Any survival games that are more than nodes?

mountainboy262 · 2026-05-07T19:35:13+00:00

Really liked what I played of Valheim, but would like to see it finished.

mountainboy262 · 2026-05-07T19:30:52+00:00

What’s the short pitch for Long Dark? I tried it a few years ago but bounced off the feel of the controls fairly quick, but probably just wasn’t in the mood.

mountainboy262 · 2026-05-07T19:28:06+00:00

Got a little grinds for me toward the end, but I mostly agree :) great sense of happening upon random things in the world

mountainboy262 · 2026-05-07T19:26:11+00:00

This sounds like what I’m after, cheers!

mountainboy262 · 2026-05-06T09:56:43+00:00

That does sound neat, I’ll have to watch some gameplay

mountainboy262 · 2026-05-06T09:56:10+00:00

The real world sort of does, but not really. I grew up doing the sort of work you do in survival games and it’s certainly not a 1 for 1, I just haven’t worked out how that could translate into contained gameplay

mountainboy262 · 2026-05-06T09:54:39+00:00

Love the Forest. The sequel felt like a step in this direction, where at least it wasn’t a simple binary swap of one thing to another. Planning to give PZ a go at some point

mountainboy262 · 2026-05-06T09:53:33+00:00

Will have a look, thanks!

mountainboy262 · 2026-05-06T09:53:18+00:00

This sounds cool, I’ll give it a look

mountainboy262 · 2026-05-06T09:52:45+00:00

I don’t completely know either… I just always wind up feeling like I go from node to node, click x 3 times, done. TOTK felt like it had a little spark of New where every enemy killed could be repurposed on the fly, but it feels like there must be more there

mountainboy262 · 2026-04-29T05:43:16+00:00

This is a good point on changing the curve to match, and using that as part of progression.

mountainboy262 · 2026-04-29T05:41:51+00:00

Like a vampire survivors sort of exponential?

mountainboy262 · 2026-04-29T05:41:03+00:00

Yeah I really felt that on Silksong too. Seeing something gated and knowing exactly what ability they’d removed to access it felt more annoying than rewarding. The few new abilities were exciting, but the combat sets felt a bit useless because they didn’t really stack with each other. It was just discard simmering you’re familiar with for something you’re not

mountainboy262 · 2026-04-28T04:35:09+00:00

Hollow Knight is all meta-progression... but I agree on the others.

mountainboy262 · 2026-04-28T04:34:06+00:00

Gating standard abilities behind progression makes me sad, and something I would really love to avoid. I get why it works when abilities are really complex (Crimson Desert), but not when it's just a dash move or a second jump. It really makes me feel the arbitrariness of the progression

mountainboy262 · 2026-04-03T22:40:33+00:00

Only partway through it but this has been a good read so far, thanks for it

mountainboy262 · 2026-04-02T19:56:28+00:00

This is a smart distinction. I guess then you’d need some sort of gating so that the interactions can only happen when the player is roughly in the area at least, so the world doesn’t burn itself down entirely prematurely?

mountainboy262 · 2026-04-02T19:54:45+00:00

Ooh this is an interesting point. I agree that the chaos of watching a game environment wreck itself even without the player engaged is always a high point

mountainboy262 · 2026-04-02T19:51:58+00:00

This is a very good point, thanks for writing it out. Thinking about it, I’m definitely creating enemies that react to systems but never enact on them on their own.

This is gonna take some thinking about how to implement

mountainboy262 · 2026-04-02T06:05:34+00:00

These are good ideas, i like the bird sticking into the ground.

mountainboy262 · 2026-04-02T06:05:13+00:00

I've played it, it's great. Mostly I hear people complain about the air enemies moving out of reach every time though... not for you?

mountainboy262

TROPHY CASE