Survival: Fountain of Youth Preview (Steam Early Access)

by Jim Smale · Published May 5, 2023 · Updated May 4, 2023

For our Survival: Fountain of Youth Preview, we check out a challenging single-player open-world survival game set on the Caribbean islands. Survive as a shipwrecked 16th-century explorer, craft tools and shelter, and uncover the secrets of an ancient civilization and your fate.

Survival: Fountain of Youth Preview Pros:

Decent graphics.
27.18GB download size.
Steam achievements.
Full controller support.
Graphics settings – resolution, fullscreen, v-sync, fps cap, graphics preset, anti-aliasing, texture resolution, anisotropic filtering, shadow quality, volumetric lighting, HBAO, and shadow distance slider.
Controller settings +Invert axis and sensitivity sliders, rumble and aim assist.
Mouse and keyboard settings – Invert axis and sensitivity sliders rebind controls, and toggles.
Four save slots.
Game setup – tutorials and intro, max number of faints (unlimited/limited/one) and difficulty (very easy/easy/normal/hard/very hard) which affects vitals drain, damage from animals, negative effects, and the chance of curing disease.
Survival gameplay.
In-game cutscenes.
You can skip the cutscenes and interactions.
First-person view.
Hack and slash combat.
In the beginning, you can only take four items from a choice of like twelve.
Unlock blueprints as you pick up items and craft new ones.
The tutorial is a list of tasks to make the necessities.
Day/night cycle.
Different weather effects with each affecting your health and the success rate of things like you can’t build a fire in the rain unless you have a cover.
Trees and other places can be harvested or cut down for resources.
Earn EXP and skill points by doing tasks a lot like cooking X amount gives you a perk and exp, but craft particular items and get perk points.
You get a success rate before attempting an action like cooking or building as it factors in the elements.
Vitals such as tiredness, water, and food all have meters that have to be monitored and topped up.
Helpful hints in the menu like when it’s dark it says what you can do to fix this or if you are tired it says what to do.

Survival: Fountain of Youth Preview Cons:

Cannot rebind controls for the controller.
Small text.
The combat is very mashy and not very fluid.
No hotbar.
The narration volume is really low.
The key bindings only show the keyboard and not the controller.
Everything is menus and bars. Cut down a tree? It’s a loading bar, build something it’s a loading bar. You don’t see the actual action it’s just a progress/loading bar.
Nothing immediately jumps out at being unique in this game.
The aiming and hitting of thrown/projected weapons is terrible and is even worse with aim assist.
They do lock better aiming away in a perk system but even then it’s still bad.
The day and night cycle is really long.
A lot of balancing from the vitals to the general health of your character and it gets very tedious.
You cannot just turn the vitals part off.
A lot of slowdown especially when it’s raining.

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