1. #1

    Is the survival genre ever going to see a resurgence?

    Nowadays survival as a genre is often confused with 'survival crafting'. With the latter being open world sandbox 'virtual lego' style games where you often craft stone age to pre industrial things and fight zombies. Far less common in the west is the more niche 'survival' genre in the east that has similar roots to survival horror only its often a disaster/isolation situation in a fix area with challenges and puzzles to overcome.

    Games like Survival Kids and Lost in Blue by Konami or Disaster Report by Granzella are notable examples but there are plenty of games that mix survival, puzzle and action adventure that often get lumped in on aggregate sites with Survival Horror and 3rd person action games due their genre being such a niche over here. The closet thing in recent memory in the west would be The Flame in the Flood which is a fantastic little game but its another random generation game that owes more to roguelikes and procedurally generated games than its tone suggests.

    They were a huge niche in the PS2 and Nintendo DS days but in recent years we see a recurring cycle that a new one is announced. A real life natural disaster occurs and its considered in poor taste and shelved indefinitely. The PS3 release of Disaster Report 4 for example was put on ice after the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami. It happened to a lot of stuff. The Manga Coppellion about girls exploring an irradiated tokyo after a reactor blowout had its anime put back, FFXIV put its leviathan patch back and changed the story to postpone it because a patch about a giant sea serpent threatening to sweep away an island nation with a tidal wave hit too close to home. Difference is a lot of other things just have to put something on hold to change something. Kind of like how MGS2 had to change its finale after the September the 11th world trade centre attacks. But when your entire game is about a disaster? thats usually too hard to fix and it gets shelved.
    This is all pretty understandable but it kind of highlights how many of these games are made in regions of the world prone to natural disasters. You never see the UK or Finland or something put out one of these games so maybe theres a cultural draw on the developers part or something? regardless it seems like a genre that has spent an entire generation having to cancel releases. There has been teases of a remake of Disaster Report 4 on PS4 and PC with VR support but as of February thats gone dark again as well. Which is a damn shame because this is a really fun genre that never gets much love over here. Instead of punching a tree for sticks or fighting zombies its about people working together and escaping a dantes peak or towering inferno scenario and nowadays in games these events are usually a one set piece quick time event or cutscene affair. I would totally recommend Lost in Blue or Disaster Report to anyone who likes niche genres, it just seems like i stopped recommending any new releases a long time ago.

    Does anyone else enjoy these games? or have their own super niche genre that gets no releases anymore?

  2. #2
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    Disaster Report was pretty sweet, I still remember the first time that I read its review when I was still a kid (it got an 8, I think), and I really wanted to play that game.

    On topic - I like some survival aspects in a game, but most if not all the popular survival games are boring - this is a big problem in this kind of genre. You chop, you kill, you build. It is the same old formula over and over and over and over and over again - It's too boring!

    I really don't enjoy them because they are really repetitive, and also because they have a lot of downtime between the "fun" parts - sometimes you just need to wait until something happens, like in The Forest, where you can't do much during nighttime.

    I really hope that this kind of genre gets better attention and creativity in the future, but for now, I'm out.


  3. #3
    State of Decay 2 is likely to mix things up again, I have some pretty high confidence in Undead Labs.

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