Review: Survival Tycoon

 Name: Survival Tycoon

Price: £3.99 / $4.99

Available on: PC (Steam Store)

Reviewed on: Laptop 1

Review: 

Survival Tycoon's store page asks a question of its audience "Can you survive in an unforgiving world?" the only answer I can give to that is I don't smegging know. I don't smegging know because the smegging game doesn't actually give you a world to have to survive in. Instead you have a small two room underground bunker where you have to try to manage the health of the former owner of the bunker whom is your prisoner, but must be kept alive as his pulse is tied to a bomb in the bunker meaning if he dies the bomb explodes killing you. You must also balance your food and thirst by growing crops and eating some while turning the rest into juice to drink due to lack of a water filtration system in the bunker.

The primary gameplay loops is running round the bunker like a mad person trying to: eat, drink, feed your prisoner, cook prison slop, keep your watering can full and water crops that dry out faster than the gashes of every woman in the room when you step into it. If you fail to water the crops in time they of course spoil. The secondary loop being to harvest the crops and sell on excess to buy more seed and more beds to grow seeds along with more mixers or chicken coups and chickens. The tertiary loop being doing all this stuff grants exp and more exp lets you open more areas and eventually at level 9 you can leave the bunker because purely arbitrary reasoning with no actual justification for it really.  The big issue with all the loops is they're smegging boring. Eventually you'll hit a rhythm where you'll basically be doing a circuit feeding your prisoner, yourself and watering plants / harvesting them and juicing them and you'll probably have hit this point by between 15 and 30 minutes into the game. You then have to repeat the same circuit again and again for 2 hours or so to get a high enough survival level to be allowed to leave the bunker and end this torment of a game.

There is a plot, sort of. The backstory is explained by a robotic voice as the game tell you humanity has ruined the world due to Global warming and nuclear war, see game journalists there is a game about global warming and climatechange that exists. 

You as one of the struggling survivors of the wasteland find a bunker and ask for help. When the bunker's owner decides to try and kill you, you turn the tables and take over their bunker. However one of their defence bombs activate with the bomb being tied to their pulse, so if it stops the bomb explodes. That's the entire story. There isn't any ending story once you leave the bunker you just get given a rating. You also don't learn anything else about the owner of the bunker or anything like that.

Everything about this game feels badly thought out except maybe the art.

Most of what you have to do is busy work with no events happening to break it up.

Once you build a structure you're stuck with it and can't change it meaning you could potentially screw yourself over early on.

Some items you collect have no use. You can collect eggs from chickens but the only use in the game for eggs is to sell them, you can't even eat them.

The watering can, can be filled indefinitely but you have to press space bar each time to fill it a bit, which can make your character look like a wanking frog, which while humorous for like 30 seconds it doesn't redeem the game in any way.

Moving between screens in the game sees you leave via the right hand door and enter the next screen also by a right hand door so if you hold right and don't let go you keep flipping between rooms. So you have to let go of the controls when you enter a new room or push the opposite direction.

Some of the wallpapers you can get cover up the prisoner you're keeping alive, this doesn't impact gameplay but it's just one more issue on a pile of issues.

The sound design in the game is also an issue, with 1 song you can play on the sound system in the bunker and the constant noise of the juicer going (assuming you want to be efficient). The sound of the mixer will drill into you, it was so bad for me after the first 45 minutes of gameplay I muted the game.

Verdict:

A poorly thought out less enjoyable version of a cookie clicker that provides little to no content and the only progression other than numbers going up are cosmetic unlocks which serve as little more than a novelty to break up the tedium. Survival Tycoon feels poorly thought out, poorly constructed and anaemic in terms of meaningful content.

On top of all the issue the game is asking £3.99 for a game with no real replay ability, none of the promised choices impacting gameplay the steam store page hints at and a game so tedious and boring you'll have seen it all within about 30 minutes; and will have to repeat the same thing for 2 hours to get to an ending.  

The game seems unfinished and doesn't seem like it'll get a much needed content injection anytime soon. Avoid this game. The price, the poor content and the issues with the game all caused it to get the score it is being given and it's only due to it being technically functional and not crashing that it got the score it has.

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