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0 If you’re looking for a new open-world survival game similar to Green Hell, check out Odinsoft Inc.’s latest game Survival: Fountain of Youth. Twin Sails Interactive and CE-Asia helped publish this game on the Steam Store in early access on April 19th of this year.
What people will do to look young again?
Set in the 16th century, players take the role of a crewman who set sail with Juan Ponce de Leon to seek out the legendary Holy Grail. After your ship gets destroyed in a storm, players get washed up onto a beach alone. They must survive the harsh elements and deadly wildlife during their ongoing journey to uncover the ancient relic.
Gameplay
The player wakes up on the beach and gets greeted with a tutorial to help them learn the basics, such as explaining how to craft and where to find the more common resources like wood, leaves, and hunting. Once players have finished the tutorial, they can begin to uncover the mysteries. Before starting the game, players can select the difficulty they want, ranging from very easy to very hard. This changes how fast the character’s needs go down and how much damage they can take and deal with wildlife.
Gathering resources to survive
Stocking up on resources is key to any survival game, and Survival: Fountain of Youth isn’t any different. Players can harvest various items from various trees, such as coconuts to help keep the player hydrated and small sticks to craft into a campfire. When gathering from a source like trees or rock piles consumes in-game time. Players will then have to wait thirty days to replenish, becoming tedious when players have to run for nearly ten minutes to find the same resources. Some supplies might be on the ground like small sticks and molluscs to eat.
Once players have all the items they need, they can craft various useful items to help increase their chances of survival. Making tools like an axe and spear will help with gathering wood and fending off beasts, while clothing will lower damage taken from animals. Workstations let players craft better versions of tools and unlock new blueprints for them to craft with. Disassembling items returns some of the materials the player used to make them.
Weather Conditions and Injuries
Survival: Fountain of Youth gives the players different challenges they will have to overcome, one being the weather. If a player doesn’t find shelter, they can become ill. Prevent this by staying warm, getting out of the rain, or crafting clothing. Looking in caves, players can get poisoned by a scorpion. If left untreated, this will evolve into a harsher disease. Luckily players can craft medicine, or when they go to sleep, there is a chance they will cure themselves.
Stats players will have to keep an eye on are thirst, hunger and energy. I didn’t struggle to keep these up as food was abundant and green coconuts kept my character well-hydrated. When trying to craft anything, there is a chance for the player to get an injury. The chances of injury go up at night, so try to craft more during the day. When the player loses all their health, they will faint and respawn at the last bed they rested at. Fainting lowers the total max health of the player by ten. This gets shown with the red chunk on the health bar.
The Journey Ahead
The player can make a raft to discover what lies beyond the ocean in search of what happened to their crew and uncover the Holy Grail. The controls for the raft are simple, and the wind doesn’t affect movement. The raft does take damage while sailing, even if the player hasn’t hit a cove or some rocks. This can be solved by finding or making a repair kit.
There is five regional islands total, including the one players start on. Each region seems to be named after an island, for example, Boar, Bird and Jackal Island, with some having sub-islands, like Copper Island. Once reaching land, it is best to find a large tree called the cartographer tree to create a map that helps show resources around the island.
Graphics & Audio
Survival: Fountain of Youth gives the player audio queues for when a wild animal is nearby, having a short-eared dog growl or the sound of a rattlesnake tail. Voice acting during the cutscenes is good and helps deliver the story. There isn’t much for the overall world regarding sound while using tools such as an axe has no audio plays.
The world looks clean and bright, but nothing stands out. When entering a cave, it is pitch black so using a torch helps, but it still does look bland. There don’t seem to be any animations for using tools to cut down trees or harvesting from animals, which is a let down.
Longevity
I played Survival: Fountain of Youth for about ten hours, and that was before I actually left the starting island. There is a lot to uncover, and I barely scratched the surface of what the game has. The difficulty selected at the beginning can change how long things take with hard mode making you struggle with keeping up with the character’s needs.
Final Thoughts
I struggled with this game as it became very tedious. I spent ten to fifteen minutes running to simply find a rock pile for small stones just to repair an axe. It wouldn’t be much of a problem if fighting for survival wasn’t so hard with the diseases and wildlife getting a jump on you. When getting injured, it is difficult to recover even with healing items as they don’t give a lot for healing.
Crafting can end up being a bit of a joke as a simple hammer needs a large boulder to craft it, whilst a simple axe only needs a small stone. With durability being so terrible, cutting branches from one tree destroys the axe, and you waste more resources fixing stuff rather than gathering them. Placing a container would be great if they didn’t have a weight limit which is odd for a chest.
There is a lot of improvement needed during this early access so let’s see how its development progresses.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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