survival game, with great emphasis on the survival aspect. You begin the game as Joe Wheeler who has been hiding in an underground bunker in an attempt to avoid the spreading zombie virus. Supplies have run out after a year, thus you must venture out and procure food and water in order to keep on living. Simple enough, until you realize that there are zombies running around and civilized life is all but wiped out. What follows next is your daily struggle in the search for food and supplies in order to keep you alive and safe from the hazards of a devastated, zombie-infested, gang-ridden land. This being an open-world game, you are free to roam anywhere you please in the search for more supplies. The further you stray from the safety of your bunker though, the more dangers lurk around every corner.

Survivalist focuses on a more realistic tone to the genre than most games do. While you do have the usual gunning and scavenging aspect as seen in similar games such as DayZ, the core mechanic of Survivalist focuses on community and humanity as a whole. When exploring Survivalist’s desert wasteland setting, you will often come upon other survivors of the zombie uprising. Each encounter can easily shape the outcome of your playthrough as every person you meet has their own personality, relationships, and personal goals and needs. Your actions upon meeting this person can easily determine whether they are a friend or foe, and they will remember your choice as well. Rob a passerby early in the game and later on in your next meeting they will remember your face with a seething look of hatred pointed your way and possibly the barrel of a gun as well. Begin friendly trades with a well-armed group and they will welcome you happily to their camp for further use and trade. The amount of work put into the AI to simulate a living and thriving community among the NPCs was simply amazing to see. The fact that I can slowly work my way into the good graces of a community by buttering up one or two members and see the results of my goodwill spread among the rest of the members left me amazed.

Speaking of community, it is not solely limited to pre-established NPC clans. The option is there to build your own community as well. With enough supplies, manpower and skills, you can build your very own fortress to house yourself and any friends you make on your travels. One key member you will come across very early in the game is a woman named Alice who is a diabetic and requires a daily dose of insulin in order to keep her alive. With her among your group, not only do you need the basic necessities but you also need to procure a regular supply of her medication. In a world devasted by a zombie plague, modern medication such as insulin does not come readily available, with the few caches coming in at a steep price. Do you keep her with you and attempt to save what humanity is left, or do you simply abandon her, leaving her to a grim fate?

In my playthrough, I decided to let her tag along with me and did the best of my abilities to keep her regularly supplied with her much-needed medication. I will have to admit that this hit a lot closer to home than I was expecting from a game. I come from a high-risk group of people for diabetes and my family does have a history of the condition. The fact that I got a small glimpse of what I may have to resort to if the collapse of civilization actually occurred, left me in contemplative silence. Not many games I have played have managed to evoke a feeling like this from me, it is both humbling and frightening when I think about it.

The gameplay itself is broken down into familiar action-rpg style mechanics. You have skills ranging from fitness, guns, farming, and construction. Each one can be leveled up by using that particular skill, with successive levels adding more benefits for your continual survival. More fitness for example can allow you to run further and carry heavier loads; better gun skills will allow you to aim more accurately, taking down zombies with ease. The zombies, while not as deadly as the human threats you may come across, are no pushovers themselves. Zombies in Survivalist come in various strengths which have been thoughtfully color coded as virus strains. The virus strains infecting the undead hosts range from a mildly annoying green, stronger blues, dangerous reds, and a rumored instant-death white. With skills you can manage each one with various difficulty, greens offering the least amount of danger and whites the most. Thankfully all the viruses save for the white strain can be combated with syringes called antigens in order to cure yourself of viral bites. These of course will further add to your list of much needed supplies. Getting bit by a zombie will mean death if the required antigen isn’t applied soon, so always carry a syringe or two while out scavenging.

I have to say I love this game. It’s a robust game filled with moral and physical obstacles while giving a grand look on the narrative of humanity and the choices we make. The graphics, while not the best looking, did the job well of playing out a world devoid of modern civilization. Abandoned towns looked eerie and foreboding, the game’s day/night cycle made you welcome the sun. Zombies looked grotesque and dead as they should; the interface offering multiple views and providing vital info when needed. The music in game added the appropriate amount of atmosphere, some more than others I might add. Having an easy, synthesized guitar track guide you along as you explore the vast desert inexplicably changing to a strange electronica tempo just felt jarring. Thankfully the majority of them fit right in and it didn’t distract me too much from the immersion of the game.

The game is so close to being perfect, it has all the aspects I ever wanted in a survival game as well as adding in zombies and a well-defined “living world”. The sheer depth it offers with the narrative separates itself from the other similarly-themed games. With it’s glowing gameplay and mechanics I do see a rather major problem coming up during the endgame, that problem being a gentle downhill slope into repetitiveness. In my playthough one of my endgame goals was to have at least one survivor with maxed out skills. Once you form a basic community and you have people cordoned off and specialized to do certain work, you begin using those members solely for their best skill and rarely anything else. I had one member who was the main builder of the group while I was a skilled marksman and scavenger. I would need to grind construction skills with useless buildings and dwindling supplies just to be able to “win”. Thankfully I have yet to experience this part of the game, perhaps it may not be as bad as I think when I eventually do get to that point. Either way this is a cause of concern for me as using timesinks in order to win does not seem enjoyable in the least.

Despite that, I think that Survivalist is great beyond all expectations and it has become my favorite game among all the titles being offered on XBLIG. It is nearly perfect and it outshines any other title I have played with the survival-horror-sim aspect. If you want a great survival game for a low price, get Survivalist as soon as you can. I guarantee it will keep you busy for hours. While it may not be as eye-opening to others as it was to me, I assure it will give you much food for thought.

Simply amazing.

Overall Rating: ★★★★★ 

What does this score mean?

This game was reviewed using a copy provided by the developer for that purpose.

Other reviews:

Survivalist on theXBLIG

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

3089 is a first-person RPG in which you assume the role of an experimental android, sent down to the strange planet ‘Xax’ to be tested on your performance whilst under the watchful eye of a shady omnipotent figure called the Overlord. You’ll be expected to traverse the sprawling, randomly generated world as you complete quests, gear up your character, and eventually begin building your own base on the planet’s surface.

Explosions on my first day…

You begin your adventure by choosing from either one of the predefined classes – ranging from the typical melee, gunner, and thief choices to more unorthodox options like pilot and leader. Being offered the choice on how you want to play is a nice touch to help accommodate different play styles, but there’s way too little information available on this screen for you to make an informed decision on what some of the classes offer. The Pilot class, for example, offers a large boost to the piloting stat which allows you to drive the various ships found on the planet’s surface. Without picking this option and diving in, there’s no way a new player would know what kind of play style they are committing themselves to.

The planet Xax will be your ultimate test, providing you can survive the hostile inhabitants that roam the surface. While you may attempt to seek refuge inside one of the safe zones scattered throughout the world, your safety isn’t guaranteed as alien ships will frequently wander in and begin to slaughter the friendly inhabitants of your town. Luckily, turrets are commonplace in these safe areas so for the most part you can use the shop and workstation nodes without too much fear.

The nodes found in each town are used to purchase new weapons, armour and special gadgets like grappling hooks and hoverboards – the latter of which is highly recommended as it not only makes you feel badass, but makes travelling the world a whole lot faster. While each node serves a specific function, it can be somewhat frustrating to have to constantly run between the huts that house each node, especially when there’s usually a huge distance to cover between each house. It seems odd that the various shops and functions couldn’t have just been gathered together in one place, effectively cutting out this need to tediously trek between posts just to get your gear sorted.

The crux of activities in 3089 are handled with randomly generated quests that you pick up from the safe zones. Each quest is a mash-up of objectives which usually ask you to perform a number of tasks like diffusing bombs, spying on hostile NPC’s or being a courier for important info discs. While the questing system serves a valid purpose to help generate content for you to earn cash – which you then use to upgrade your character – it’s unfortunate that most of the objectives are repeated after completing several quests. It soon becomes more of a chore to complete these necessary side missions just so your character doesn’t fall behind on its progression for bigger and better equipment.

[Spoiler warning: If you want to avoid any story spoilers, skip past the next paragraph.]

Alongside the side quests is 3089’s main plot, centred on the shady goings on with the Overlord, the omnipotent entity that sent you to the planet in the first place. After jumping through a few hoops, you soon learn that planet Xax was once inhabited by another race of creatures, which were all but killed off. With their planet taken, they hid underground waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike back against their attackers.  By enlisting your help, this hidden faction hopes to use you in their secret war against the Overlord. You’ll have to piece together most of the story via transmissions received whilst completing quests and defeating the various boss monsters at each interval as you progress, but the plot is engaging enough to encourage you to push forward and learn more about this secret war.

The Matrix, only with 100% more robots.

How you fight in 3089 depends entirely on your play style. There’s a full stealth/sneaking system in place to allow those who like to flaunt their melee and backstabbing prowess, whilst still accommodating the big guns and awesome firepower gun nuts will no doubt crave. What’s more, weapons are modular, meaning you can swap and change the individual parts of each weapon with newer pieces, allowing you to freely customize the stats of each weapon, or even add attachments like silencers for extra functionality.

Being the experimental robot killing machine that you are, you also come full equipped with a special device that lets you pause time briefly. This allows you to set up elaborate precision strikes on enemies, or perhaps just escape a tricky situation unscathed. This super power is balanced by making you seek out collectible clocks, scattered throughout the game world which replenish the charge that fuels this ability.

Perhaps I can build a bridge outta here?

Once you’ve progressed far enough into the main plotline of 3089, you’ll gain access to the building tools. This equipment adds a whole new layer to the gameplay, shifting away from the character progression and more towards building structures, turrets and useful utilities. This feature is quite robust, and easy to use for the most part with on screen cues helping you to place and shape your structures any way you wish. It’s a strange concept, as for the most part this feature didn’t feel like it was in any way attached to the main concept of the game. It didn’t seem in any way necessary for me to dive into this aspect, and yet I was drawn to it simply because of the new level of control over the world that it gave me.

3089 is a strange mash-up of genres, and one that is quite common place in gaming today with so many titles opting to meld genres in an attempt to mix up the formula and make something interesting. While this is an impressive feat pulled off by such a small development team (a single fellow by the name of Phr00t), it doesn’t quite hit all of the buttons to make it anything more than a fun sandbox adventure to sink a few hours into. The extra gadgets and the handy building tool help liven up the standard ‘run & gun’ aspects somewhat, but with the tedious quests and unnecessary ferrying between shop nodes it is easy to become annoyed at the feeling of repetition.

Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

What does this score mean?

This game was reviewed using a copy provided by the developer for that purpose.

For more information on 3089, check out the developer’s website or Steam page.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Astrobase Command, a sandbox base-building RPG by Jellyfish Games, is a character-driven throwback to those old 70s style sci-fi ideas of what living in deep space would be like. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and as your crew struggle to make it through the day some will die. Players will be tasked with creating their own species and building up their base any way they see fit using a ‘Lego-style’ module system to slot in various rooms onto the space stations infrastructure.

Alongside the base building elements, Astrobase Command promises some interesting RPG elements as you explore the stars, with procedural content thrown in to help keep content fresh and unexpected. To get a better understanding of what the folks at Jellyfish Games are trying to achieve, we got to throw some questions at them, and here’s what team member Dave Williams had to say.

The Indie Mine: The game appears to have a big focus on the lives and activities of your individual crew members. How deep is the character development system?

Dave: Character development is a major part of the game, so it’s quite deep. The best metaphor is that when I played D&D in my early teens, it was all about min/maxing and getting that character which was completely optimized in his stats and abilities. And this was loads of fun. But what was even more fulfilling was playing D&D in college and as an adult because then it became about the character and solving challenges from the perspective of the character. The stats were there to inform the roleplaying and flesh out one aspect of character development, but they weren’t the be-all-and-end-all.

So Astrobase Command is really based around the premise that the characters living on your station are not just “bags of stats”. but they’re actually people in the same sense that characters in a well-made D&D universe are.

And I think this dovetails nicely with what’s interesting to us about science fiction. While lightsabers and Star Destroyers got me excited about sci-fi, I feel like it’s really the characters that make the genre compelling on a level so deep that fans go to conventions every year, do cosplay, and exhibit an uncanny willingness to wait in line for a day to get tickets for a theatrical release. This isn’t because of the awesome futuristic technology and panoramic shots of spaceships and pew-pew; it’s because of really compelling characters and their stories which take place in a believable sci-fi world (which is where the technology comes in).

So in my mind, science fiction isn’t about technology itself; rather it’s about exploring the conflict inherent in technological development and how characters meet those challenges. So I think if you dig into it, what’s cool about lightsabers is how this archaic technology (by Star Wars standards) embodies the values of ancient wisdom and tradition represented by the Jedi, and how this fundamentally clashes with the Empire’s need for relentless progress. It is against this backdrop that Vader proclaims “don’t be too proud of this technological terror that you’ve constructed, the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.” So what’s interesting is the storytelling opportunities afforded by the technology as a backdrop, not the technology itself.

As a result of this notion, we have a heavy investment in the personality trait system which hooks into our AI story engine in specific ways. There are 280 personality traits (so far) and a given character can have up to four. Each trait has a very long list of properties, affinities, and relationships and it’s actually these more atomic units that the AI story engine interacts with. But we wanted the mechanics of the system to be invisible to the player, because he or she should care about the character as an individual — the sum of its parts. It’s the code that does the work to make it believable, and we’ve put a lot of effort into this.

Our test as to whether the trait system worked was being able to construct our favourite characters from various sci-fi universes and have them behave as you would expect. Part of the iterative process was ensuring they could be represented in this system. Because if the trait system could theoretically use its Lego pieces to construct anyone from a believable Picard to a believable Vader, then you can make anything.

And just to be clear, the player doesn’t get to pick the traits of the crew. They develop over time as an outcome of the AI Story Engine. Personalities of characters emerge from the situations the player puts them in.

Much of the fun is taking these deep characters (who may have some great aspects combined with other aspects that don’t fit your playstyle), and figuring out how to best utilize them on your station. The Star Trek example is Lieutenant Barclay. He was an extremely talented diagnostic engineer, and he might have been the smartest human on the Enterprise — his intelligence was at the genius level, even by Star Trek standards. But he also was completely paranoid, an introvert, and plus he was pretty arrogant. And this is what made him interesting. And plenty of TNG episodes explored how his perceived weaknesses actually became an asset. His paranoia actually saved the day a number of times, as did his arrogance to insist that he was right and everyone else was wrong (which ended up being true).

So the idea’s that there are no intrinsically good/bad traits. It’s simply about the kinds of characters the player trusts and what characters best suit the player’s playstyle.

The Indie Mine: How will the player maintain a steady stream of crew members? Since you plan on having several ‘disastrous scenarios’ like alien infestations and accidental deaths amongst the crew, I’d imagine there must be a way to replace those unfortunate red shirts.

Dave: Yeah, there are a number of ways. The most fundamental method is recruits. One of the jobs on the station is Recruitment Officer, and it’s the job of the character in this position to feed the player a steady stream of recruits. Like HR in real life, better Recruitment Officers yield better candidates. Then it’s up to the player to accept or reject the application. Because Crew Quarters are a module that needs to be built/supported, you don’t necessarily want to accept everyone that comes your way. There definitely a danger of “dead weight” — which is something that can exist in any real-world organization, and indeed in Astrobase Command. Sometimes the player is looking to fill a need or role on the station, and then looking at recruit applications and deciding who the best fit is. Other times, a superstar may come along and the player may feel he’s a good hire even if there’s no immediate job for him.

Other than this, there are instances where travellers, or people you rescue, or defectors from other civilizations, etc, will want to join your Astrobase. The story engine determines these moments, and gives you the opportunity to do something about it.

I think red shirts are ultimately characters that don’t yet have a developed personality, nor has there been any particular investment into their skills. Since there’s no emotional attachment, sure they can go explore the Planet of Death because maybe there’s some needed resources on the surface. What’s interesting is that when those red shirts do something interesting, and maybe get a personality trait of it. Then you care about them. And indeed, this is how things worked on Star Trek.

Chief O’Brien is a good example about this. At the beginning of TNG he was a fill-in character, completely expendable. After awhile, you got to know him and he did some things. Then by DS9 he was a primary character. And you really cared about his story, even though he was still a Petty Officer. That’s kind of how things work in Astrobase Command. You want NCOs you can trust, just like you want Commanders you can trust.

The Indie Mine: How much customisation is available when building your space station?

Dave: We use a module metaphor, so the player essentially crafts modules out of parts and then the module has the cumulative attributes, including the relevant duty stations where the characters physically work. The characters assigned to build the modules also play a part, so better engineers will construct better modules. There are no map sizes or hard limits, so you can basically build whatever you want. You can make a Death Star, you can make a Babylon 5, you can make a DS9 — or whatever mash up fantasy is living in your head. These goals are intrinsic.Well, since Astrobase Command is a lot about sci-fi fantasy fulfilment, it was paramount to us to make it feel like you were actually building a believable station.

It is important that the game doesn’t push the player to building any particular thing. It’s more that every opportunity is a choice, and every choice is a tradeoff. So you’ll want to build the station that best fits your playstyle and accept the good with the bad. So for example, a Death Star has lots of points of failure. Security is a pain. Its energy needs are extremely high. It is a city that has everything, but this is also its weakness. It needs experts in every field imaginable to be fully operational. Whereas a small science station has a lot less points of failure, but the trade-off is inherent in the narrow focus the player gives it. Simply put, it’s about risk v reward but also playstyle.

So a lot of design has gone into these sorts of natural mechanics. One very simple example of a natural tradeoff is power vs. security. Power is distributed through modules which have resistance, so the farther something is from a power reactor the less efficiently it’s sucking that power. Power reactors have a set output, so in general you want to utilize the output by having modules that are nearby. Incidentally, the code works out the most efficient way for the modules to draw power given the distance and resistance of the modules in-between it and the reactor. The way the algorithm works, if you don’t have enough power then rolling brownouts occur naturally as the algorithm walks though the module list and tries to power everything. This was a validation of the process, because it’s what you would expect. We didn’t code it deliberately, but rather it’s a natural result that emerged from a sensible way to represent station power.

In terms of trade-offs, being extremely power-efficient trends towards a “highly connected” base, which makes sense in real-world terms. But this is the opposite of what you want for a very secure station. Security works by having checkpoints take up some of a module space, and security personnel will work out routes. Super efficient security means having a tubular (or ring-like) station, with choke-points where you can trap enemies. Because it’s a lot easier to sweep an area with just a few access points. So something that’s very efficient for power ends up being very inefficient for security, and vice-versa simply due to a natural outcome of module connectivity. That’s just one example.

The Indie Mine: You say the game features real-time squad-based combat in some situations, so how will the battles play out?

Dave: I could say that battles play out a bit like a cross between Rome: Total War and tabletop miniature games, but in a 3D space. But this is highly dependent on the conflict size.

Unlike Rome: Total War (or RTS games in general) where each unit is identical to others of its type, in Astrobase Command every unit is unique because it is a character. The player creates groups (could be squad sized, or regiment sized) and gives orders at the group level.  For small conflicts, the player is able to really take a hands-on approach and direct every movement precisely. For large conflicts, there’s too much going on for the player to micromanage every small action, and he’ll need to give high-level objectives to Commanders on the ground. The AI will execute those orders using the character personalities. So it’s about promoting Commanders you trust.

A counter-analogy I like to use is Starcraft. I loved Starcraft, but I could never compete at the high levels of play because it ultimately was about clicks-per-minute which required a lot of practice and a huge investment. And I felt like to be able to compete I would have to lessen my enjoyment of the game, and invest a lot of time doing that. Astrobase Command isn’t about how fast you can click — you have Commanders to do this for you, if you’ve cultivated them.

And this means the game scales up quite well. In the early game, where you don’t have a lot of characters and none of them are particularly well-developed leaders yet, you’ll be fighting small engagements and directing every squad yourself in the moment-to-moment gameplay. As you progress and the battles get larger, you’ll still probably focus on one area of the battle where you really want to take personal control, but for other areas where you can’t give your undivided attention you’ll put characters in charge and give them an objective which might be “assault this position” or “take this hill” or “hold my flank” or “bombard their capital ships to distract fire away from the fighters” and the AI will fulfil those orders, to the best of the ability and personality of the Commanders you’ve assigned. This is how we plan to support huge fleet battles and armies, without requiring the character move every unit by hand.

The Indie Mine: Astrobase Command boasts a “robust AI-generated storytelling system”. How will the game keep things fresh and exciting for the player?

Dave: I think one of the weaknesses of rogue-like games is that they often play like a series of disconnected events, where things happen randomly. We feel like that invalidates the concept of meaningful choice. Because a big part of player choice is having outcomes which are a consequence of player action.

The goal in Astrobase Command is to have events which occur in the game world that are a direct result of the actions taken by the player, and by the player’s crew. And that it makes sense when compared to the internal logic used for sci-fi shows. Because that’s the metric: “Could this string of in-game events be a Star Trek episode, and over time when story arcs emerge does it start to look like a season?”

So the idea is that we give the player a maximum possibility space, and ensure the game responds appropriately to his actions within a maximal set of reactions. This in turn prompts the player to make new choices to respond to the new situations. Then, it will always be fresh.

The Indie Mine: What’s the craziest moment you’ve seen when making the game?

Dave: I think being indie is necessarily filled with crazy moments. Obviously, Astrobase Command is very much a technology and systems driven game at its core. And the team composition reflects that, but it also means we won’t have an artist until after the Kickstarter. But part of doing a Kickstarter means showing gameplay, and we got to a point where we needed in-game assets just to proceed. We were like “who has the most 3d Studio Max experience?” and Adam our primary coder had opened it like once, two years ago. He had the most experience, so he’s now also our 3d modeller. We call it our “Inglourious Basterds moment.” Banjerrrno!

If you want to know more  about Astrobase Command, check out their Kickstarter campaign (In which 30 Canadian dollars will net you access to the beta when it’s released) and the game’s official website.

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.