When I booted up Survival: Fountain of Youth, it had that style that made me a bit wary of it potentially being one of those janky indy games. But I’m happy to say that, while its not perfect by any stretch, the game is solid enough for me to have put 80 hours into it and enjoyed the trip all the way through. That’s not to say the has no jank, quite the contrary, but its got plenty of polish and a gameplay loop that, if you like survival games, you’ll likely find satisfying.
For the good: its got an enjoyable progression track starting stranded on an island and eventually building all the way up to captaining your own seaworthy ships. The game has a lot of grind to it, in that you’ll need to do a lot of scavenging resources and going back and forth between node points, but the reward for the effort generally feels meaningful and impactful in a positive way. If you’re not the kind that likes to spend a couple hours collecting resources and then building a home or new tier of equipment than it may not be your kind of game but most survival-game enjoyers seem to be into that sort of effort => reward cycle.
Sounds are fine, nothing to write home about though the cutscenes seemed quiet compared to the game sound. The game comes with some nice quality of life features like being able to upgrading many objects in place and automatically crafting out of nearby storage. I think it has a few too many crafting stations that would have benefited from some consolidation (they didn’t need a unique [spoiler]carpentry bench[/spoiler] for the half dozen things it makes, should have just combined it with the workbench, same with [spoiler]forge and smelter[/spoiler]).
Base building was neat too, if quite limiting. I considered looking for a mod to remove build restrictions but I was 60 hours into the game at that point and decided to just deal with it. However, I did see one afterward that would likely be worth getting if that’s your jam. There are some places I can understand, like in [spoiler]boss arenas[/spoiler] but no idea why you arent allowed to build in the [spoiler]iron mountain[/spoiler]. Cant even build a cart there which was quite frustrating to figure out once I’d gone all the way to my destination >.<
For the bad; performance can get a little hitchyglitchy near the end, especially around lights. On a 4060Ti, I found having any active light on the [spoiler]Ark ship[/spoiler] tanked my framerate from 80-100 to 15-20. Near the end of the game around my base, I had light-fps issue too. I only had 2 lamps but, near the end, the framerate was starting to chug there too. Which, now that I think about it, was probably caused by the [spoiler]Ark ship being docked nearby as well[/spoiler].
Additionally, while the progression feels good for the first 2/3s of the game, once you get to the last two zones its quickly grinds to a halt. There isn’t really much in the last two zones that steps you up in terms of progress as if the game kinda ran out of tiers and just used those sections to further the story development. Not that you don’t get anything out of them but, if you’re decently upgraded from previous tiers, there’s not much to gain from these zones to take back with you.
The resource collection nodes being on a [i]very[/i] slow respawn timer made it a bit of a slog. This was fine early on when the low tier resources are plentiful and you just have to go a bit further to explore and get to new nodes. Makes getting [spoiler]storage on your boat[/spoiler] feel really nice. The problem is that the mid and high tier resources can take an in-game week to refresh 1 or 2 units of the [spoiler]ore or wood[/spoiler] you want. So if you want to make some more chests and the resource nodes needed to make those chests are empty, the fastest way to get more of that resource is to sleep through an in-game month. I felt that either the refresh timer needed to refresh [i]all[/i] the resources in the node or needed to be much quicker, like 1 piece per day or something.
Lastly, the story is a little… wonky. It’s not a bad story but the part that got me was that [spoiler]95% of the game is very grounded and believable. Gamey in that a single person could build a Spanish Schooner in 17 hours or hold your breath unassisted underwater for 2 hours but that’s not the problem. The weirdness comes when the last 5% of it is just that ‘magic’ stuff that happens. Like a button that causes a natural canyon to instantly fill and empty with water or living statues that attack you or venom spitting serpent that lives in flesh melting acid[/spoiler]. Its not that it’s badly implemented but more that they occur so infrequently and feel so out of place that, when something like that happens, it feels like a brick to the head.
That being said, for all its flaws, the game was quite fun and the upcoming co-op mode looks like something that might get me to replay it with a friend. It has a lot of charm and enough enjoyment to be one of the few games I wanted to keep playing so got 100% achievements on. Worth the price of admission imo :)
