AtomicTorch Studio
Daedalic Entertainment
Survival games seem to be a dime a dozen these days and frankly, most of them are merely slightly different takes of already established titles. For instance, having played the likes of Miscreated, DayZ, Scum, Survive the Nights, etc., even though each of these games features slighting different variations of what I call the “zombie-pocalypse” genre, they basically all blend together in my mind. There’s nothing extraordinary that sticks out about any of these games individually, there’s all basically just the same-y survival elements thrown together with lots o’ zombie killing.
Therefore, I’m a big fan of RimWorld, which takes the survival genre to new levels by offering complex colony management in a science fiction setting. AtomicTorch Studio has been working on its own science fiction-survival game, CryoFall, for over four years now, and their hard work appears to be paying off.
Unlike RimWorld, where you’re managing a group of colonists, in CryoFall you play as a single avatar. The game has a similar top-down perspective and familar set-up—you’re basically stranded on a mysterious planet and have to scavenge for food and other resources in order to survive. However, each server in CryoFall can hold up to a whopping two-hundred players. Fortunately, you can choose to play on either PvP or PvE servers, so if you don’t want there to be a chance of getting stomped in the early goings, PvE might be a better choice to start off with.
CryoFall’s visuals may seem rather simplistic, but don’t let that fool you; there’s a lot going on under its hood. As each player’s avatar has crash-landed on the strange new world, they must travel throughout the game’s various biomes in order to collect resources unique to that area. With said resources, they can turn meager hovels into futuristic mega-structures and archaic weapons into technologically advanced ones.
CryoFall can be a little grindy, but it’s so entertaining that I really didn’t mind much since even in its current alpha build, there’s already plenty to do. There is a robust tech tree that is well organized in a highly logical manner, with convenient tabs for everything that has thus far been released. The crafting recipes are likewise easy to grasp and access. There’s also a slight RPG aspect to the game because your character gains skills as they go along.
My first game of CryoFall consisted of jumping right into a PvP server with a decently high population in order to see what sort of ass-hatery was on display. One of my big, initial tests for games that feature PvP is seeing how they compare to the most toxic of PvP games: Rust. If I get killed-on-sight just as much as Rust then I know I’m probably not going to have much fun with that game.
Fortunately, while there are some rando asshats here and there, most of the community in my first PvP server was pretty laid-back. If they didn’t want to interact, they’d simply run the other way most of the time. I tried a few other PvP servers and experienced the same results, so my advice to new players would be to chill and say “hi” to other players you encounter.
Much of the time, others will react cordially and sometimes even offer you some rare resources and even weapons. I had one group of rather well-off, established players approach me (okay, I first ran and they chased me saying they weren’t going to kill me) and offer me some armor and an advanced assault rifle, even though I’d just spawned in with barely the clothes on my back.
I recently introduced a gaming buddy to CryoFall and he’s fallen in love with the game (his wife hates me now), which has made me come to the conclusion that (at least for me) it’s much more fun to experience with friends. Not only is it a little safer when you do run into dastardly brigands, but it’s a real blast to construct things, such as bases, together.
CryoFall is shaping up to be a really fun game and has some unique features to boot, including large, two-hundred player servers. I’m really excited to see what the future holds for this little science fiction-survival gem of a game.
SCORE: 82%
CryoFall has some pretty good looking graphics that make its survival gameplay truly shine. However, you want to have a pretty beefy gaming PC or gaming laptop in order to play it at a decent framerate. So, you may just want to invest in a decent gaming rig:
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