You wake up in a medical cell, dripping with cryogenic fluid, and immediately have to decide how to handle a vicious monster coming down the hallway. If you're Strong, you can grapple with it and win. If you're Athletic, you can leap out the window safely. If you're a Mechanic, you can force the door to jam shut...
Once you get out, you start looking for ways to stay warm, stay fed, and stay hydrated - while looking for clues about who you are and what's going on. You have a set number of actions per turn, determined by several aspects of your condition; from 0.0 (barefoot, drunk, bleeding, starving, blind, hypothermic, and dehydrated) to 5.0 (healthy, warm, well-fed, hydrated, wearing shoes, and with good visibility). You spend these action points crafting, moving, hiding, searching, clearing tracks, resting, etc.
Pros:
- Complication. I love games with a lot to learn and a lot of different angles. For instance, creating the essential of fire can be done several ways. First, use sunlight focused through a glass object on dried twigs and sticks to start a fire - and then feed the fire each turn to keep it alive through the night. Second, if you took the "Trapping" skill, you're a survivalist that can rub two sticks together over a bed of dried twigs to start a fire any time you want, day or night. Third, you found a lighter and life is simplified until it wears down.
- Randomness. Some people hate being subjected to RNG whims, but I think it means a lot of different scenarios. The world is random, the loot is random, the encounters are random, and combat is random. What's not random is how you handle the situations and what you do to try and rig the game in your favor.
- Crafting. Lots of things in the game can be disassembled into component parts - like a shirt torn into rags and string. You use somewhat logical combinations to make new items - like a long branch, the Ranged skill, string, and heat put together to make a rudimentary bow. A shard of glass, a string, three pieces of torn paper, the Ranged skill, and a medium stick make a crude broadhead arrow. To make a sling it just takes a rag and a couple pieces of string, and then you load it with either 2 large rocks (for a couple big hits) or 20 small pebbles (for a lot of smaller hits and a lot of chances to hit).
- Challenge. It's hard to survive, and you'll die a lot. I like the challenge of it, and of searching the wastes for the items I need to survive. I've been enjoying learning from my mistakes and trying to fit into the world.
- Flash Player. For some reason, the developer used Flash to make this, and you have to 'authorize' the game to save your progress the first time you try it. This also means it responds poorly to hitting "Escape" - which kicks you out of Full Screen and you have to reset it again from the menu (this happens to me too frequently). Missing, also, are any real video options aside from setting aspect ratio and scaling.
- Menu Obscura. The game interactions can be frustrating. For example, you can't end your turn while you're looking at your inventory - you need to be looking at the overworld map first. You can't "back out" of interactions without "using" the "step back" command in the interactions selection.
- Inventory Madness. You need to hoard and organize everything you find in order to thrive in the wasteland. Sure, you can just dump it pell-mell into a camp and ignore sorting it, but you'll never find your lighter in that mess and have no idea how much food you really have or which chunks of cooked meat are about to go bad so you can eat them first. This means a lot of time spent just cleaning and organizing inventory space. It works to my OCD and I find it relaxing in a strange way, but I can imagine a lot of people would find it annoying.
- Randomness. Randomness in this game is a strength and a weakness. It's really frustrating to spend hours creating a sustainable and well-outfitted character, only to have them wiped out in seconds by a randomly spawned scavenger with a rifle or a pack of wild dogs you just can't get away from. There may be ways to help mitigate these risks, but it sucks to get a pile of great stuff and then just lose it all because the RNG made you fall over while trying to run away.
- Saving. There's no "good" way to save your game. To save, you have to Save & Quit - otherwise, it's unsaved. Closing the game doesn't save. Saving & Quitting just to save is a nuisance - so I play like it's a Rogue-like and if I die, I die. I don't know if the game kills my saves or not when I die, but I do know that it feels wrong to try and quit the game every 20 minutes just to save it. I suppose you could avoid losing everything by going back to a previous save - but then you're not playing the game in Ironman mode as it seems to be intended.
Combat is text-based and RNG-driven. When you encounter anything, every element of the encounter is randomized. From how far apart you start to how bad the terrain is. If you start far apart, it's easier to run - but closing to melee distance takes turn after turn after turn of moving forward. Few encounters start 25 meters apart. Most start 8-10 meters apart. Some start with you right on top of the hostile. Each turn, you select an action from a list based on your skills and situation. When you perform your action, the RNG decides your fate based on whatever maths it has to make the decision. You might fall over just trying to walk forward 1 meter, leaving yourself open to attack. You might critically hit with a thrown rock, knocking someone out at 8 meters and then stumble over your own feet while you try and run in to finish them off, giving them time to get up and fight back.
The developer has gone on record as saying the objective in combat isn't to just win the fight, but to avoid getting hit. Getting hit can cripple you and lead to your ultimate demise if you loose too much blood or just can't function in the fight anymore. For a game where your objective is to not get hit, combat is frequently unavoidable and generally why you die.
If you have the Botany skill, you can survive on a diet of scavenged berries and mushrooms and try to avoid combat as much as possible. If you don't have Botany, combat is essential for survival so you can collect meat for cooking and consumption in order to avoid starvation. I've found chips, saltines, twinkies, and ketchup packets while scavenging - but not near enough to live on. You also never, ever eat anything but blueberries if you don't have Botany - red & white berries can be poisonous, as can mushrooms; you have no way of knowing which is which without the skill.
Skills:
Character creation is simple and you'll do it a lot. Essentially, you start with 15 character points and allot them for skills. You can buy negative skills to give yourself more points to work with, but at the cost of some element of your survival - and these are mutually exclusive with their opposing skill. I have yet to make any character that felt like they had it all - there's always a drawback or something you can't do.
- Strong (6 points): Carry 50 kilos more, hit harder in combat, can create cover in combat. The opposing skill is Feeble (-4 points), and it reduces carry weight and damage.
- Melee (4 points): Better melee hit chances, ability to trip foes, better melee defense, better damage. Can make some advanced melee weapons (spears). Pairs well with Strong for maximum melee prowess.
- Ranged (4 points): Better ranged hit chances, can make some advanced ranged weapons (bows, spears, arrows).
- Eagle Eye (2 points): See 1 extra 'hex' on the overworld grid (great for spying hostiles before they see you), useful in some scavenging scenarios. The opposing skill is Myopic (-1 point) and it limits your visual range and ability to find hidden enemies in combat.
- Tough (4 points): Heartier - more health, better immune system, less likely to get infections. The opposing skill is Frail (-4 points) and it means taking more damage, getting sick easier, and more likely to get infections.
- Medic (4 points): Heal faster, less likely to get infections and illnesses, more information available on injuries. Can see how effective your camp is in terms of health regeneration.
- Botanist (4 points): Find berries and mushrooms in the wild and know which are safe to each and which aren't. A very convenient way to stay alive without fighting all the time.
- Metabolism (2 points): Require less food & water, heal faster. The opposing is Metabilism (-2 points) to require more food and water while healing slower.
- Hiding (2 points): Hiding is more effective. Can see how well hidden your camp is.
- Tracking (1 Point): Tracks in the overworld map are more easily spotted, and you can see older ones. Removing your own tracks is 90% effective instead of 50%. Apparently a lot of enemies hunt for you by your tracks & scent.
- Trapping ( 4 points): Start fires without sunlight or lighters, get more meat and pelts from killed animals, craft snares, ability to cure meat so it lasts twice as long as cooking it.
- Hacking (2 points): Break into electronics for valuable data. Must have the right hacking tools and power for electronics.
- Lockpick (3 points): Make and use lockpicks to bypass security measures.
- Insomniac (-1 Point): Getting to sleep is harder, staying asleep is harder, sleep gives less rest. I've read this is less of an issue if you're completely exhausted (up for 2 days) and then sleep.
- Athletic (3 Points): Running takes less energy, less likely to fall over in combat while moving, run faster in combat. The opposing skill is Enervated (-2 points) to fatigue faster and need more rest.
- Electrician (1 Point): Able to interact with electronic devices (not computers & phones, but electric panels, lighting, etc).
- Mechanic (3 points): Able to interact with mechanical devices, add safety to searches at the cost of some loot chance, can build some additional "vehicles" (objects used to tow or store loot - like shopping carts and sleds)
All in all, while the game has flaws I find myself enjoying it for the complexity and challenge. It's certainly not for everyone, though.
*Edit: I've been playing for a few evenings now and still enjoying it, but not because I'm winning. I can't explain it... I just feel compelled to keep starting over every time I die and roll up a new character. My wife wonders why I bother when I just end up dying over and over.
**Edit: My longest play time so far is just over 17 days, and the character visited MegaDetroit and a tribal enclave. I died due to massive infection despite having worked out other ways to survive. Botany is a -key- skill, as it not only allows you to see which berries and mushrooms are poisonous (thus being able to avoid fighting for meat), but you can combine water & twigs to make a Tannin tea, which has antibiotic properties. While I knew the tea was special, I didn't know I could make it myself - and I had no idea I had to wash wounds out before bandaging them. As a result, my Strong/Botany/Hacking/Hiding/Electrician died from repeated infections through cuts and scrapes I wasn't properly treating. I didn't even think that I needed to pour clean water, tea, or whiskey over a wound before bandaging it with clean rags - I've been playing for days without that knowledge.
