Survival Island

One thing we certainly have enough of are survival games, because the genre has been exhausted in the last couple of years by both indie and triple-A productions. Whether you have to run from zombies, skeletons or starvation, everything has been tried in a variety of ways. On the other hand, the sandbox element means that you can always add new things or improve the ones that are already there, except that this requires a lot of work.

Survival Island is a first-person survival game in which you have to stay alive by yourself on a pretty barren island and make sure that you make the most out of the environment. Besides gathering food and water to keep your energy level up, it’s also important to find materials required to craft various things, such as shelters and fires to cook the food you find.

Speaking of which, you can hunt animals in order to get their fat, meat and hide, all of which come in handy one way or another. Animals such as wolves can even hunt you, which means that you always have to be on guard. On the other hand, the whole system is built using sticks and duct tape, because the game is very empty and boring at the moment, which is not something you want when you are encouraged to explore and create your own adventure.

The fun part might be revealed in multiplayer, because theoretically, it’s a lot of fun to fight other players for survival and see who manages to come out on top. However, that’s a pretty unlikely scenario in this case, because the lack of content makes it difficult to enjoy yourself for more than an hour or so. On top of that, there are no players either most of the time, so it’s easy to get bored in record time.

As for the graphics, the actual visual quality is not bad, given the fact that the game uses Unity and quite detailed assets. On the other hand, the level design is terrible, since there’s nothing to see other than the occasional tree, rock, and the ocean that surrounds the island. Again, this is a major issue in a game that should encourage long gameplay sessions.

All things considered, Survival Island lacks the spark required to make itself a viable option for sandbox survival fans out there, mainly because it doesn’t feature any new ideas. Not only that, but the gameplay mechanics are too simple and basic at the moment.