Survive the Fall is an open world survival game from Angry Bulls Studio where the world is reeling from a meteor’s impact. A new lifeform known as Stasis has infected the majority of the planet, permanently changing its landscape. The survivors are doing their best to survive but not everyone is trying to work together. You must lead a personal group of survivors and have them thrive among the warring factions, creating a new life for themselves.
The balance between building your base and scavenging supplies for quests is seamless, while hammering home the lack of resources. Multiple methods to resolve situations gives you variety that immerses you in the gameplay. However, no new ground is broken and there are bugs that have a noticeable impact on the gameplay. If you’re looking for a new survival experience, Survive the Fall will work if it gets some fixes.
The story doesn’t introduce anything new to the survival genre. Different factions are competing for resources and you must manage these relationships if you want to survive. The introduction of Stasis reveals a new breed of enemies and causes areas to deal damage over time if you approach. As resources dwindle, you must establish self-sufficiency while navigating a world that gradually becomes more dangerous. It’s easy to figure out what direction the story will take after spending a few hours on it. Factions either ally with you or become more aggressive, and you largely do your best to defend yourself while allying with friendly factions. It’s not groundbreaking, but it does give a solid reason for your goals. The ease that you befriend factions also stands out since it makes you feel like you should have done this earlier.
Characters also don’t have unique storylines or dialogue to account for multiple team combinations. While the standardization is expected, it’s a shame that certain characters don’t get unique lines or special quests. Your survivors have varied backgrounds and interests that make them stand out, so not investigating these backstories feels like a waste of potential and makes your survivors feel bland.
Gameplay shifts between base-building and exploring the open world. Base-building involves lots of micromanagement during a day-night cycle, ensuring your survivors are fed and rested. Exploration involves taking a team of up to three survivors out to forage resources for and complete objectives. Complete self-sufficiency isn’t possible but the goal is to last long enough until you complete the game. Survive the Fall shines with the balance between these two modes. Base-building is crucial for equipment maintenance and keeping survivors healthy for exploration. Exploration helps you find materials, recruit more survivors, and reinforce your base. It’s fun to complete quests knowing you get rewards and creating a stronger base gives a genuine feeling of pride. When your base is fully formed, you feel like nothing can stop you.
The open world is beautiful and nice to explore. There’s lots of resources, but also lots of enemies. You can’t grab everything in one go and be set for a few days. Thankfully, the game isn’t too strict with timing and as long as you make progress towards quests, you should be fine. Harvesting everything isn’t the goal; making multiple trips is expected. Making plans to get resources while searching for points of interest is immersive, making you feel like an actual scavenger.
Base-building also boosts the immersion by making sure everyone is healthy. If survivors are tired and hungry, they won’t be effective in the open world. Equipment degrades over time and if you don’t repair your tools, your harvests won’t be fruitful. This puts pressure on you to open up trading with other factions or recruit survivors to bolster your efforts. Making decisions hammers home the leadership aspect; sometimes making tough decisions and hoping it pays off.
What hampers the gameplay are some bugs and gameplay issues. For example, enemy sight ranges don’t match the direction they face or survivors falling through the ground. It’s also possible for some quest objectives to either complete themselves or become impossible to complete. Your save files might also not work properly depending on the situation. This affects gameplay enough that it snaps you out of the immersion and makes the game frustrating.
Survive the Fall has strong survival foundations that genuinely help immerse you in the game. Even if it doesn’t break new ground, the mechanics are fun to work with and exploring is enjoyable. But the flaws are too hard to ignore and drag the game down considerably. With more refining, Survive the Fall could be a stronger entry. But right now, there’s a good chance you would get frustrated through no fault of your own. This makes Survive the Fall tough to recommend for a survival fan.
Victor reviewed Survive the Fall on PC with a provided review copy.
