Card Survival: Tropical Island

风暴把我织布机卷走的那一刻 人生彻底灰暗。。。

Card Survival: Tropical Island is a survival crafting game set on a tropical island. Despite the look of it, this isn't a card game, it's just that all the items, structures and animals are represented as cards. In this game you play as a survivor who lands on an island and has to find a way to survive on his own. The game has the usual mechanics of a survival game, you need to look for resources, craft tools, find food and water and build structures for protection. All of this is presented through cards, the top row shows the region and all structures in it, the middle raw shows all the items that you have gathered here and the bottom row are the items you currently keep on your character. You can explore aregion to draw more cards from the deck which can be natural structures like trees and and other plants, items like wood or stones or even animals that you can hunt. Some animals are dangerous however and you should be prepared. You can pick up cards and place them on another card to craft new items, you can grind a stone against a heavy stone to get a sharp stone which functions as your first tool. You can use it on coconuts to peel them and then drill a hole into them to drink the coconut water, afterwards you can use it again to cut open the coconut and eat the meat. The coconut shells can be used to collect rain water or other liquids. More complex craftings require blueprints. You start with ahandful of them but to discover more you have first to discover specific items and crafting recipes and or reach enough points in specific skills. Discovered blueprints have to be researched however, the player has to select a blueprint to research and your character will automatically research it while you do something else. Once the blueprint has been researched you can place it in the toip bar and fill it with the required items. Some of these items have varietes, for example for a simple wooden spear you just need a long stick and any sharp tool to sharpen it, this can be a sharp stone or any knife. Despite it's simple look, the game has quite complex mechanics run in the background. For example there are many different ways your character can be hurt and the game simulates how this affects your performance. Hurting your hands will increase any work you do with your hands, hurt legs make exploration take longer. As you explore the island you start to find new regions, starting with the jungle. Each region has different resources to find, the jungle is lush with plants and trees but also has a dense bug population that will pester you and can even inflict diseases if you are not prepared. In the wetlands you can find watter puddles that you can collect water from but you have to boil it fiorst or you could get sick. Alternatively you can collect mud and create clay from it or some mud bricks which can be used to build a kiln. As you can see, there is quite some depth in the mechanics and everything the player does will increase their skills which improve the efficiency of their actions as well as unlocking more of the important blueprints. You can select your survivor from four different pre-designed characters, each one having their own traits and goals. The first one is the Hunter which is the beginner character who starts with many benefits and resistances against the dangers of the island and has good starting skills that help with your early survival. The Hunter's goal is to become the ultimate hunter, as such you has to improve your hunting skills, craft various hunting tools and kill many of the animals on the island until you challenge the ultimate foe. The Farmer is similar simple to play. She focuses on farming but the farm was destroyed in a storm and your grandfather is sick, so you have to take care of him while rebuilding the farm and catching the missing animals. The Tourist crashed with a plane on the island and got injured. He is obese and dangerously unfit for the island, being vulnerable against many of the dangers on it. You have to take care of your wound and find a way to survive and eventually escape. The mermaid is the only mystical character in the game. She is pregnant and comes to the island to birth her child but before that she has to take care of herself while avoiding dangerous animals that hunt her for food. Because she is a creature of the sea she has to keep her skin wet or she will die. Besides these characters you can also create a custom character from various traits that you can unlock by playing with the pre-designed characters. The game is fun but can be sometimes stressful, especially if you run out of food or water and don't find a way to get more. But every obstacle is something th eplayer can overcome through careful planning and exploration. Some negative aspects of the game are however present. First, there are many hidden mechanics the game poorly explains, like for example that fauna and flora are actually limited. They do return over time but that's a very long time, so you can run out by overhunting/-foraging. Second, character portraits. The dev decided to use AI to create those and they look really bad. It would have been better if he just used some bought asset for those portraits or don't use portraits at all. All the art of items on the other hand are done by hand and it really makes me wonder why even use AI on the portraits then. Besides that I believe the game is super fun if you like these kind of survival games. The game isn't too hard although in some circumstances it could spiral out of control.