I Am Future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival

Do I recommend this game? Maybe — but with a lot of caveats. I Am Future has a great concept and all the ingredients to be something special, but for me it landed squarely in the “just okay” category. I really wanted to love it. Cozy apocalypse games are my thing, and this felt like it had the potential to be great — it just never quite got there. The core idea is solid. Cleaning up rooftops, scavenging, building machines, and slowly restoring areas is satisfying at first. I liked the variety of things you could build, and I appreciated that different objects required different destruction methods (well except doing microwaves over and over again). I didn’t connect with the story at all. I wasn’t pulled in, and I mostly ignored it in favor of cleaning areas before exploring or following quests. Unfortunately, the game didn’t really support that playstyle well. Once areas were fully broken down, it became difficult to bring resources back, especially since the minions are… not great. The minions felt slow, frequently got stuck, couldn’t use elevators or teleporters, and barely ventured into extended areas. They would pick up anything and dump it into random chests unless you micromanaged every container, which quickly became tedious. They’d also grab repair kits, use them, and then store them wherever, instead of having a dedicated place or smarter behavior. I often ended up hauling resources back myself — including items sitting on rooftops they should have been able to reach. Combat and enemies were another low point. I really disliked the bug enemies and the big infected plant. I hated that you couldn’t permanently deal with it — only contain it — and that containment would eventually break down and needed repairs. It felt more annoying than engaging. Some of the achievements were unnecessarily tedious. Flooring every single tile was painful due to visibility issues and how long it took to craft materials — especially since not all items could be broken down into components. Visiting all locations on the drone map was also frustrating because there’s no indication of where you’ve already been, so you’re just guessing. UI and clarity were frequent problems. I didn’t realize certain things could be upgraded because of how menus were laid out. Why would I open a power connection that’s already connected? Turns out that’s where upgrades live. I only discovered this because of an achievement requiring everything opened in the library. Speaking of achievements — I had to replay what felt like half the game just to get one because I ate biomass before a party. I’m fine with restarting for certain things, but that one just felt bad. I was also hoping the game would expand more — more locations, more depth — almost Raft-style (without being in the water). I imagined setting up large specialized areas like farming, power, or money generation. Instead, once an area is cleaned, it mostly just… sits there. Movement and navigation were rough. Getting between rooftops felt clunky, and I really wished for something like a vehicle or better traversal tools. The camera was honestly the worst part for me — I felt slightly sick playing, even after adjusting settings. You have to move the camera manually, the whole time) and there is no way for it to just follow behind the character. There were a lot of small annoyances that added up: Chests take a second to open (it should be instant). Fishing was fine, but unnecessary animations slowed it down. The drone/map mechanic was confusing at first — I thought my character was traveling. When exiting the drone map, every time it took forever. The frames dropped to just 1 or 2, lagged and took several minutes... Every... single... time. And this is on my desktop computer and Steam Deck. I only did that part when I needed to You earn more tickets than you can redeem for things in the shop. The trash can only holds one item type (I know it says that, but come on… it’s a trash can). You cannot use it to dispose of anything, and I could not figure out how to do it. Farming was lackluster. Cooking was tedious, especially for achievements and eco machines (I just want the easiest option, I don't care about making specialty dishes). Decorations felt pointless — I didn’t use any beyond the trash can. NPCs, their minigames and gifting to level them up didn’t really grab me. Only did it for the achievement. I expected different fishing areas to have different fish, but they didn’t, weird but ok. The art style and camera reminded me a lot of Disney Dreamlight Valley, which wasn’t what I was hoping for. I wanted more of a scavenger, survival vibe. The character design was fine, but customization felt unnessacary, and I really wished there was a proper companion — the backpack guy doesn’t count. All of this probably sounds like I’m tearing the game apart, but that’s not really where I’m coming from. I wish I could’ve given this feedback earlier in development, because I Am Future feels like a game that could have been great. As it stands, it’s fine. I don’t regret buying it on sale, but I wouldn’t pay full price, and I don’t see myself replaying it. You might enjoy it — just don’t go in expecting something deep or especially polished. Verdict: Good idea, missed potential. Maybe worth it on sale.

disappointing and abrupt end to the game. Will be avoiding the publisher and developer from here on out.

I actually like this game fine. It's pretty nice for a cozy afternoon or two. However, the game breaks randomly about every ten minutes. Your character starts jittering and warping around, and it gets very difficult to go where you want to go, so you have to save, quit back to menu, then reload the game. The developers appear to have acknowledged this problem in the game forums about two years ago, with a promise that a fix was one the way, however, there has been no word since then. I'd recommend you stay away from this one unless there's an update.

I have played a lot of this game, it's fun to have with a video on. I can't in good conscience recommend it. It wouldn't be right to not bring up the performance issues first. A game like this makes my computer run hotter than AAA games, and never once have I been able to close the game without task manager. As you play, the loading and waiting gets longer and longer, and is just generally badly optimized. About the gameplay. I like games where I collect resources and craft, building my own little space. However after a certain point there just feels like there is a lot of space and not a lot to do. Now I haven't gotten through the entirety of the main story and if some things change that's on me. Even so, there feels like there isn't much motivation to create a space that looks nice and fun. A lot of the tasks have little minigame steps to them, and I'm personally a fan of that sort of thing. But things like the basic UI and some of the crafting should not be tied to making one at a time. I would say it's a buildup of a lot of small things, just little bits of annoyance that make going through this game's menus exhausting. Overall, I'll keep playing until I finish, but probably never again.

Honestly, it may look absurd from an outside point of view that a player with so many hours would leave a negative review, but I have my reasons. Let me explain x) Basically, the game feels like a mobile game where you spend a crazy amount of time completing tasks, cleaning areas, gathering resources, and so on. The premise is that eventually you won't need to do much because everything will be automated... Don't fall into that trap. The guy in the trailer is usually spending 2–5 minutes sleeping under the sun, while the rest of the time he's dismantling tons of stuff through repetitive and boring minigames, hoping that future technology will eventually automate it. Still, if you need something to keep your mind busy for whatever reason... this might work for you. After all, you'll be doing almost everything yourself. Robots help with some tasks, but only the most basic repetitive ones, like gathering planks that you throw on the ground while working. - There are very few puzzles in the game. I expected more while exploring. The first one was fine, but the second was like "._. ok". - No idea why, but the game can't shut down properly without crashing... x) - The robot that gives recipe tips bugged completely and stopped giving me new recipe hints ¬¬ - Don't alt-tab too much. When checking storage containers, the game starts freezing for a moment every time you switch between different storages, eventually forcing you to restart the game to fix it. Summary: "Not a bad game", but don't expect to automate everything and relax once you get robots focusing on decoration... You'll continue working like crazy literally all the time. In the late game, for example... SPOILER. >> The game promises automation, but even in the late game you're still doing most of the work yourself. << Cheers x)

In the second half of the game some bugs appear that you simply can’t fix. After checking the forums, I found out the only option is to start over from scratch and the same bug can happen again, so 15+ hours can just go to waste. The developers seem to ignore player reports, so the game is basically unplayable and impossible to be finished. It’s really frustrating that this wasn’t known earlier - wouldn’t have even started the game.

I hate to say it, but I ended up not liking it much. I was expecting...well, not an open world game. But a game where I could sort of set my objectives and gather my resources and do things in the way I wanted to do them. But instead, everything here seems to want to be completed in a specific order. To unlock This, you need That. To unlock That, you need Another Thing. You have to more or less process in a seemingly linear order....there are few points where you are free to "explore", because you are always trying to seek out something very specific. In games like Raft, for example, you are given a limited "roam" space, but the game finds ways to "explore" and find random objects that you can then gather and decide what to do with. For whatever reason, I also seemed to be constantly having inventory issues as well. Sometimes, it was me running out of inventory space. Other times, it was having trouble keeping my chests organized so I could find what I was looking for. I found myself struggling at a couple of points trying to find the last of a particular object I needed to progress (because there were only three total available for me to get, and I already had two with no idea how to get the third). Turns out I already had the third, but it was stashed away somewhere. This could just be user error...but I almost feel like the game suffered from having TOO many items. In addition, things just involve a lot of extra steps. The bots you eventually unlock are probably supposed to help with this, as they can be automated to gather and do things. But by the time I had unlocked them, I didn't even have a great way to recharge them yet...and I found myself just not wanting to boot the game again. There are a lot of good ideas within this game, but in the end it felt...well, it FELT like it was originally envisioned as one of those free mobile games with energy levels that lower with everything you do, and then you watch an ad to get more energy. And the further you progress in the game, the more demanding those needs become, until you find yourself slogging through so many ads to do something basic that you just give up. To be clear, this game doesn't have ads or anything like that. It was just the same feeling.

The gameplay loop is addictive, I give it that. I just tore myself away from the game after a six hour session. I rarely play that long in one sitting for multiple reasons, but the game had enough incremental progression and dangling carrots to give that "just 5 more minutes" vibe that addictive games tend to have. Usually it is grand strategy games that hook me like that (Total War, Civilization, Stellaris, etc.), but [i]I Am Future[/i] managed to do it as well. Very addictive. But unfortunately not very fun. Playing with a controller (which the game seems to be designed for, since the keyboard and mouse default controls are horrible IMO), I can sum up 80% of the playing time like this: find item in inventory or container, click (X) to move it to the other side. Ad nauseum. Yes, there is base building, survival mechanics (which are pretty harsh in the beginning, setting a tone that threatens to frame your whole approach to the game from that point on, always checking that hunger level), fishing, foraging and some exploration (though after almost 9 hours, I have not been able to explore much; I see vast islands and other spaces around me waiting to be explored as well, which gives me frankly anxiety thinking about how many hours that would probably take). But most of the time, the game is about inventory management, refueling, farming and watering. The loop is so busy and barely automate-able (I have three minions with a couple of updates already, but still), so if you have an inner Rain Man like me and *cannot simply have things unorganized* before exploration, this supposedly cozy game can create an uncomfortable amount of stress. With more crafting options and stations, I increasingly got the feeling of "being behind". It's not true, of course, since there is no time limit and my early game experience left me so paranoid that I had stockpiles of food to go through for in-game weeks before hunger would become an issue again. But the addiction showed itself: every time a station cried for resources or upgrades, I took it upon myself to satisfy its desires. After I stopped that six hour session today, I gradually returned back to reality and tried to recap what I had accomplished during those hours and whether I would want to do it again. And honestly: No, I dread returning to the game and feeding the addiction loop again. I am 100% sure it would get me again, losing myself valuable hours of my life doing basically the same 4-5 things for hours on end without any constructive benefit and not even for a fun story experience. Sometime in those hours I had put down my headset as I had gotten bored of the same sounds and music. I stopped reading the story exposition texts, because they never appeared to be anything more than fluff and flavor, nothing that mattered. Like those minions I had built, I was droning away day after day, going through the motions of an endlessly addictive cycle with slow incremental progression. It was a waste of time. An appealing (and in the early stages: challenging) waste of time, but a waste of time nonetheless. I have uninstalled the game to stop myself from being caught by it again.