How to Survive (2013)

The first How to Survive title is a top-down, action-survival game set on a zombie-infested tropical archipelago. It blends Hack'N Slash combat with light RPG elements and a clever crafting system. The core gameplay revolves around scavenging for food, water, and materials to survive, while fighting off increasingly aggressive undead enemies. The game stands out for its humorous tone, especially through the “Kovac’s Rules” survival guides narrated by an eccentric masked character, which inject a quirky charm into the otherwise grim setting.

And trust me when I say this, this character carries the whole game, from start to finish, it is indeed the big standout, you'll have it's quotes and voice into your memory for a very long time after playing this. Crafting is one of its strongest features, allowing you to combine items into makeshift weapons and gear, it is a must mechanic since supplies are very rare, even at the regular difficulty level. Combat is responsive and satisfying, particularly when using crafted weapons like explosive arrows or homemade chainsaws.

Local and online co-op modes also enhance the experience by turning the survival challenge into a fun, shared adventure, though one I could not experience myself, unfortunately. However, the game suffers from repetitive environments and quests, with a lot of backtracking that can make the gameplay feel tedious over time. The user interface and tutorials can also be clunky, often interrupting the flow of the action. Its short campaign, often under three hours, means that the experience may feel too brief for players looking for depth or replayability.

To make this short: this game is flipping sweet. It's just fun to play. It doesn't do anything terribly new, but for being a game where the main objective is to kill zombies, it's hella fun to kill zombies.

The crafting system is very delightful, especially the fact that you can uncraft an item and then use its parts for something else. The skill tree isn't anything amazing, but it adds quite a bit to the game. Controlling your character is nice and fluid and feels very natural. The plot is nothing to write home about, but it's good enough for what this game is; you're trapped on an island. ESCAPE. The menu system is slightly clunky, but does the job just fine. I do love how stylized the game is; they did a very good job with the yellow/block color scheme mixed with stencils.

My favorite part of this game is how "real" it tries to be. Yes, it is still just a video game, but the fact that you not only have to worry about health, but also hunger, thirst, and sleep make it that much more "real" in terms of survival. I also liked how natural the character's movements seemed to be, even when just walking.

Of course there are parts where it completely goes off the rails in terms of realism; brutes, elemental zombies, the "homemade" guns, etc. Some of them feel a little out of place, but they certainly don't detract from how fun the game is. In fact, the least realistic part of the game was one of my favorite parts: Kovac's Rules. Right alongside the survival and murderous zombies, you have a ridiculous guide with funny pictures telling you how to survive, told by a very ridiculous character. I got a very Borderlands-esque feel out of it, and that made me love it.

In terms of gripes, there aren't many. The monkey sidequests were ok, but mother of god, did they choose the dumbest voice possible for the monkeys. It reminds me of the pterodactyl from Starfox Adventures. Yeah. I also wish the difficulty was more linear toward the beginning of the game; the second you craft your first weapon, the difficulty decreases dramatically and it takes a lot of edge off. The difficulty does pick up as the game goes along, it's just that initial drop was somewhat disappointing in terms of proportion.

Nitpicking aside, my only real gripe is just how excessive the game can be. When you first take a safehouse, an alarm goes off that attracts zombies, and dear lord, sometimes the amount that come running is staggering. Eventually my strategy became to quickly get inside the safehouse and close the door, then try to kill the enormous horde outside through the door by various means. It felt kind of cheap, but I honestly have trouble imagining being able to kill that many zombies without dying. You can't reload your gun fast enough and if you try to use a melee weapon, the fat zombies that explode will do heavy damage as well as knock you off your feet, which doesn't sound bad until you have 6 or 7 coming at you at once, in addition to the scores of regular zombies that are flooding you. And don't get me started on armored zombies in the midst of a hoard.

This by no means makes this a bad game, and many people would even find it to be a non-issue.

Ultimately "How to Survive" left me very satisfied. It isn't very long but I enjoyed every minute of it and I look forward to returning to it again to try playing as a different class. I can't say that it's for everybody, but I would say that anybody that likes zombie games should at least give it a try. You may be pleasantly surprised.