Survival Games 1. - Rust (PC, MacOSX - 2013)

I'm a big fan of survival games. They give you freedom and the illusion of free will. The illusion, because you still have to play within the borders created by the game programmers, still the illusion could work really well and suck you in for countless hours.

I already wrote about Stranded II and Starbound, both great survival games but since then I've realized that there are many more out there. I think there must be a connection between the revival of zombie movies and tv series, and the popularity of survival video games.

So let me write about a few more survival games I had the chance to try out in last couple of month. I plan to write about DayZ, The Stomping Land, The Forest, but first let me share a few words about RUST.

Rust is an fps survival game where you have to gather stuff, hunt animals, craft, study, explore. The world of Rust is huge, there's no map or compass, so you have to find your own way, check the sun and mountains for directions, this gives an extra level of realism to it because even if you know the map well it's still pretty easy to get lost.

You can farm rocks for ore, chop wood, hunt animals for fat, cloth, meat, leather. You can build your own shack or house, if you have enough material you can build a fortress. On the map you can find little cities, factories, abandoned buildings - most of these places have spawn points where you can find important loot, bullets, blueprints, guns even, but most of these places have radiation, so you will need protective clothing or rad pills to spend enough time there. Oh blueprints, you need them to be able to craft the more advanced stuff, but you can also research with research kits and learn how to craft something that way. 

Basically the world of Rust is not really dangerous if you watch out for animals (bears, wolves) and the heavily radiated zones. The fun comes in with multiplayer and you want multiplayer, because gathering can be fun for a while, but what's gonna happen when you have the biggest fortress and no one to protect it from? Boredom.

There are around 4-5000 servers at the moment, some of them are heavily populated ( up to 200 players per map ), others are almost empty. In Rust if you join a server you will have a character on that server, you can build stuff, gather resources, study blueprints but you can't take your stuff / knowledge to a different server, if you choose a different one you will have to start from zero.

If you are new to Rust I suggest you to start on a less populated server, preferably a friendly or noob server, so you won't get killed in the first 5 minutes. What am I talking about? You will probably get killed in the first few minutes, but that's Rust for you. The best is to find some buddies to play the game with, alone it's really hard, especially if you have to stand up against 3-4 bandits raiding your house and loosing all your stuff after gathering it four hours can be really painful trust me.

After many hours of gameplay I have finally found a server where most of the people are friendly, we have a village and events from time to time, and the best times are when there are bandits on the server and everybody works together to protect our land. The game itself is not very complicated, the basic gameplay can be exhausted after 15-20 hours but the fun starts when you find a good community with cool people.

The game is still in early access so a lot of things will change. I keep checking the developer's blog and they are basically rebuilding the game, so the next Rust is coming and it's going to be ever better. Can't wait.

Rust Devblog:
http://playrust.com/

StarBound (PC - 2013)

First, there was Minecraft which revolutionized the sandbox / openworld / survivor gaming style, added elements like crafting, block based graphics and a complete „geo-mode” so you can build or destroy anything you want. This gave the game a great advantage and gamers a whole new perspective to look at a game and to play.

Countless clones arrived, the designers started to add rpg or strategy elements and some really nice games got developed, but the next big step in my opinion was Terraria, a really beautiful and deep experience. Visually it was a step back some might think, but for the type of genre it think 2D is more than enough and since I'm sucker for retro games it made it even more interesting for me.

I'm sure some of the designers of Terraria must have gotten involved with the development of StarBound because structually and visually it's a very similar game, still it manages to be very different and a million times bigger than Terraria was.

You can handle the universe of StarBound like your own, you can explore planets, mine for precious metals or minerals, craft, create mini civilizations, hunt animals, grow vegetables, reach asteroids or moons, different galaxies, kill bosses and most important of all, survive.  

You have to be careful with food and the temperature. Cold is a real enemy, during the night you have to find a fire to keep you warm and certain planets or moons are not even explorable until you don't get some really warm clothes because you freeze almost instantly.

It's really an amazing game, worth trying it out, but you have to be careful, it can make you sit in front of your monitor for days!

Stranded II (PC - 2008)

If you ever been fantasising about being Robinson Crusoe than this is the game for you. Developed by Unreal Software - but basically a one man project - Stranded II is not a very fancy game, but it doesn't have to be. You are shipwrecked on an island somewhere in the middle of the ocean, your goal is to survive, in order to do that you can hunt, craft, build. You will have to build a hut for yourself, so you can sleep in a dry place, you will need fire, tools, food, medicine and loads of luck to be able to survive in this harsh world.

The game itself is similar to Minecraft, it's not voxel based but you can still mine, dig, chop down trees to collect wood, build different structures. You have a great variety of things to craft and it's really crucial that you take care of your health, because fixing a broken leg, an open wood or poisoning isn't that easy at all if you don't have the right materials. 

The game has a story and a sandbox mode. In the story mode you can visit several islands, complete missions, meet strange characters and of course survive. In the sandbox mode you can choose the size and the type of the island, and start being a cast away without any particular goal apart from being alive. The game is really fun and can entertain you for many hours, it's really atmospheric, the simulation is working and it also has some laugh out loud moments like setting a turtle on fire and watch it being cooked while it's still walking around.

The game is free and very small, it will run on almost any computer, you don't need a high capacity machine in order to run it. As of 2012 the developer started to work on Stranded III so the saga continues. Check out the developers website, download the game:

http://www.strandedonline.de/