The Survivalists Review (Steam)

A living world full of surprises, secrets, and danger awaits in The Survivalists, an adventure-filled survival sandbox set in The Escapists universe. Explore, build, craft, and even train monkeys with up to three friends in a desperate bid to survive. Have you got what it takes to be a Survivalist?

Pros:

• Modern pixel art graphics.
• Download size.
• Steam achievements.
• Controller support.
• Graphics-fullscreen, resolution, v-sync.
• Dyslexia assist option.
• How to play section. Text-based.
• 10 save slots.
• Tutorial prompts-on/off.
• Host/search games.
• Survival gameplay.
• Character customization-skin color, body type, hairstyle, accessories, and clothing colors.
• Building-use the blueprint to place the item then collect the materials for it to have it built. Blueprint mode turns the game world into graph paper to help with placement.
• Map uncovers as you play and you can place custom markers.
• Day/night cycle with loads of enemies and monsters spawning at night.
• Bed-save or sleep point.
• Crafting recipes–as you craft, you unlock new recipes.
• Treasure maps-show a spot and location with a brief clue.
• Health bar that depletes over time but eating will regain your health.
• Stamina bar-used for running and rolling.
• Lore-discovered by picking up notes.
• Death-you drop everything.
• Ship to buy/sell treasure maps, items, keys, and do tasks for rewards. This ship shop will travel around the map and be in different places.
• Monkeys-you can have these guys do tasks for you like cutting down materials, crafting, or even fighting. It uses a clever system whereby they watch and learn from you.
• Monkeys will earn exp and get better at tasks.
• A constant flow of tips, lore, and treasure maps.
• Vaults and dungeons are separate little instances with heavy combat and puzzles to solve.
• Pure productivity killer.
• Time just flies by.
• Teleporters-craft and use as fast travel.
• Boats-craft so you can explore other islands.
• Play how you want.
• Treasure maps also start off like tutorial quests to prepare you.
• Multi tool-what you use to build items once the recipe and materials are collected. You can also give this to a monkey for them to do it for you.
• Many items to build including traps for animals, boats, training dummies, and weapons, and tools.
• Clear timers for building and the health or durability of an object.
• Each tool has a charge up an attack that does an area of effect.
• Telescope-use to scan the map and uncover parts of it.
• Mysterious chest-huge chest storage but you can also use it to carry items between online games.

Cons:

• Cold opening section.
• No way to turn off the death penalty.
• Constant difficulty spikes.
• A lot of walking back to where you died.
• Rough initial start due to small storage and working out what icons mean and do.
• Combat is messy and hard to follow.
• The camera angle makes looking around the land tricky.
• Felt like I had to just craft everything at least once just to advance the craft/blueprint tables so I could get to the good stuff.
• It gets straight forward but every now and then training monkeys doesn’t always work.
• Slow-paced.
• Feels like the day/night cycle is short.
• Needlessly awkward boat controls.
• The hunger meter goes down fast and basic food is pointless as it does so little.
• No quick save so you have to have a bed in order to save your game.