Subsistence

This game is a big serving of donkey-balls with its; reused store bought or free assets on a UE3 game engine. getting in and out of the lakes is a task in and of itself. aiming with weapons and actually hitting the hitbox requires 100hrs to master Developer seems to be an arrogant fop with an immense disliking for anybody who doesn't love the hot garbage he makes. Refuses to add QoL features as a result of realism, and yet the bears have Mortal Kombat finishers... The grind is immense for no reason other than he doesn't know what he's doing, it's not like this is a subscription based game designed to take all of your money. and to top it off it's nearly 10yrs old and still in early access. ♥♥♥♥ this noise, no thank you.

This game is a lot of fun if you are playing in group sizes of 10+ people. For solo or even duo this game is not it. The game takes hours and hours of grinding (30+) just to have basic things up and running. And when you finally achieve this it feels like you accomplished nothing. The rewards for grinding all these hours are lacklustre to say the least. There is also no option to change the gather rates, turn off predators, or sandbox mode. You spend more ammo on killing animals and hunters (which are AI - that you can turn off) then you gather after running around for hours. There is no positive income on these things. You have to permanently run around and farm, farm, farm. There is no real reward to achieving late game. And late game takes hours upon hours. To put in perspective, all my 100 hours are from constantly playing, no idle hours (as a duo) and we have 37 solar panels which generates about 3.5 power per hour. This 3.5 power per hour means nothing if you have 5 fully upgraded mines and 2 fully upgraded fridges. And we are still constantly running out of ammo and resources to sustain ourselves, everything except for food. Now you might think, just create a dedicated server so that all those miners and things can run while you are sleeping for instance. The developer thought of a great idea to disable this feature, which means if you are offline on a dedicated server everything in your base stops producing, and NO OPTION to turn that off. This game is nearly 10 years old and still in Alpha, and if I am honest I don't think it is coming out of Alpha. And the community of the game seems nice at first, until you ask about updates or making changes to the game. The same 100 people that have been playing (and probably) paid to play the game will say the same NPC response. The developer does no effort what so ever to post updates on his Discord. It is always just a guessing game when the next update is coming. This game has a lot of potential, but if you are reading this before you buy it, DONT. Maybe in 20 years, when the next update is released.

Avoid it. The game loop is grinding materials constantly to get mats to progress while feeding a grown man more than most humans eat in a week, but just for one day. What really gets me about this game is how many hours it took to get a respawn point due to dying and respawning and walking back for hours on end only to find out you need electricity which is something that you get way later, it's required to CRAFT respawns. You must CRAFT respawns points to use your bed that took several hours to progress to the point of being capable of getting it. That was the straw that broke the camels back for me, I was willing to let the less than great mechanics in every other aspect go until I seen that. What's worse is the AI on the map barely follow the same constraints players do, they have infinite ammo, no requirements for crafting tables and they don't do anything but walk between things they made spawning objects. Once this was discovered I just made it a task to attack them for mid game materials, but it's not worth it, I wouldn't recommend the game at all. Another few things that absolutely suck in the game: Anything in water that isn't the player instantly gains a speed boost, items in water shoot towards the ocean floor while animals on the surface will actually double or triple in movement speed so they can kill players on the water, while the players movement speed in water is halved. I learned this by accidentally dropping something off the side of a dock and it shot to the worlds deepest lake ever located only to despawn by the time I got to the bottom and drowned trying to get back up. The snowy mountains are actually useless and just clog up the map for the sake of scenery, there's nothing on them, no animal spawns, no items to loot whatsoever. AI can shoot while diving under water, but players cannot.

I'm going to start off by speaking to those who have never played this game before. If you are debating buying this game, know that it will not a satisfying game to play unless you enjoy punishing yourself. Dying and walking (not running because it hurts you long term) back over a kilometer to get your body is going to be the norm for a long time. The game itself feels like a Soviet-era programmer wanted to make a game devoid of joy and made sure each mechanic worked in the most hostile way in between swigs of homemade vodka/gasoline. I understand this game has a very dedicated player base, so before people start reading this and try to dissect every point I make with what you should do and tell me to use materials that I clearly already have trouble acquiring to achieve each task with circular logic ("Can't do X, you need Y! Can't do Y, you need X!"), please take a moment to see the full message before you go back to flogging yourself in your free time as I assume many of you do. From my understanding, games are meant to be enjoyable. If I want to play it on hardcore or easy, I should be able to feel it is on that setting and get enjoyment from what I'm getting into the game for. I've played survival/builder games before and tend to enjoy them. There's challenge, but you also feel empowered by the mechanics of the game to actually accomplish your goal by steady progression. This game does not provide that feeling. Most tips I find for doing things like catching chickens or killing predators rely on some unrealistic metrics, including if you're playing on easy. Either use up a fair amount of your stamina and an exploitative jumping technique to catch a chicken or exploitatively using a platform to trick wolves. "Oh, but you can corral chickens into a fence" or "well you can kill wolves with a shotgun blast and an arrow" type of advice is dependent on me having those things nearby. If most tips I find for basic survival are exploits, that's not fun. Meanwhile, my stamina/hunger/thirst is constantly dropping and chasing a chicken to have a chance at arrows (which for some reason are impossible to find on the ground because there are all sorts of straight, straw-like graphics in the ground design) depletes those metrics. Additionally, I have to keep stuffing my face constantly, more often than I eat in real life or else I have no stamina to chase said chickens or flee from a wolf. Go fishing, you say? Okay, I need to go track down some bait as my stamina/hunger/thirst deplete. Tree grubs are not easy to find and I'm sure that bear guarding the fat tree won't mind. At no point did I feel a sense of accomplishment, which again is unheard of in a videogame meant for enjoyment. Even upon constructing a fridge, it was great until the power randomly went off (no, we were not drawing too much power and, no, nobody turned it off) and spoiled any food we had started to stockpile. I got an infection early on and just decided to never cure it since death seemed more prudent than staying alive and using resources that I could save up. This is also considering that respawning without a bed can put you almost 1.5km away from your base and you're doing a deathwalk with no buff to hopefully get your corpse back. That is bleak. I'm sure someone will read this review and give it a "tsk" and say that this person doesn't even have 30 hours in the game and is a newb and doesn't know how to wait and wants everything now and "why don't you just make an antidote for your infection by killing a wolf" and all sorts of criticisms meant to downplay how unenjoyable the game is in its current state and make those who have spent time "getting good" feel better about their time commitment. More power to you, but you can't tell me the game is fun when playing it as intended is decidedly not fun. Hard doesn't mean it can't be fun. The game itself is very pretty and looks like it could be a lot of fun except for how everything is a testament to hatred for the player. Challenge is one thing, but forcing exploitative behavior in the face of unrealistically difficult odds is a big turn off. To those reading this that feel self-satisfied in reading about my pain, you have my permission to use this review in your private time. Cheers.

I cannot recommend this game to anyone. It is, without a doubt, one of the most baffling and frustrating survival games I've ever played. There are mechanics that make me question if the developer has ever played their own creation, or for that matter, any other video game in existence. You may be thinking to yourself, "Wow, another reviewer with a lot of hours in the game leaving a negative review, clearly they have a grudge against this game." Maybe you're right.. I absolutely hate it. Here's why. -If you read other reviews about this game, you will inevitably see many, many complaints about the bag/box pickup system. It's one of the oldest, most prominent gripes about it. (Justified, its one of the worst parts.) The developer states in the FIRST LINE of the early access mission statement, "I want to start getting more players involved, so I can continue shaping the game based on their feedback." This is an outright lie. Look no further than scavenging endlessly for boxes scattered around the woods as the main method of aquiring MOST of the resources you need. Look, I'm not gonna go on about this much more, just read a few other reviews to see that everyone hates it and the dev doesnt care. Baffling mechanic. -There are no stones as a resource in this game. This strikes me as some sort of weird design choice that the developer decided on early on in the development and just kept on down that road, never considering how omitting this one resource (used in nearly every survival game ever made) could complicate the balance of items in this game. Instead of stone arrowheads, we must get nails from the randomly spawned, random loot chance bags/boxes scattered around the woods and make the arrows from those. Instead of having stone constructions, you have tissue paper (wood) that you probably will never have the resources to upgrade to slightly thicker tissue paper (metal.) You can CRAFT the nails... using iron, copper, and (you guessed it) another item scavenged from the random boxes, scrap metal. The quantities of resources needed to make them is a joke, the amount of nails gained is a worse joke, and having to loot boxes to get scrap metal to make the thing that you're already scavenging the boxes for is straight up bad game design. This is the same for pretty much anything you can craft, such as ammo. -There are no melee weapons. I mean I guess you can argue that the axe you start with is a melee weapon, but the only kills I ever got with it was when a bear would attack the wall of my base and the head would clip through and be open to cheesing it. Why isn't there a wooden spear that you can make a couple of and throw them? Because the addition of a cheap, renewable weapon would completely destabilize the entire game's item economy, or whatever you want to call it. -The developer seemingly has "realism" confused with "tedium." I am a big fan of grindy games, but this game is so disrespectful to the player's time that it's insulting. You will NEVER have enough of any resource, and when you finally are able to craft that next base installation, you're gonna be disappointed by how limited or useless it is, or how much worse your grind just got to craft something at it. You will harvest the same unfellable trees around your base every day, wandering around looking for boxes, avoiding predators. It just sucks. The fetid, rotten carrot at the end of this gnarled stick will satisfy you even less than its in-game counterpart. Which leads me into my next point. (Do i have a point anymore? I hate this game.) -The amount of food you need in this game stands in STARK contrast to how limited you are for methods to obtain it. And you need a LOT more than what could be considered "realistic." You have to be sure to keep your meat-food bar and your plant-food bar from depleting, otherwise you can't get your stamina to regenerate, then you die. The ONLY source of free meat-food is chickens, and if you cant run, you can't get them for free. If you're playing with a friend? Good luck. When you look at each food item as how much you have to spend to get it, you aren't having fun anymore. A fish costs a worm minimum, after the cost of the trap of course, and that worm equates to 18 chops of a specific tree, which takes roughly 12 seconds. This wolf takes minimum three arrows, which equates to 3 feathers, 3 nails, and 1.5 wood. If i can get the bear to attack my wall and I cheese him through the wall with my axe, the repairs will cost me an estimated 5 nails and 10 wood. This is how the food looks to me after 173 hours, fun right?!?! Now, dear reader, I'd like to pause to address something. I'm sure you're asking yourself, "Why the hell did you play this game for 173 hours if you hate it so much? What's wrong with you? Do you value your time so little?" Well, wow, that's kinda harsh but ok. But the truth is, there IS something compelling about this game. For me, I think it's a combination of the npc base raiding and the later game tech that I never reached. I've never used a vehicle, never crafted anything at the electrical workbench, never got to the underwater caves, the list goes on and on. I give up. I refuse to believe that any of these carrots will be any sort of satisfying. And as for the npc raiding... -The raiders are the straw that breaks the camel's back. This is supposed to be the fun and exciting part of this game. (Because it certainly isn't the "hunting," or the crafting, or the building, or...) So after you establish your base control unit, a few days later the world begins to populate with npc hunters. A lot of late game resources are bottlenecked by the hunters or can be found in their loot in their bases. Their movement is jerky and erratic, their aim is impeccable, their ammo is infinite, they all carry a bow, pistol, rifle and shotgun, and they're faster than you on land and in water. Let me be clear, they aren't difficult, but you have to expend resources to kill them, and the returns for spending the ammo are never worth it. I can almost see it being fun if every shot for every weapon didn't feel like I was spending my life's savings shooting it. You will use ALL of your ammo on these raids. Every time. Then you go back out and start farming mats to make more arrows and bullets, more boxes, more boxes, more boxes, then you get the notification that your base is under attack. Rinse, repeat. But you're expected to kill wolves, bears, moose, etc. It just doesn't add up. As for raiding? I chopped down a door with like 10 crafted axes once, it wasn't worth it. Color me surprised! There are just so many glaring issues in the design of this game. It is bereft of any kind of game design philosophy, and it's truly baffling how the developer can still claim to listen to feedback after 10 years of early access. The updates are rare and insubstantial, and it has a cash shop for crummy reskins of the weapons. There are many, many more things I could gripe about, but I'm ready to forget about this game forever. It has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I can't think of a single time or experience to be had that was enjoyable while playing. Avoid this game.

Subject: Feedback on "Easy" difficulty and resource balancing Hi ColdGames, I wanted to share some critical feedback regarding the current state of the "Easy" difficulty in Subsistence. I really like the concept of the game, but the balancing right now feels incredibly frustrating and unrealistic, even on the easiest setting. Here are the main issues that make the game feel more like an annoying chore than an enjoyable survival experience: Unrealistic Metabolism: In real life, a human can survive without food for weeks and without water for days. In this game, even on Easy, the character starts dying of starvation and malnutrition after just a few hours of game time. It makes no sense and ruins the immersion. It feels like managing a constantly dropping line in a menu rather than surviving as an adult man in the wilderness. Severe Lack of Basic Materials: Finding plant fibers to craft ropes is an absolute nightmare. You can walk half a square kilometer and only find three pieces of grass, which isn't even enough for a single string. In a real forest, you would gather bundles of wood, bark, and fibers in no time. The grind for basic base-building materials is completely overtuned. Please consider adjusting the Easy difficulty so that it reflects more realistic life conditions. It should be a mode where players can actually enjoy building, fishing, and exploring without being stressed out by a broken hunger mechanic every three minutes. Thank you for your time and for continuing to work on the game.

I've played a lot of this game. I mean a lot. I won't sugar coat it... this one is a hard one, and not in a good way, but hear me out. You're gonna die. It's gonna happen, either by your own hand or by the several things that'll get ya. This is where you'll learn what to do and how to do it. For instance, don't build the base thing right away... it stalls the humans from spawning. You're limited in things to do, but you can gather, craft and prepare. Then when you're ready, you'll have the advantage. Remember, they're armed to the teeth when they FIRST appear, a new player won't see that coming and easily rage quit. Not their fault, they want to go forward like the game expects them to. Play by your own rules and you'll have a better time. The human enemies are terrible. They have laser pinpoint accuracy and if you don't have a helmet, they'll eventually get a lucky shot on ya; especially the pilots who can have lever action rifles and magnums... and a new player might be curious only to be met with violence and a possible rage quit. I get it, it happens, but that shouldn't happen. The humans however, are rather dumb and with enough patience, you can turn the tables on them. I've created essentially, pillboxes around their compounds. They thought they were the hunters... they met the wrong one. You can easily farm the AI and sometimes get good stuff from them like high level crafting items, just build a shelter close by, shoot one and they'll all swarm and be confused as all get out. I'll tell you this, I've never crafted a single explosive or shotgun shell, they provide those for me at very good trade of a few ounces of lead. But I imagine this isn't how you're supposed to play. If you try to take them head on... you'll have a harder time. They will hit you very often with ease, while it takes you multiple laser focused misses before you can maybe get a good hit. Or... you can do it my way and never lose. But... oh yes, there's a but... getting into their homes is a pain. Early stages, you'll need a lot of pickaxes and axes, which need materials you can generally find in stashes or boxes... and herein lies the grind. Search, take, craft, steal, fight, die. It will get tiring, it will get monotonous and it will get boring, very quickly. At 400+ hours, I've done pretty much everything, minus a few things like build an atv... if that's not jumping a shark, I dunno what is. I can only find one berry in a bush in an entire meadow, but I can build an atv. Yeah, no. Animals are also equally stupid and violent. If you play their game you'll lose... but you can build a small blind where you spot them and make them come to you and just let a few arrows fly or if you're in a good spot, reach down and a few smacks with the ax. Be on a ledge and pull an animal, the sumbish'll try to scale the wall, giving you free reign. Again, probably not how it should be done, but it works. There's a lot that might not make sense to a new player, basic survival is one of those. If you can't provide the player with a basic survival tutorial, at least give them a sort of starting pack for first night's survival. Again, I've played this game a lot, gimme my ax and am good, I'll have hot brass on the grass within days, but a new player will get angry and will not come back. Start with basic survival for the player, a tutorial or better yet, a starting pack with essentials for at least surviving the night. A buff to item boxes as well would be good. There's a lot of wonky business going on in the game too... don't get me started on crafting, but if you'll craft anything, craft a pistol and pistol ammo. This is gonna be your bread and butter, put it on number two because she will never leave your side, unless you're not very smart. Don't question how you can craft these things with generic stuff you find in boxes, but that's the wonky stuff. Hunt, yes... but fish and gather. Seaweed in the water will help you, it's not much, but go find it and eat it. Search for it near the shores, or look for obvious textures in the water. If you're cold at night with no fire... there's a chance the water is warmer and you might survive if you go in. Fishing is fantastic, be careful of eagles. The water is your friend, unless you're chased by animals, then no water. Hunters see the water and freak out. You can hide in it and even build on it, make a blind in the water and hunt humans at their home all day. If you want to win at this game... you have to play by different rules. Use the game against itself, and you'll win every time. If you, by the grace of the deity of your choosing, manage to find a friend to play this with, bless them and go play something better together because they are gonna rage quit unless... you think outside the box the game gives you. Then, you might enjoy it. Do I recommend the game, yes... but with a huge caveat. This game needs a lot of work. Basics need to be communicated or at this point, just given to the player. This is to keep them playing, to get them to want to play. Give them a reason to play vs punish them for trying. I don't want to give too many suggestions because I imagine others have, but I will say this: the game is playable, and you can make it fun. There's worse things you can play, and I legitimately enjoyed playing. I make my own fun. I've put my time in and I didn't regret it (for the most part) but the early days were rough, and I think if the developer would ease that curve a little for new players, they might stick around more. Aside all the news, because am not here for that. I just wanted to tell you how the game is, and yeah it's ok. I dig it.

It's got that sort of early access limbo going on where nothing ever gets polished or really finished, the visuals suck in general even on max graphics, the game runs horribly even on low graphics, overall just depressing that this game is here.