You could go hunting for high grade materials, but there isn’t much point, seeing as there are two game modes in place, friendly servers where it’s PvE, or Hostile, which is PvP. I couldn’t imagine how clunky the PvP would be, seeing as combat is essentially that; Clunky. You have a generic swing for all of your weapons, some very powerful, some rather weak, and some faster than others. In fact, the strongest weapon I’ve acquired took me forever to get the parts for it, and it sucks. It does 40 damage but it is so slow, I opt for the much easier to craft, slightly weaker sword that does 33 damage per swing, but is much quicker. Unless you are someone that really just needs to have everything, just stick to relatively basic stuff, because it does the job pretty well. I personally love the wolfskin armour because I can go out into the wilderness for longer because it keeps me all snuggly warm.
In terms of “fantasy” creatures, there are skeletons, more skeletons, a dragon that doesn’t ever attack you and skeletons with armour on. Oh and bears that are really powerful, but aside form that you have deers that clock an average speed of my car, wolves that always seem to attack you when you’re in your inventory screen, and plagued wolves, which sometimes disease you, if you don’t kill them quick enough. Disease basically is poison, which can be cured in seconds by eating berries which you find by cutting bushes with an axe (go figure!). The tree giants are probably the most interesting enemy, but they only attack you if you attack them.
I don’t want to seem like I’m picking on this game, because I’m really not, I think its a great idea, and some of the concepts are already there, things like the weather effects are amazing, but it just lacks in other areas, especially in the game play department. I reckon this’ll be one to watch the developer log on.
There really isn’t anything I could pick out about the game that makes it stand out from other survival games. Yeah, it’s in early access, but there really isn’t enough content to keep you busy for long. I’ve crafted every item available and built every structure in the space of two days, left with a huge stockpile of a wood and stones that I have no use for, other than occasionally repairing an item. I honestly hope this game takes off and adds more content, and I look forward to finally fighting the dragon, but for now, I’d give it a miss.
[review]
About the Studio:
DigitalDNA Games is an indie game development studio, credited with developing some of the top grossing and highest user rated Xbox indie titles of all time; including the CastleMiner franchise, and Avatar Paintball, Xbox’s first avatar based first person shooter. DigitalDNA Games currently has over 14 titles released on XBLIG. Most of them #1 best selling titles.
Signal Studios is a Seattle-area developer of video games and interactive software applications founded in 2008. Signal’s founders combine years of experience across all disciplines in the games industry, working as leads and developers together at some of the industry’s top studios and publishers. The studio is the developer behind several award winning games and is currently developing original IP for consoles, PC, and mobile platforms. Signal’s current announced games include:
Signal also actively develops its own proprietary engine and toolset, SigEngine™, facilitating the massive content demands and rapid iteration necessary for today’s top-tier, AAA games.
Savage Lands is available to purchase on Steam for $19.99 (in Early Access)