This was an unexpected discovery.
I was having a brief look down the Steam Store page, wondering if there was anything good for under $10, when in the "New and Trending" list was something I hadn't seen before, or heard of.
The tags were: survival, crafting, building and roguelike.
The reviews were: overwhelmingly positive.
The price: free?
I was intrigued and downloaded the 300mb game straight away. Which was awkward because I was in the middle of cooking dinner and I very soon realised that there was no pause option in the game.
This game has been out for nine days as of me writing this and has over 20,000 positive reviews. And I'll admit: I really don't know how. Did it have a buttload of marketing I never saw? Did a popular streamer happen to see it and all of his thralls decided to jump on in?
I don't have a clue!
What I do know is the game is very, very basic. And the only explanation I can find for the thousands of positive reviews in such a short time-frame, after a very brief Google, is that the game was created by a youtuber with 2.4 million subscribers, and I guess they are all conditioned to love him and whatever he creates.
It's really not that good.
But it's free, and isn't broken. So. That's good enough?
It's a rogue-like, so you're going to be dying a lot.
Unfortunately it's not a rogue-like like every other rogue-like. In most other rogue-likes there are benefits to dying. In this... there's nothing.
You start a randomly generated game, you're surrounded by nature, trees, rocks, a few pre-built structures, treasure chests all over the place, most of which you can only open once you have gold.
You need to eat.
There are apples, cows for meat, and mushrooms, a lot of mushrooms of many colours. Red ones heal you. You need to cook meat or it does zilch when trying to fill your hunger bar. Pretty standard.
You need to craft pickaxes, axes, furnaces, workbenches, buildings, etc. You loot and craft all day, and defend yourself against never-ending enemies all night.
And... that's it.
You must survive.
My first impressions of this game are basically:
There is no pause in the game. Soooo. 🤷♀
By the looks of things, the game's great draw is the multiplayer. But I'm really not sure if it can hook me so much that I'd bother my partner and friends with it.
I can see the appeal for the younger gamers though.
I'm always on the lookout for games that could appeal to him, and this could just be one to add to the Kid List.
If you have a child who likes a couple of games, this could be a good one for them. But for me... and likely for most other adults... it's a hard pass.
All screenshots in this post are courtesy of me, 
