StoneBack

Back in prehistoric times, people had it pretty rough when it came to survival, because everything was out to get them. Hence, whether it was apex predators or a simple infection, people were not as resilient or well-prepared as they are today to deal with dangers. On the other hand, their lifestyle was much more active as well, so they certainly did a lot of living in a very short period of time.

StoneBack is a 2D survival game in which your only goal is survival, and you have to do it by all means necessary. Hence, you have to gather food, cook it and explore the world in order to make sure that you always have the proper resources at your disposal. On the other hand, the game is pretty empty as well, so it might not be as fun as it sounds, especially after a few minutes of gameplay.

You get to choose from multiple characters at the start of the adventure, but it doesn’t really make a difference which one you pick, because there’s no difference between them, other than the actual look. After that, you have to start cutting trees, gathering leaves and building fires in order to stay fed and protect yourself from all sorts of predators that make your life difficult.

Every now and again you meet another character, and most of them can provide you with quests. These quests challenge you to gather various resources or kill certain dinosaurs, which is certainly not an easy thing to do. Speaking of which, some of the dinosaurs are hostile and attack you on sight, while others are docile enough to be ridden around the map. In fact, it’s a lot easier to just jump on the back of a turtle and explore the world that way.

Exploration must come to a halt once darkness sets, on the other hand, because that’s when the dangerous predators come out to feed. The bad thing is that they are flying, so it’s pretty much impossible to do very much about them. In fact, it’s very frustrating, because you cannot really build defenses or do anything else, so you kind of have to move at all times.

In the end, StoneBack is a bit too frustrating and empty to keep you engaged for too long, but it’s still a pretty interesting concept. Hence, as long as the developers manage to fix a few things and add more content, this could certainly evolve into something much better in the future.