Anchored

It’s not hard to understand why survival games have caught on so much lately, especially if you are an avid gamer with a bit of experience under your belt. In short, the genre calls for a lot of freedom, because it’s not really survival if you are not left to your own devices. Whether you are trying to fend off zombie invasions or simply avoid starvation in a tough environment, it’s always nice to have the freedom to do as you please and see whether your solutions work out in the end.

Anchored is a real-time strategy game with survival elements, in which your goal is to help a handful of settlers to build a base and protect it from the wild animals that come out at night. The whole thing takes place on some kind of floating island, which is actually floating atop a jungle. Hence, the ultimate goal is to explore the jungle below and find useful resources while trying to stay alive.

You start with a few people that must work together in order to build various structures and reinforce their base while searching for food and other useful resources. Once night falls, on the other hand, the gameplay shifts to a more fast-paced style, given the fact that you must equip your settlers with weapons and command them in battles with all sorts of nasty animals.

Survival gets tougher and tougher the more you manage to hold on, so it’s a good thing that you can acquire gear from special structures. Not only that, but you can personally equip your characters with various items and watch their performance increase in battle, which is quite satisfying. Granted, the game is still only a prototype at this point, so don’t expect too much variety in this regard either.

The real-time strategy mechanics are as classic as they can get, so you only need the mouse to control everything most of the time. It’s also possible to scroll around the map and zoom in or out, just like in every other RTS out there. This makes it easy to manage your troops when things get tough, as well as to organize your base during the day.

In the end, Anchored can easily keep you busy for as long as you manage to avoid boredom, given the fact that it doesn’t feature a lot of content at this point. However, there’s definitely potential here, so it would be nice to see more of the game in the future.