So this little humble looking game came out.
Screenshots were bad looking, the interface clunky, and on top of that, the game is all done in Flash.
However, after giving it a try, I got quickly hooked. Combat is clearly dwarf-fortress inspired, without hitpoints and D&D tropes, depending on very tense and verbose text descriptions. On top of that, it's quite deadly.
You start almost naked, without equipment, and must survive in a completely hostile post-catastrofic world. You must scavenge, you have to craft, and on top of that, you have to hide a lot and cover your tracks.
Somebody called it - Bum the Game, and indeed, if you hobble wearing two left shoes (of different type), dressed into a patchwork of animal skins, sharpened stick in one hand and plastic garbage bag in the other, looking for things to put in it, you feel just like a bum.
You will hoard pulls, berries, stickes, lighters (those are little treasures), rags, treads, yes, even pebbles.
You will die constantly, from wounds, cold, food poisoning, blood loss, being eaten while sleeping, but also from bullets and teeth.
But if you get hooked like many players before you, you will come back, again, and again.
For those frustrated in the beginning - there is a story, and there is quite a nice lore, but you have to survive to get to it.
The game feels incomplete to me, and I was disappointed when it was suddenly pushed through to "1.0".
For example, half the skills they give you are crap and don't unlock enough to even consider using them. Perhaps there was more planned to balance out the skills which was subsequently scrapped.
I also dislike the fact that there is no real progression in the game. You can't scavenge enough to build a fort or get strong enough to where you feel invincible, so there's no point in holing up in one place. No matter where you go a dog man can kill you in your sleep and a single gunshot wound wrecks you.
Still, the combat is tense and exciting, and there is a story to explore if you manage to give up on your initial campsite as soon as possible.
I think your opinion is based on an incomplete experience with the game.
It's simply not true that there are no safe places in the world.
My character now for example lives in the outskirts of DMC, slowly healing from the first trip from the cryo facility, and gathering strength for further journey.
I have botany skill, so I go to the forest every day, brew a few bottles of tannin tea, sell that on the junk market, buy something to eat in the Last Chance canteen, rent a wrecked car to sleep in, and I am even getting richer slowly. There is absolutely zero danger there, because the DMC guards patrol the vicinity.
Which skill seems useless to you? I guess hacking is underwhelming, but the value of the skills is reflected by its cost in points. Strength is more useful than hacking for survival, indeed, but it's 6 vs 2 points in cost. Some skills may be situational, but still may come in handy.
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