UnReal World

[FlowerChild]

To be clear, this has NOTHING to do with the Unreal engine :)

As the official blurb says:

"UnReal World is a unique low-fantasy roguelike game set in the far north during the late Iron-Age. The world of the game is highly realistic, rich with historical atmosphere and emphasized on survival in the harsh ancient wilderness."

I gave this game a try a few years back, and it didn't fully grab me, but as what's probably the most hardcore survival game ever made (been developed for 25 years now), I've always felt compelled to return to it, which I'm doing right now.

Anyone else here a fan of it? Anyone want to give it a try now so we can discuss?

Free download from official web page here:

http://www.unrealworld.fi/

As far as I can tell, there's been no advances made in the Steam version, so not really worth a purchase there unless you want to support the dev.

I'm currently working my way through the basic survival scenario, which seems like a good way to learn the game so far.

[Gilberreke]

I played this a couple years ago and I remember it not being exactly what I was looking for at the time, but it being very impressive indeed.

I might give it another try at some point

I know some people on the IRC used to play it, I'll ask around

[rockoutwill]

Well I mean I hate the UI, like a lot. It was a while ago so I don't know if it's gotten better.

But I loved the concept and idea. It's partially what made me want to start writing my own game.

[CrimsonStorm]

This is one of those games that makes me question what I think I actually want... because while, on paper, it seems like it should be almost exactly what I'm looking for (in terms of freedom, challenging survival, interesting setting, etc.) but I can never actually engage myself in playing it.

It might very well be a problem with how I interact with this game (and others like it--while obviously a different genre, Dwarf Fortress is the closest parallel for me). I feel like I need to rely on an external resource (i.e. a wiki) in order to get anywhere, but in doing so, I see the mechanics of the game too clearly and it loses it's 'magic'. It doesn't help that the in-game documentation is really wordy and painful to navigate. For example, in Unreal World, trading with villages for supplies is pretty important, but the mechanics of trading and value are so opaque, I felt the need to look them up to understand them. But then, I could easily find the 'best' item to mass-produce and trade, which then felt uncomfortably min-max-ish, and I quickly found myself not having fun playing.

I can totally accept that this is at least somewhat my fault in lacking self-restraint, but it also feels like there design space to encourage better player engagement, either by making a wiki-style resource less necessary or useful, or otherwise mitigating its effects.

[FlowerChild]

I think one of the things that really doesn't help with the above is that there seem to be a LOT of dangling loose ends in this game.

For example, I had a tutorial task to cross a lake using a boat I was to make myself. I see something in the description about a raft, and a hollowed out log boat thingy (forget the name). The hollowed out log makes sense to me as I don't have any cordage to spare to tie a raft together, so I start digging through the UI trying to figure out how to craft the hollow log thingy. Awhile, and a few wtfs, later, I decide to consult the wiki only to find out the log thingy isn't craftable, and only purchasable from NPCs. Sigh.

Same thing happened when wondering where I could find salt to preserve meat.

Same thing happened when wondering where I could find nettle (or other cloth) to make my own nettle clothing like the stuff I spawned with.

So yeah, just to say that I think when you have that many counterintuitive loose ends dangling in your design, it's very hard for players to not wind up diving for the wiki whenever they run into trouble, as you quickly learn that there's no guarantee the feature you're trying to figure out even exists.

I'm still on it, through the first "tutorial" scenario, onto the advanced one now. Enjoying it, but I think it's starting to feel a bit aimless to me, without any tech progression or other long term goals to really work towards.

[Gilberreke]

Yeah, using the terms from my game design thread, the game is expansive, but doesn't scale much.

From what I seem to remember, my biggest gripe was the trading. I didn't particularly want to trade stuff, but there's a lot of areas where the game forces you to and that wasn't the kind of game I was looking to play at the time.

[FlowerChild]

I'm not sure I even find it all that broad either, especially for something that's been in development for 25 years. Sure, there are a lot of menu options to sift through which gives the initial impression of feature richness, but is the gameplay really that diverse? Unless there's a lot of stuff I haven't seen yet, I really don't find it to be.

From what I seem to remember, my biggest gripe was the trading. I didn't particularly want to trade stuff, but there's a lot of areas where the game forces you to and that wasn't the kind of game I was looking to play at the time.

Yeah, agreed. One of my earliest disappointments with it was the realization that I couldn't craft everything myself eventually.

[Gilberreke]

I'm not sure I even find it all that broad either, especially for something that's been in development for 25 years. Sure, there are a lot of menu options to sift through which gives the initial impression of feature richness, but is the gameplay really that diverse? Unless there's a lot of stuff I haven't seen yet, I really don't find it to be.

I think the trick to these games is to make each part play different, so it feels like a collection of simple to optimize mini-games. Most games of this style fall flat there. There tends to be a lot of same-y content. And then there's an issue sometimes with predictability, where it's hard to find a strategy, when the outcome can be entirely too random. A good example is Fun in Dwarf Fortress, where it's just not clear where any decision leads you and the slightest mistake snowballs into a situation that you can't fix with the information the game provides you with.

One thing I've been wondering about these rich complex games: if you look at a very basic game in the genre, like Survival Kids for GBC, does it really play that differently? Does all that extra complexity add another dimension or are you better off with a simple, focused design? I'd like to try that new Zelda open-world game, I heard they strike a nice balance of simplicity versus complexity in different parts of the game. Fallout 4, for all its flaws, handles it quite well too, they took a strategy of making the complex, fiddly bits optional, while making the core gameplay just a very polished loot 'n shoot, which works quite well.

I guess you want a basic pizza with tons of optional toppings instead of a 1000-layer cake where all the layers taste the same.