The Survivalists

Following on from their previous title, The Escapists; Team17’s newest release sees you build and manage a little civilisation just trying to survive in the wild after you’re washed ashore on an island; get monkeys to do your work, craft tools and weapons and work to build your own camp to keep you going until you can escape. If you enjoy procedurally generated, survival-sim-type games, especially if they’re a bit more easy-going on the survival-side, then this might be the game for you!

Crafting has two main forms in The Survivalists, the core crafting for items such as hand axes to chop down trees for wood; and Blueprint mode, which is used to build a bed, campfire and perimeters such as fencing. From the off, you will see monkeys dotted around the island whom you can build trust with and win them over by feeding or by rescuing them from temples, to assist in your quest to set up camp. Teaching these fuzzy little friends to repeat actions such as crafting or fighting can help to minimise the amount of time it takes to gather materials or get your camp looking good, and serving its best purpose.

The art style of The Survivalists is very much the same as previous games in the series, with a cute, simple appearance. You’ve washed up on a deserted island, and the different areas of the island and caves all look great, with plenty of subtle detail. Mysterious stone structures - known as Labyrinths - can be found and require a bit of puzzle-solving are an interesting inclusion, adding to the wonder of the island and giving a bit more depth. As the game is procedurally-generated, my island will look a lot different to your island, which allows for greater surprise in what you might find and where. Day and night cycles will alter the island, and you’ll find all different kinds of enemies; varying wildlife, Fanatics guarding the Labyrinths and undead roaming inside. Everything is really interesting to see, and figuring out the path ahead to enable your escape makes exploring worthwhile. The densely packed areas of forest combined with the 2.5D isometric view can sometimes prove to be a bit awkward for being able to see, but if you’re just gonna chop down all the trees anyway - this won’t be a problem for long!

The crafting systems have been well designed, and despite taking a little bit of working out - are presented well and show all of the craftables available to you. Similarly, the blueprint system follows this same general idea, and progression of which items you wish to create are easy to follow and understand.

With the ability to play alone or with friends, The Survivalists does well to have both options feel rewarding and fun. Playing with others can sometimes prove to be a bit of a challenge, with the whole “too many cooks” idea, but as long as you are all on the same page and working together, it can make things much smoother and you can get tasks completed soooo much faster. On the flip side of this, you have the benefit of the monkeys on your island being available to carry out tasks for you, if playing alone is more your style - this allows you to plan out your time effectively, and keeping monkeys available to protect your base when required is always a good idea, as deserted islands aren’t always as safe and relaxing as one might think!

We had a lot of fun with The Survivalists, and whilst we did run into a few blips where selecting particular monkeys was harder than it seemed, or accidentally getting them to do something other than what we intended, these were very minor issues that can be attributed to playing on console with a controller, over playing on PC with a mouse and keyboard - which is definitely what the main layout design seems to be optimised for.

In the end, we decided to give The Survivalists the Collecting Asylum rating of 7/10.

Have you played The Survivalists yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!

- V x

Thank you to Team17 for The Survivalists Xbox One review code!