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Bro, do you even survive in a post-apocalyptic, turn-based, crafting, exploring, fog-of-war, character-creating, text-heavy, role-play world? Oh, you must have played NEO Scavenger too then!
NEO Scavenger is a game that has been done before. Something similar to the character creation skill-choice has been done in the Fallout series. Zombie-infested sector-based scavenging games have been done in games like the Rebuild series on Kongregate and countless others. Survival crafting games have been made so often that it’s a fully recognized game genre under the same name. So, if it’s not unique, what makes NEO Scavenger worthy of Tier 1?
Well, it’s because NEO Scavenger does all these things very well. Skill selection is unique, clear, and has meaningful impact upon what the player can do, both in and out of dialogue choices. The mechanics of the world are detailed and usually have a menu screen associated with them to display to the player what information they need to know–right down to things like where your character was wounded and how bad the wound is. Crafting allows for experimentation without being completely obtuse. Inventory management is harsh but realistically challenged–unless you find a knapsack or want to sacrifice a precious sleeping bag to make one, your carrying capacity is nearly limited to only what you can hold in your two hands. Add to this that you must manage exposure, fatigue, pain, and other bodily needs, the game is a well-built mesh of survival elements.
You won’t find flashy graphics or dynamic visual assets in this game but it doesn’t need it. Any time something important happens, there is a paragraph of text to give you the needed flavor. The theater of the mind plays a pretty big role in all of this–something that is often lacking in the gaming world today and as such getting to experience it here is refreshing. That’s not to say that our modern day “high-falootin’ high resolution polygonal graphics are evil,” but it is to say that not all games need them–NEO Scavenger being a fine example of this.
My only complaint the game’s UI. While it’s clear that some effort was put into user friendliness, overall it’s kind of cluttered and at times confusing how to get things working. Take for instance the idea of camping. There is a campsite menu, but you don’t actually camp there. Instead, the campsite menu is used for selecting where you want to rest. While there is a sleep option, you actually just want to click “End turn” if you want to rest for a bit, and not sleep for several hours. It doesn’t stop there though, for if you have a sleeping bag (most often carried in one of your hands since you probably don’t have a backpack) you must unequip the sleeping bag, go to the “inventory” of the location that you are visiting, and throw the bag on the ground so that you can benefit from its warmth when ending your turn, and not die of hypothermia. No, this kind of thing isn’t a game-breaker for me, but it’s a bit tough to get used to.
All in all, I still like NEO Scavenger and I look forward increasing my chances of survival in it through skill and familiarity. Currently my record is a whopping 1.13 days, ending when I was tracked down by a swarm of ravenous zombie dogs (right, did I forget to mention that enemies can track you if you leave a trail?). I’m not sure what I’ll find out there in the Neo world, but as I’ve said before about roguelikes, the journey there into the unknown is what makes it all worth it.
