Open world survival peaks with zombies, spaceships, and genitals
If you’ve paid any attention to the best sellers on Steam, you may have noticed that three open world survival games are dominating the top slots. It’s a crafting, gathering, killing, and building heyday! These games are hot and they’re not even complete yet!
After the break, we erect a hut, and hole up for the night!
In zombie plague terms, DayZ would be considered a global outbreak. Maruk Spanel, CEO of Bohemia Interactive posted that 172,500 new copies of DayZ were sold in the first 24 hours. The zombie survival game, which started as a mod for Arma 2, has long been anticipated since Bohmeia announced a standalone version. Creator Dean Hall has been active on Twitter since the alpha launch cautioning the curious that the game is very much a work-in-progress.
“Please do not just buy the game because you heard it was cool. Many streamers are now streaming. Visit this and view the (many) bugs first”
DayZ is currently available on Steam Early Access for $29.99.
Starbound looks a lot like the side-scrolling survival hit, Terraria. That should be no surprise since the developer, Chucklefish, is headed by Finn Brice, who did most of the art for Terraria. Starbound differentiates itself by offering players nearly all the vastness of infinite space to explore. Gather, craft, build, and fight for survival, then fly to another procedurally generated planet to do it all over again! The goal is to offer players a new experience every time. As an example, Chucklefish wants to add ways to make monsters less predictable.
“Right now, monster parts just have stat boosts, but eventually rolled monster parts will affect their behavior and abilities. For example, monsters with spider legs can climb walls; fiery monsters inflict burning. You might get a burning spider dropping on you from the ceiling. Projectiles may be tied to specifically generated heads. Biome may influence monster part generation.”
Starbound is available on Steam Early Access for $14.99.
For a less urban setting, Rust, from Facepunch Studios, features a stone-age start for players. Instead of waking up in a modern ex-Soviet landscape with some clothing and a gun, Rust puts players into the game completely naked with only a rock for company. Rust otherwise has all the stuff fans of the survival genre have come to love; a hostile environment, crafting, other players that can be helpful samaritans or downright violent bastards, and monsters that want to kill you.
The game has had issues besides the normal ones that come with Early Access. Caveman genitals, for example. As Garry Newman explained, Valve’s Steam service was inundated with screenshots of virtual members after the game launched and he had to enable a censorship option that blurs out the pubic area of characters. Balls, man!
“You can turn the censorship off in the console, but any screenshots you post publically to the Steam Hub will be deleted. Over the next few days I’m probably going to make it so that whether you have censoring on or off the screenshots posted to Steam will always be censored.”
Rust is available on Steam Early Access for $19.99.
