General Feedback after 75 days.

[Jra]

To start, this is a wonderful game. The sound is excellent (good job sound guy) and the whole premise and environment are engaging. The endeavor is very realistic, as a primary care provider I can say that you have handled calorie burn, need for water, and illness in simplified, but still meaningful and accurate ways.

Note for the haters: For those people who think any form of criticism means the criticizer hates the thing, please grow up. It is precisely because the game is so good I even bothered to play it long enough to have these insights and care enough to share them.

In my current game I have survived 75 days and have experienced every game mechanic and environment I know about, including desolation point. I did research for this so I don’t think I missed anything the game has to offer. If I did then sorry, I did try to experience everything before speaking. All that said what follow are my observations of the game which are critical.

Up to day ~50, the game has a great tension. Inside is safe and warm but there aren’t very many resources in each interior. Outside is cold and dangerous. You can become lost, eaten, or frozen. There is a balance between traveling from place to place looking for resources and needing to be warm and protected. There is also lots of exploration to do with the 4 areas and this captures attention too. I want to go out to see the world even if I don’t strictly need to be out. At first I would spend whole days and parts of the night outside from either necessity or curiosity. The balance isn’t perfect but it is close and I think you’ll get there.

I'm sure more experienced players would hit this wall even sooner.

After day 50? The tension is mostly gone. Unless I really screw up I’m not dying until I consume every resource on the map, likely only limited by scrap metal and cloth for repairing. I don’t have to go out every day anymore and when I do I have good clothes and tools now. The wildlife is less cary and the environment isn’t scary at all. I’ve seen everything there is to see by that point as well (even got the achievement).

Now I am at about day 75 (my first time that far) and I have realized that I can survive for an unbelievably long time now. I have at my disposal weeks worth of kCals and liters of water and am still in possession of means to get more of each. I don’t need fire much anymore but I also have a good store of combustibles. I am currently passing time on my way to the day 200 achievement by sleeping 12 hours, drinking water, then sleeping 12 more hours and eating and drinking water. That is it really, the tension is gone. It isn’t fun anymore and if I weren’t going for the achievement I likely would have stopped playing totally. One more playthrough to get pacifist and silent hunter and I am done with the game except story mode, which I have heard is estimated at only 5-6 hours in length.

Aside: I know sleeping all day is hokey, but there is no other way to pass time quickly and I don’t want to just stare at a screen until my character is sleepy. Thanks for giving me the option to sleep even when I am not tired, but a better solution would be to give me something to do while I am awake.

In short the game needs more gameplay for the mid to late game.

On the simple end the character could find a deck of cards, a chess board (or better yet make one), or something else. Then I could fast forward time doing something besides sleeping. Or let me actually have him read books by the fire in a chair. I found at least 8 books but I just burned them because there was no apparent use for them otherwise. Maybe they could increase your skills or contain your crafting recipes?

On the not fast forwarding end the craftable items are great and I used up a few days of gameplay making them, not to mention finding the materials and curing them. I would like to see more, from the big (my own log cabin and furniture) to the small (basic recipes for more complex meals, other weapons, more clothes, wooden friend, whatever). More things to do that reward me for doing them, like the clothes and bow.

If I want I can just continue sleeping the days away to an arbitrary goal, but I would rather have meaningful gameplay to do that makes me want to keep playing to discover it. More things that give me an advantage over the environment and more things that help me take ownership of my situation.

Lastly, I’d like to see the seasons change. At day 75 it is still blizzards, piles of snow, and very cold days. I crashed in the middle of winter unprepared for the weather and 2.5 months later it is still the middle of winter? What if I make it 300 days? Would it still be the middle of winter nearly a whole year later? How are the animals and plants surviving? Even in northern BC this ends at some point. Anywhere you could have a farm and abundant wildlife has to have spring, summer, fall, even if they are shorter than I am used to in the northern US.

This might solve the issue with later gameplay being very repetitive as well. Having the seasons pass could present new challenges and opportunities for the player. New places to explore now that things aren’t frozen, new foods and wildlife, etc. Scarier river crossings, is it too deep and fast, is the ice still thick enough, should I just go around until I find a bridge, could I make my own bridge?

Then winter could have less wildlife available to you (as it should) and then the coming of spring means something. At first the player survives off scavenged food found, ice fishing, and carrion while exploring his surroundings for resources and shelter. Once all that food is gone spring brings plants and more wildlife with its own variety of bad weather and dangers. Heating is less important, but now you can’t just dig snow out of the front yard for water.

Summer can get warm, food spoils faster, and more fresh food and wildlife. Perhaps some rudimentary farming. I noticed the farm had an orchard, perhaps we could plant some wild tubers and tend the trees? Hauling water and farming could take time but reward the player with more sure food supply that is less dangerous. Or the player could attempt to continue with the nomadic hunting and trapping lifestyle with trips into the mountains for fresh game.

Fall – Peak harvest time – how will you prepare for the winter that is coming? You have no refrigeration or electric heat and now there are no packets of food just lying around waiting for you to discover, like the first winter. You’ll have to prepare yourself before the freeze. Gather firewood, dry fruits and meats, gather tubers etc. this keeps the tension between the player and the environment at a natural ebb and flow.

Preserving food leads me to a side point – give us the ability to dig below the frost line and use that hole as a refrigerator too keep food fresh longer. A shovel, pickaxe, to do it quick and a slower time to do it with knife, prybar, hatchet, impossible to do with hands alone.

This all makes sense unless you are intending for your disaster scenario to wipe out all humans in an insane ice age. If that is your intention though, why do the current wildlife seem to be just fine with perpetual winter? 75 days hasn’t seen a drop off in their numbers.

Those are my major concerns at this point. It certainly isn’t everything but this is also over 1,000 words now. I want more things to do after the initial grind that are still rewarding in a gameplay sense. I’d like to see the seasons change as well. I think these two things actually complement each other.

Thank you for a great game. No matter what you do I have had fun and I do want more.