Ember's Verge

If you're tired of zombies, raiders, or griefers getting in the way of your survival gaming, then this is absolutely for you. Except for the occasional wolf, you're free to scratch out your existence from a deserted island. There is a great variety of world settings from common resources and indifferent wolves to scraping for everything while wolves gnaw on your southern boundary. Seasons, droughts, and floods can keep you from getting too relaxed while you try to upgrade your living conditions and start trying to farm. I'm having a blast honestly. This is survival for survival sakes. There's no building an AK from sticks and mud. Hell, there's not even a spear. 24 hours in, still in my starting area. Can't wait to explore the rest of the island. 11/10, would let date my sister.

So, I've got opinions. To start off, overall I enjoy the game quite a lot and will continue playing, and following the development. I say this as someone whose favorite game genre is survival/crafting games; the more realistic the better. I do recommend it if you enjoy games more grounded in realism like The Long Dark or The Last Plague: Blight, rather than more casual survival games like Valheim, Raft, ARK etc. Simply put this game is the closest I've found to a "Primitive Technology" vibe that I've been looking for, especially since it's surviving on a deserted island (so no pre built structures) and avoids the fantasy theme of e.g. zombies. It's just you with nothing, and the wilderness. ---------------------- Quick-checklist, elaboration after: Graphics: ☐ Potato | ☐ Bad | [X] Decent | ☐ Beautiful | ☐ Masterpiece Atmosphere: ☐ Okay | [X] Immersive | ☐ Masterclass Performance: ☐ Well-optimized | [X] Decent | ☐ Stuttery | ☐ Poor | ☐ Unplayable Difficulty: ☐ Easy | ☐ Medium | [X] Rough | Unfair Survival Mechanics: ☐ Balanced | [X] Punishing but fair | ☐ Brutal Grind: ☐ No grind | ☐ Casual grind | [X] Tedious | ☐ Life-consuming Controls: ☐ Smooth | ☐ Grounded | [X] Clunky Bugs: No bugs noticed during my playtime. --------------- Strap in, this will be a long wall of text. Okay so, let's start with the graphics: Overall it's decent, but the atmosphere is on point. It's in an interesting middle ground where the general foliage and atmospheric effects in the game look great and makes it feel immersive, and on the other hand the models of the surrounding scenery like rocks are rather simple, without much variation. All large rocks ranging from singular boulders in the fields to the map's mountain ridges seem to have the same general round shape and look, just with a different scale. So occasionally I'll notice the repetition when wandering around. This isn't an issue in wooded areas, only noticable in barren/open areas. The atmosphere of the game is fantastic. The first time walking into a cave and having everything turn completely pitch black, and slightly struggling to go back out was unnerving. Stumbling upon a thick pine tree forest, having a heavy fog appear and unable to really see anything past a few feet besides thick foliage gave a welcomed but uneasy feeling and kept me on edge while I was there. Struggling to see what could be hiding in the grass only to get scared by a rabbit running past has given me a few spooks. The nights are dark, the storms are heavy, and the morning feels refreshing. The general quality of item models are rather good, and the only one I have a personal issue with is the look of clay. It looks like a hard edged rock rather than a softer material that you could work with your hands; which I find odd since there is already a model for a pile of mud/dirt, which could just be repurposed for clay with a different texture and feel more accurate. Now, onto performance: This is my experience on both my PC and my Steam Deck. On my PC it runs well. I haven't noticed any performance dips while running everything on the highest quality, so that's a plus. On the Steam Deck it's a different story. On the lowest settings, 720p, terrain/draw distance brought down to ~50%, the average frame rate is around 50. In some heavier areas like the thick woods, it can dip a bit lower, or during some weather. I'd assume the majority of the performance issues is just from atmospheric effects. In either case, it is still playable and personally enjoyable to play on the Steam Deck. Difficulty and Survival Mechanics: Important context: I play on permadeath with all guidance/assistance features turned off to see how intuitive the game is. I have built my first mud hut and currently am in a good survival loop with a constant supply of fish, rabbit snares, wolf meat and some vegetables. There is a codex in-game with some general information on resource locations, some crafting recipes, and some other tips. I aimed to use this only as a last resort if I could not figure something out. Okay so, in short; while the difficulty is rather rough, I think it's fairly balanced. Most of the difficulty comes from finding specific resources, but more specifically how you find/get them. Example, clay. I spent some time looking for patches of clay in the ground around water/shores with no luck, digging in random spots only to find just dirt, and it took enough wandering around that I ended up checking the codex. Turns out, clay spawns in specific, static, rock crevices that are near water, usually a small but decent walk away. These rock crevices don't look much different from the surrounding rock scenery/collection of stones and the clay blends in with granite, so it's rather easy to completely miss them. So even with that information from the codex it took some extra time to finally find a couple spots with some clay, and those spots were some that I have walked past a handful of times in the area where I set up shelter. Example, fiber. The main way (but not the only way) to get fiber is by removing specific foliage on the ground, small bushes. However, you can only get fiber from specific bushes, and without trial and error it is difficult to tell what does give fiber. The issue lies more on being able to tell what can and can not be harvested for fiber, rather than making every bush harvestable, because realistically not every plant will yield usable fiber for cordage. In the birch/maple areas you get fiber from darker small bushes, in another area you get them from a more vibrant green leaf heavy plant. This is just a smaller issue that I personally struggled with. You can also get extra fiber by harvesting tree roots, which works well, it just takes more effort. The gameplay loop of surviving is rather balanced. You can find fresh water, but there's a chance you can get sick from it if you don't boil it. Your character can get wet, the wind-chill can give problems, but you can take cover behind trees and in crevices. You can find a handful of different types of fruits/vegetables to keep you going till the next day, can get a steady supply of fish by setting up traps or fishing, and meat after a kill is plentiful. The general grind is what you'd expect from a survival game that tries to take a more realistic approach. Performing actions takes time, starting fires doesn't always work out, you can mess up crafting and lose resources, your items have durability and the quality of the materials affects the end product; however your character's passive skills do get better over time, so you'll end up breaking less things, harvest more resources from animals, start fires more efficiently etc. In that sense, yes it is tedious but it's what makes it feel like an actual "Survival" game. So.. the controls are kinda rough. Yes, the general movement is fine. You can walk, run, jump, swim. There is no crouch which is a little odd. My final verdict is that the game is good. While it is rough around the edges and needs some QoL fixes, it shows a lot of promise and I'm really eager to see how it progresses. The map is enormous with a mix of biomes, the atmosphere is great and immersive, you can (in most cases) logically figure out what to do and where to go to find resources to survive.