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Topic: The Survivalists on Switch

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edhe

A game where you craft tools and items to help you survive, and, ultimately escape an island wilderness. The main hook is that you can be assisted by an army of monkey helpers who can cook, craft, carry and even fight with you. Indeed, they are much more effective at these tasks than yourself - even at base proficiency, so you're encouraged to utilise them to speed up your progress.

To those who have picked this game up, what are your thoughts? I played about an hour of the demo before I decided I wanted to get the full game, so I'm experiencing most of it fresh.

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porto

I loved the bland white text that appeared in the trailer every 5 seconds.

I'm actually quite interested in this game. It's a supposed sequel to another Team17 game, The escapists.

porto

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edhe

@App Have you played Escapists? Survivalists probably contains lore that ties it to The Escapists - the game is described as being in the Escapists universe.

I've picked up a few journals on the island, but I've got no idea is that is the case, as I hadn't played either of the Escapists games.

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porto

@edhe I haven’t played Escapists, but there are tons of similarities between the two games; the art style, title, and some aspects of the gameplay.

porto

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edhe

My exploration excursions have been improved greatly since I added a monkey with a large chest to my party - it's so much better to be able to dump a load of resources into a chest on the go. I'm also accompanied by three monkeys - two armed with gold swords, another with a metal club.
After sufferring a raid and not having the time to rally my armed monkeys together, I always have some armed and ready at all times.
In that instance, I was knocked out, and respawned at my bed. I was immobilised while they smashed everything up (luckily, not beyond repair). The raid ended, but I still couldn't move, so I had to jump into someone's multiplayer game, and exit so I could move again.
It doesn't help to protect my base while I'm away though - I wonder how you'd go about that? Do your monkeys attack goblins when you're halfway across the map? Do goblins even spawn in, or do your constructions just suffer a damage hit?

Speaking of which, I travelled halfway across the map to a volcanic island, and explored it a bit. Worth it for the metals, gold and crystals. It also houses a labyrinth, but I can't enter it yet.

Yet, after travelling halfway across the map, back to my home island, I noticed a landmass, something like 4 times the size of any Island I've visited, right next door. I'll probably head there next.

One little annoyance I've encountered - when you've got a group of monkeys crowded around you, and you're trying to pick stuff up, or even deposit in a chest carried by a monkey, it's easy to start handing your monkeys items you don't want them to have - like fruit to your guards or, worse, an important tool to your chest monkey. In this instance, you have to take the chest off of the monkey, then the tool or item you want back, then give them the chest again.
Luckily, when you swap a guard's weapon out for something by acident, you can simply swap it back, and they retain their role, and are ready to attack, at any time.

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edhe

I went back to this ater a bit of a break, and an update seems to have solved some of the issues I'd mentioned (and some I may not have).
Some welcome changes are your monkeys retaining their jobs - after loading a save, and performing certain tasks like posing - it would get annoying having to reassign your monkey as a fighter after making them pose on a switch - meaning you'd have to get them to watch you attack an enemy before they'll willingly fight again. In fact, it appears that arming your monkeys seems to put them into battle mode by default.
Their effectiveness has been tweaked a bit, so as to make them less overpowered, although having 3 of them with me at all times does make battles quite easy.

Passing an item to a monkey now requires you to hold the button down for a few seconds. This is a godsend, as you are now free to hammer the A button to collect resources without handing stuff to your monkeys and disarming them of their weapons.

By my reckoning, I've got 3 more labyrinths to clear before I've beaten the game. There are still a few issues, and the game still feels a little barren, so I probably won't want to go through it a second time.

I'm not sure what the developers can do to make the game a more fulfilling experience . Building up a base seems pretty pointless - making it defendable against goblins is a waste of time because they can spawn right in the middle of a base, avoiding the rows of spike traps I constructed at great expense. Last night, while I was preparing to enter a labyrinth on a different island to my two substantial bases, a goblin party attacked my first one (they never seem to attack my new one, which leads me to wonder whether their raids are centered on your first spawn point), and I had no choice but to let it happen.
Even with the use of teleporters, if you're just a little too far away, you might as well just leave them to it.

What I'd like to see is the ability to clear an island of goblins - this woyuld be complicated by the game periodically refreshing the world and its monsters every few cycles.

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gcunit

@edhe I appreciate the detailed posts you made about this game, thanks. Do you have any idea whether any further updates have released and given this game more depth/longevity?

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Magician

I played the game for about an hour.

Not a bad game per se, but the monkey micro managing turned me off the game.

I prefer my survival games be less demanding, like Stranded Sails...or something similar.

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edhe

@gcunit

I sold the game long ago, but, I did decide to subscribe to the game's steam news page, just to follow what they do with the game. The last time I checked, last year, they had added the ability to tame and keep animals, and were then working on farming. Both updates have since been released on PC and consoles.

There seem to have been several QOL tweaks as well, including some related to inventory management and goblin raids, which would have made my experience a bit smoother.

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Switch Friend Code: SW-6650-8335-1908 | 3DS Friend Code: 4682-8598-1260

gcunit

@edhe I see, thank you. So it sounds like they've just been tweaking the existing game rather than adding significant extra content/purpose to the game.

You guys had me at blood and semen.

What better way to celebrate than firing something out of the pipe?

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

My Nintendo: gcunit | Nintendo Network ID: gcunit

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