Developer: CCCP
Publisher: Plug in Digital
Rrp: £10.99 (Steam) and £10.99 (Humblebundle)
Released: 27th August 2015
Available on: Steam and Humblebundle
Played Using: Mouse and Keyboard
A few days ago you were flying home. Now you’re stuck here, on this beautiful and terrible island. Every day is a struggle and you can’t be certain if you can trust everyone around you. Sure everyone says they’ll help but when things get desperate and it becomes a choice between their safety and your survival which side will they pick? To make matters worse the island itself seems to be hiding something…
I think this game fits the term ‘genre-blending’ quite nicely, one part survival management, one part relationship manager and one part mystery story. Of course, you’ll spend the majority of the game on the survival management part because, well, it’s kind of hard to solve a mystery or manage a relationship when you’re all dead.
So, the plane has crashed and you’re all stranded on this island leaving you with no other choice but to try and survive. To do this you’ll need to move characters to slots around the camp to perform tasks while bearing ion mind that certain characters are more suited to particular jobs.
There are many characters to choose from all of which have specific abilities and traits that can be seen on the information screen. Use this information to the best of your ability to get the most out of a character and hopefully choose the right person for each job.
Any action that a character performs has an affect on their states which are; hunger, sickness, injury, fatigue and depression. Each state is represented by a bar and if any of the bars becomes full that character dies. Almost all actions increase fatigue and one other state with exception of talking around the campfire and sleeping. You can also use special items that will lower certain states too, these tend to be costly to make but can, at times, be found when you explore the island although its best not to rely on that.
Performing an action also can cause a characters stats to increase adding the occasional point of constitution here or intellect there.
The campfire isn’t solely there to lower your characters depression state, it also can influence the dialogue that you get in the cutscenes at the end of each day. As well as that, as your characters get to know one another better they start to reveal their traits to one each other which allows you to learn how to use them more efficiently.
Some characters just don’t get on with others and can bring the whole group down. I’m sure we all know at least one person who’s like that. Of course, it all depends on the characters mental state and the events of the day. If all went well they might be a positive influence on the group.
Inevitably day turns to night and your survivors gather around the campfire. It’s at this time that you get to see the dialogue that occurs between the characters and when you can ration out who gets food and water. To make matters more difficult many foods are perishable and can degrade becoming less effective against hunger (or in a worse case scenario making them sick).
Eventually finding salvage to survive on is going to mean leaving the camp and that involves exploring the island. Each newly discovered area on the island may bring up a new event. These events, where and when they appear, are randomised at the start of each new game.
Most actions performed when your away from the camp make your character go through a stealth check. If the character passes the check nothing happens, fail and you get attacked by some beast causing the character injury. This means it becomes a question of using a character with high stealth but low scavenge (for example) or a low stealth with a high scavenge.
But this isn’t a game of simply surviving, there are mysteries to be solved too, at least there are if you want to actually complete the game. Sadly I can’t tell you much about the story, partially because of not wishing to spoil it and partially due to the fact that I never got far enough to really work out the full scope of the plot.
Make no mistake this is a difficult game, every action requires thought and if taken haphazardly can very easily spell the end for your group.
Aesthetically speaking the game has a kind of… postcard feel to it. Almost as if someone traced over a postcard and then coloured in that trace to use as a background. As you scroll around the camp you notice that parts of the scenery, such as places you can put your character to perform an action, have a ‘popped out’ look to them. I have to say its certainly a different aesthetic and it works well with the way the game works, being not to busy or so flashy that it looks out of place.
This is a game that I have trouble recommending. It’s not that it isn’t good, it certainly is, but I feel that the difficulty curve is too steep for most people. If you want a challenge and don’t mind a lot of relationship management in your game then this may just be perfect for you.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
