New price low $16 at GMG, prolly won’t be lower than that before the 1.0 release.
Surviving the Aftermath is €14.99 on Epic Game Store and as the sale is on you can use the €10 voucher.
I still like it a lot and am looking forward to playing the final 1.0. The mixed rating on Steam is a big misnomer as nearly all the complaints are based on a few bugs that are being fixed for 1.0. These mostly revolve around peep priorities where they sometimes ignore buildings… particularly ones that clean them up, such as the bathroom lol. The developers are very attentive so I say get it as $16 is a very good price and this feels more like a $35-$40 game vs. one less than half that.
I like the balance of gameplay, with the city building and worker allocation level offset by the global map, exploration and resource/research gathering. You won’t survive and build a good city without sending your experts out to fight, scavenge and find research to unlock the better buildings/options. The random events (weather, raids, traders) and trade with other cities all combine to keep you busy.
I’ve seen videos of Endzone (but not played) and while that looks like it’s got a better, more detailed city building aspect, I’m not sure it has the other elements (someone correct me).
Either way, for the price with an Epic coupon, StA is well worth it and it’s still regularly updated adding new functionality and balancing existing.
Endzone does expeditions but they’re not nearly as deep, and they’re on the same map. However city building is more organic in Enzdone in that it works a little better. But there’s less to do overall in Endzone, and right now I think the disasters are more fun in StA. From a graphic standpoint I like Endzone better. It’s easier to tell buildings apart and the interface is nicer.
I think it’s great they both stand on their own.
So I picked this up yesterday and played for 10 hours. Unfortunately, twice I had lost all my progress, a power outage and then not saving my game properly. There is an autosave but the default is off, not on which is dumb.
At $15 I agree it is a worthwhile purchase. But I’d add the caveat this is truly an early access game, not something like Old World, which is pretty much complete, but just needed some polishing.
The game play is very similar to Dawn of Mans, and in some ways I prefer Dawn of Man. But I really like the Fallout genre setting. It is actually also fairly similar to the colony management portion of Fallout 4, with the colony management portion fleshed while the adventure aspect of Fallout 4, is greatly abstracted.
The Good
- Remarkably stable and bug-free for Alpha software game
- Generally intuitive more than most complex games, I found it pretty easy in StA to do what I wanted. The help system is adequate and the tool tips are good.
- I like the level of abstraction. You have direct control over your specialist which is 3-10 guys. You don’t have direct control over your colonist but you can assign priorities, and determine which building should be staffed. I pause I lot of Paradox games but this one I pretty much left on slow speed for most of the game. You have not stuff to do but not so much you feel overwhelmed. (Like say playing a big country in Hearts of Iron IV)
- Graphics are decent.
The Bad
- Primarily it just feels very unfinished. There is no end game, and from what I gather from the StA forums not much of a middle game.
- Weird and unbalanced production system. Some examples concrete is a significant resource yet there is no way of producing it, while far down the tech tree you can produce electronic components. Similarly, it is really inefficient to produce planks for making building (base rate is 1/day subject to various improvements). While a specialist can easily gather 30+ planks a day on the strategic map or in your colony.
- Research is fixed speed no way of increasing it.
- Combat is pretty Meh you click on bandit a few times and they die and you take damage.
- Lots of inconsistent between the Wiki, in game help, and the actual game. For instance, Cookhouse is suppose take 5 units of food, and 2 units of firewood and produce 10 meals, that give a happiness buff. This is very consistent with games like Rimworld, or Oxygen Not Included where cooking food gives you a bonus, both to nutrition and happiness. But it turns it is actually 3 units of food+1 unit of firewook=4 meals, so no bonus. Furthermore, there is water requirement needed for the cookhouse, that I couldn’t figure out how to fix, despite building a well right next to the cookhouse.
I’m done with the game until 1.0 and possible 1.1. because I think they are many months away from making a fun game.
Buildings with water requirements need a ‘Water Tower’ nearby. They don’t use the same drinking water sources as the colonists.
Thanks, I went back and checked I have a large water (1500) storage unit near by, but for reason only known to the developer that doesn’t supply water to buildings… I guess you have to have a water tower nearby, nothing bigger, and of course it doesn’t make a lot of sense that a regular well won’t work…
Whoa. Now I found Dawn of Man terrible. Super uninspired, incredibly boring, and brain-dead. Is it way better now than a few months post-release? Their previous game, Planetbase, I found to be a hundred times better. I will agree combat is pretty lame in StA, but the rest worked well for me and I haven’t played it in at least 6 months.
Hey, it’s finally coming out of early access!
Wow awesome!
Gameplay looks life like. :)
Good timing just yesterday, I dropped into the Surviving the Aftermath forums looking for update.
I was underwhelmed during early access, but it is been a long-time so I’ll give 1.01 a try.
Yes they really struggled over the last 6 months for balancing, so I have very high hopes all the extra time they spent will pay off.
Can’t you also type the date it comes out, so we all don’t have to view the trailer to see the date?
I tried, but my fingers gave out. Just too tiring.
I can lend you one…
You’re a peach. I’ll ping you the next time I can’t quite make it through a sen