Samutale is currently running a free trial on their website: https://www.samutale.com/ to try out the game.
The same is a sandbox survival type mmo that is similar to the old version of tree of life. Fans of that will probably enjoy this. It also has a samurai type setting.
You can build actual houses like archeage that one can go inside and place furnishings in. As well as build walls and other objects around their place.
You can tame mounts, animals, farm, gather, craft, hunt and various other type of things similar to games of this nature.
Grounded by Obsidian Entertainment has officially launched into early access with a decent pricetag of 30usd. This game is set in the genre of survival sandbox and uses xbox services for its multiplayer.
Many “issues” negative reviewers have complained about are simply silly. Co op works and you simply need to use the same login you do for windows. The game launches fine from steam.
The current main story quest in the game is currently rather short, however, there is tons of things to do as it is a survival game. Tons of other quests, things to explore and find, things to learn to craft as well as an interesting building system.
The setting and world and graphics of the game are incredible and really make you feel like you are shrunk down and wandering around a backyard at the size of a bug. The way you chop down grass, find rocks, use insect parts as well as the basic other things is just really well done.
There are no levels in the game and instead you use a research device to unlock new recipes by bringing things you find to it. You can also get new ideas for recipes by crafting or finding things.
The building is interesting and I can see some crazy bases being built with the system they have. It is similar to other games like the forest or green hell in how it is done.
The enemy ai does have a few bugs to work out, but for instance if you kill enough ants a giant force of ants will come for you. This is the type of AI I do enjoy in survival games.
While the price tag for many at 30usd is steep for an ea game and I do understand the why, but the game itself is currently loaded with fun for survival genre fans with a story added on as a bonus.
Atlas continues to betray its user base even a year and a half later. They released a “new map” update of 74 mbs.. Yes an entire new map that is so changed it was only 74 mbs. I think warcraft 3 had bigger map download sizes than that.
They did not fix or change anything except to shrink the map. The map name is still ocean and nothing new like they kept calling it up in the updates on steam. They simply shrunk it because of the lack of user base. All while wiping the entire game to help with server costs as well.
Supposedly they added new team members a month ago and this was the “We did things guyz” content patch that was supposedly gonna change the game for the better. It is literally the exacty same. No new islands or interesting locales. The same old copy paste still.
No real bug fixes or changes except to shrink upkeeps of things while also nerfing drop amounts. That is their grand hope at changing the game. Considering what Ark became this is just a huge embarrassment for the team behind atlas.
But what do you expect when Atlas was meant to be a mod for Ark and not a standalone game? They seemed to rush out this crap update to capitalize on the steam summer sale.
Avoid this even a year and half later. It is still the same and even worse now because of all the lies and dare I say, almost scam like behavior from the devs.
Pixark on steam is currently 60 percent off the 39.99 price tag making it 15.99. It also has a free weekend period till June 1st if you are interested in checking it out or trying it. Plenty of official and unofficial servers as well as newly launched official servers for this.
Also my unofficial server is Dingos PvP x3 if you want to join
Yikes. The only word that comes to mind with Population Zero. If you want a game that takes the worst aspects from mmos and survivals and puts them together than this is a game for you. From the start of the game it gives you a crappy custom character creator that is pretty limited. Then it shows you all these cool options but nothing you can do until you level up the “account”.
You create and then click play. Then you are given 3 game modes but can only do the pve mode because all the rest is locked behind your account being higher. You cannot even pvp until you level up more.
Upon logging on you are met with a barren world with few things to interact with, very few people, and even fewer npcs and mobs. You are given a few supplies and a metal pipe. Upon doing the quests and finding the npc city for questing. Yes this is a game that takes the kill 5, gather 10 quests everyone mmo fan loves and decides you need 10, or 100 of them.
The survival aspect is in the hunger, water, elements and toxic elements. All of which are pretty extreme and silly.
Crafting? Well you can unlock tons of crafting recipes, like stone, bone(a bonesword that is very similar to last oasis), leather and other basic crafting. You know, the type you expect in a nonscifi mmo. But no ranged that I have seen. This is a scifi mmo that apparently everyone forgot how to even cook meat on a campfire or how to even make a campfire let alone anything more advanced than level 20 ark player.
Also there are no stones to be found. Took almost 2 hours to find 3 stones. Now you could say it is because the game is so populated, but, at of writing this there was only around 736 in game. So to advance past your crappy metal pipe you start with, you need stones for stone weapons and tools to even gather most stuff. Which you cannot get. As stones do not exist.
The way to advance is thru quests and finding new objects which help give you points in various sections. However the land is either weather extreme so you cannot explore, or so barren of anything to interact with or fight it makes you want to jump off a cliff.
Also there are apparently only 4 mob types and most of them are just the same model but colored different.
The graphics and art style is “okay” and about the best part of it.
This game was not ready for early access and should be avoided. Maybe in 3 years with a new dev team this game might be something. It is also at a mostly negative review on steam as of now.
There are quite a few glaring issues with the survival genre. Atleast those online anyways. Many try various gimmicks to try and fix it but normally fail for the most part. So what are the biggest issues in the genre?
Offline raiding. This tends to be a major issue for most survival games. The issue of this is that if you are not on the game 24/7 there is a high chance people will wait till you log off to raid you. Now there is a few trials to fix this in the genre but most tend to not do well. Many offer a pve-conflict type option where there is timed pvp and no base destruction, but that leaves tons of other issues and a lower player base.
Last oasis has the offline protection logging for the player/walkers but the server issues make this impossible to be good or even work many times. Others like rust/cryofall tend to wipe every month but that makes it more session based and less fun for folks who do want a static place. Also unless the core loop is really really good like rusts gunplay then no one is gonna want to keep doing that fresh start loop.
The most logical fix would be to create a way for the base to become immune or protected a few minutes after the player logs. While this can create issues of battle logging but there are ways to make it so one cannot battle log either.
Another issue is that many in the survival genre think pvp is offline raiding. Infact that is the complete opposite of pvp. But the least risk and most reward is offline raiding as bases simply cannot survive without the player online. So this creates a weird non pvp meta in a genre that promotes pvp. Of course this would be solved if offline raiding was not a thing.
The core game loop tends to be a big issue for many of these as well. Many of the survival devs say they just can’t fix the offline raiding problem, however, I think it is mostly because without that loop of always starting over most players would find the core loop is basically nil.
So rather than create a good loop and a lot of good content they rely on crappy mechanics to be lazy.
The last issue is the alpha or huge tribes that are able to build up and keep things in games that do not wipe. Of course many of those do get all that by offline raiding and not really grinding it out so of course offline raiding protection would help this. But there can be other ways to help this. Various limitations on numbers, or places owned. Something like a purge like conan does. Or even adding a system where if you get to a certain level then random folks could team up to take you down. Letting the player population basically police itself agaisnt such things.
Of course these are only some of the issues but the most glaring ones that plague the genre. Think you for reading and if you have any comment or ideas feel free to do so!
F76 had a very rough launch when it came out. However now they have released it on steam with the wastelanders dlc. The reviews on steam currently sit on mixed on it. I had gotten it at launch and so signed up to get it free on steam.
After playing it today I must say I have enjoyed myself and am impressed with how far it has come. Starting a fresh new character you are almost immediately thrust into the new real npcs and a starting quest line which was way more fun than the starting experience upon the original release. The npc quest and options when talking makes it feel like a real fallout experience.
The quest line itself is actually fun, engaging and features lots of action, puzzles and not much traveling but enough traveling to get you to explore the world abit.
If you just go thru this quest line you will hit around 6-8 off of it. You will also get a nice weapon at the end of the quest.
Upon hitting level 5 you are able to pvp, pk and have the same done to you for everyone 5 and above. This is a big thing for myself and many. As survival games, pvp is a big part of them.
The game itself feels way better in terms of combat and optimization. I did crash once in my 4 hours of playing. Which is better than my once every 10-15 minutes at launch.
So if you do enjoy rpgs, open world, fallout, or survival I would suggest picking this up now. It does seem like we may have another no mans sky situation on our hands with this.
I did a video you can check out for in game footage here
Last Bastion Studios Savage Lands is an interesting game with an interesting history. The 2 people who worked on it originially kind of lost it for awhile and ended up getting it back and really turning it around. It started out like any EA survival type game but with some twists. Then it seem like it was more than likely going to be in the long pile list of abandoned survival ea games that are never finished. Then Last Bastion Studios acquired it and it has been worked on and improved greatly for awhile.
So what is Savage Lands? Well the steam page lists it as open world survival and crafting. Which it is. But it is also other things as well. For instance ontop of what is listed it also feels like a virtual tabletop dungeon group game when played multiplayer. The look and feel is also akin to a Kings Field like vibe.
You can craft various items, weapons, and armor. As well as potions and food. You can build various buildings, crafting stations, traps and defenses.
Survival wise you are constantly battling the frozen cold in the land as well as hunger. Trying to survive against the AI Denizens of the island as well as the giant dragon that flies overhead.
There is no level or stats outside of the gear.
The lore is spread across the isle as are various dungeon like places, boss types and tons of things to explore and discover.
All of this together does make it more like a kingsfield era game but with friends.
Ontop of this in your multiplayer games you can toggle on pvp. Or you can stay offline and play singleplayer. Sort of catering to everyone that way.
But if you want to enjoy your tabletop gaming group during social distancing this game might just help scratch that itch a bit. Or if you are looking for a bit of a Kings Field itch to be scratched. This might do it as well.
For a survival category title it is a bit weak compared to any of the others on the market though. But the pvp toggle does add some to that.
Some of the cons to it is the lack of building options to furnish your buildings and lack of customization for armor and weaponry. There are various weapon types but they do all look the same.Lack of leveling and skill points is also in that category.
Some other cons are the AI can be weird and dumb. Hit boxes can be off at times, including for looting. As where the body falls may not be where you loot, but where you last killed it.
Some will consider the graphics a con, but I think the graphics is ahead of the next era. That era being ps1 style graphic games as opposed to voxel or 2d.
Recent updates do include steam trading cards and more bug fixes so it is actively being worked on and the devs value input for suggestions and bug reports.
It is currently on sale on steam for 2.99 down from 9.99 until april 17th.
Or a 4 pack for 10.49 down from 29.99.
If you would like to see someone bad playing it here is my two sessions in it:
Last Oasis entered a stress test today. On launch day the games backend servers crashed when they reached 10k concurrent players. Today after a week of working on it we are now sitting at 20k and climbing with no real issues. So far it is looking good and the population is crazy.
On launch day in the starting cradle area I only seen a couple of people and it took me 2 hours to find pvp. Today on relaunch? I have seen 20-30 people in the cradle and it took me 10 minutes to find pvp! Check it out here: Dingos Stream First PVP.
It does seem they did delete and wipe everyones data which was expected. But if you got to play on launch day going back into the tutorial is a breeze. For those that are playing for the first time; do the tutorial. You will thank me greatly later.
It seems the steam survival crowd now has a new and very exciting game to enjoy and sink their stay at home time into! This EA survival game is one of the most polished ones to hit steams ea survival crowd since it started.
DingosGaming 