I just spent, let's see.... exactly two hours?... tonight on a near-release copy (tomorrow leaving beta) of FADE TO SILENCE, a survival horror game with no dang zombies per se. <:-)
In the game you play a father, trapped in a corner of Earth recently destroyed by an eldritch horror called The Eclipse, plunging the world into perpetual winter, and progressively corrupting natural reality on the way to exterminating all human life.
Fortunately, your daughter still survives, along with some other scattered people. She's also perfectly capable of looking after herself.
Unfortunately -- though also fortunately? -- the Eclipse seems obsessed with your resistance, and manifests as a weird techno(??)wraith, haunting your existence. He claims that he just wants you to die, but he also keeps bringing you back when you do: the game starts with him taunting you for having died yet again (evidently twice already), in a primitive temple just outside your now-ruined first base. This wraithy thing is one of the best hissable villains I've seen written in a game in a lonnnnng time! Defying him is a hoot!
I fraternally anticipate questions, but I shall avoid as many spoilers as possible.
DO YOU REGRET HAVING JUST PASSED THE 2 HOUR RETURN THRESHOLD?
Not at all. This is a keeper.
WHAT KIND OF SURVIVAL PACE IS IT?
You'll freeze and/or starve to death, but it happens pretty slowly. Resources are scarce, but there's a sensory trigger which temporarily highlights usable items in your view, and there's an overhead compass which radars various useful things and areas (not necessarily telling you what they are however). You can opt for a more casual mode to experience the story. Enemies so far show up on rare occasion and in singles.
It is rather like a combination of the 'survival' portions of the recent Tomb Raider reboot trilogy (especially games 2 and 3), and Savage Lands, also a wintery survival horror game about a Viking retaking a set of islands from a dragon and its curse upon the land. (One big difference is that FtS is leaving beta tomorrow and SL seems to be abandoned. :'( But it's still a pretty good game, though not nearly as polished as FtS which seems at least AA if not AAA in quality.)
MULTIPLAYER?
Not that I can tell.
NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS? ....WAIT, YOU ANSWERED THIS ALREADY...
Yes, rare but you can gather other people back to your bases to help with base defense and improvement work. There's a definite base-building aspect, though not in a real-time-strategy sense. (More in the Savage Lands sense.)
BUGGY?
Not obviously, except for some killer alien warp hellbugs occasionally. O:-)
DAY NIGHT CYCLE?
Yes.
WEATHER VARIABILITY?
Kind of? The game will throw a blizzard at you toward the end of your first day. I haven't seen one again since then. Sky effects are nice.
TERRAIN CRAFTING?
No, like SL and TR you can pick up or harvest resources -- finite resources in some cases, so a few select trees in an area can be cut down and harvested for example -- but you can't dig up things to craft blocks to plant or anything like 7 Days to Die or Fortresscraft Evolved.
JUMPSCARES?
Not really so far, unlike occasionally in 7DtD (which come from the environment not from scripting, to be fair). The horror comes more from the mood and ambiance, which is ace! O0 (The wraith makes a joke about me trying to ruin the ambiance by starting a fire, so he'll just send some worse things. There's a touch of very very dry humor occasionally.)
"SENDING SOME WORSE THINGS..." SO, HORDES?
Based on some things said by the wraithy thing, and by cues in the game's user interface, I infer the answer is yes, but they don't show up early on. I am working on the presumption that horde mechanics unlock once I have rescued/gathered followers for base defense.
GAME MAP SIZE?
I gather it's large enough that a vehicle comes in handy relatively early into the game.
VEHICLES?
The main vehicle is a dogsled team. Pulled by wolves.
PLAYER DEATH MECHANICS?
I'm not sure if harder mechanics will unlock, but I'm playing on the normal survival level where dying respawns you (via in-story mechanics unexplained but evocative so far!) near your first base area. You keep your inventory and other gained things. However, you only have a limited number of these respawns, after which the game permadeaths you! -- sort of. If you get far enough in the game, you can earn an increasing number of perks (unlocked partly in an order of your preference) which will permanently carry over into your new games going forward. You can also find rare extra respawns. (One is available in your starting base.)
INVENTORY MANAGEMENT?
Very standard. Limited slots in your backpack, where some crafting is also allowed but which doesn't pause the game. Crafting is not allowed except while you're in inventory (so far?), so you need to be safe. However, gathered NPCs can be put to work crafting while you're out doing things. (And they can be sent out to do things.) Stashes hold a lot more slots and a lot more material in each slot, and unlike some survival games (such as Subnautica) your stashes are all connected so in new camp areas you can access your stashed stuff.
CAMP ANYWHERE?
Only with enough of the right material in inventory. Otherwise you camp where other people (now dead or vanished in the story, not NPCs per se) have built more permanent (if ruined) shelters. I haven't built a temporary shelter yet, so I don't know if it comes with stash access.
The game design is built to focus on enjoying the wintery eldritch apocalypse aesthetics, while chugging along on progress loops. It does the job.
FIT FOR NIECES TO WATCH?
No cursing or adult things other than the general tone (so far). I would say not for the nieces, though, so no videos from me. Maybe screeny snapshots.
Thanks for the info, always looking for new survival experiences, wishlisted. There's a handful of survival games i'm keeping tabs on for future consideration.
Thanks Pratt. Will check this out.
Thank you for the overview. Sounds like a great story to base a game on. Checking it out for sure. ( but UBOAT releases today I'm so excited!! :clap: )
Thanks for posting the recent video. Bummer for me that its third person only, prefer first person. I'll check out some release day videos. JP are you playing it on PC?
PC yes, with X360 controller.
Video reminds me (1) there is multiplayer in the game after all; and (2) I now recall complaints that the mp is broken because the clients play by the rules of the NPC 'followers' rather than the main character.
Appreciate the preview JP. O0 You've peaked my interest. :bd: