Lone Survivor

Lone Survivor:

Developer/Publisher: Superflat Games

Release: April 23,2012

Genre: Survival Horror, RPG, Simulation

Language: English

DRM Free

http://www.lonesurvivor.co.uk/buy.html

Lone survivor was an indie game primarily made by Jasper Byrne. I got it in the Humble Bundle 5 sale. This is a interesting game to review because it's easy to spoil things which leaves the review being more broad with an lack of examples. I do hope this review will give you an understanding about the game though.

Story:

You play as a guy named "You" who is supposed to be a stand in for your self. An incident has happened where you have locked yourself in your apartment for days. Running out of supplies and losing your sanity you decided to venture out. The most interesting part of this game in my opinion is the story. It's vague and mysterious at first like random sets of puzzle pieces. I found myself constantly questioning what was going on in the game and try to figure out how things relate. Once you reach the end things will start to make sense but you kind of need to get the other two endings to really get the story. It deals with a theme that all of us have dealt with or will deal with sometime in our lives and is done well. I could relate to some parts of the theme and the story.

Game play:

The game is a 2D side-scrolling survival horror game. I emphasize on survival as you have to take care of yourself in the game. You have to feed yourself good food, sleep when tired, take care of your sanity by to healthy activities, and other things that I can't spoil. Experiment and try things out, use your head and read the notes. Depending on what you say and do affects the ending you get and the scenes you see at the end.

The game is not easy and can be very unforgiving if you make a mistake or don't realize about the sanity system. It does not tell you about the sanity system but hints at it in dialogue nor does it tell you what can affect sanity. Controls in this game are non-reprogrammable and can take time to get use to. They are not the best and could have been much better. Reaching the shortcut keys requires you to move your hand to reach the number keys. Combat is okay with one standard enemy if you shoot them in the head but it best to avoid all combat if possible.

Another annoying aspect is that your game only saves when you sleep but your strongly encouraged not to do it when ever you feel like otherwise you will be penalized. It can be frustrating when you have gone through a hard part but can't save yet. Unless you want to risk a penalty. A nitpick I have with the level design is that you will end up using a lot of flares to get past area's due to the lack of hiding spots. This means you will have to backtrack often to trade for new flares. One other problem with the level design is that sometimes you will stumble into a combat situation due to how close they are to the entryway that you come in from with the flashlight on, or if they block your way to getting an item. I sometimes wonder if the developer intended it to have more combat at first and these were leftovers of that idea. Despite these problems I did manage to enjoy playing it. It can take you between 1 hour and 8 hours tops.

Graphics:

The graphics are in a old style 16bit pixilated style. The low quality gives it a horror feel due to how hard it is to distinguish some of the backgrounds. It's not that you can't see what is important but rather environments and enemies only have enough details to be their but leave a lot to your imagination. It adds a nice touch but it can be awful to look at in full screen or resolutions higher then 720p in window mode. Window mode has to be configured in the programs location outside the game. Thanks to some people on the steam forums this is how you ahve to do it.

Open up the application.xml inside the META-INF\AIR folder from Lone Survivor with your favorite text editor and take a look at line 57 and 60.

<!-- The window's initial width in pixels. Optional. -->

<width>640</width>

<!-- The window's initial height in pixels. Optional. -->

<height>480</height>

Just remove the <!-- and --!> around height and width (like i did) and there you have a window mode. Hope this helps you a bit. ....\Steam\steamapps\common\lone survivor\LoneSurvivor\META-INF\AIR\ when you can't find the folder. Just enter a desired 16:9 resolution.

Sound:

The sound is alright with the game having 5 tracks that do a good job of pulling you into the mysterious and dark atmosphere. You will hear the exploration theme a lot which it can get a bit boring to hear after awhile. Sound effects are great with the monstrous noises that triggers your alertness, to avoid being attacked. I did feel uneasy when I could hear the sounds of enemies from the distance but couldn't see them. I didn't want to get trapped between enemies.

Conclusion:

Overall the game is pretty good. It has some flaws with the level design, communicating game play to the player, control layout, and full-screen issue unless you configure it yourself to work in window mode. The graphical style and the sound all contribute to the atmosphere which does a good job of drawing you in. The story is engaging by making you question what was going on and how does everything relate. You can buy the game for $10 on steam or on Jasper’s own website to support the developer.