Kalahari’s End

Not steam deck ready right now but sort of playable with low frame rates 19-38 range. Most of the game runs around 24-25 range. I see a foundation for a good survival game here. What I didn't see was any food source to replenish hunger which I died from. The good news is the developer gave a long survival into the hunger state still never found food. Until I find food I have to leave a lower score despite enjoying what I played. Chopping trees down was satisfying. Can't comment on the bow and arrow since I never found food. My biggest negatives is better optimization this game should easily hit mid 40's on a Steam Deck give the developer some time to figure this out. Nighttime gets way too dark making night exploration nearly impossible to do. I'm sure crafting a Torch would fix this but without a Torch it's way too dark. Lack of food sources for a survival game just feels bad only life I saw was a dragonfly which doesn't seem very tasteful to me. Overall this game could be an 8-9 range caliber game. In it's current state I will give it a generous 6.5/10 fixing food sources would bump this to a 7.

UPDATE: There have been a number of QOL updates that have really helped out a lot of aspects of the game. Wanted to update my active hours for the review. I have to say that I rather enjoyed my time so far in Kalahari's End and I honestly cant believe more people aren't playing it. The survival mechanics are solid and really give a good start for refinement. The area that shines the most for me is the building aspect, with a big emphasis on creative freedom. Some of the resources to do said building seem to be challenging to find right now but I'm sure that will be balanced out in time. The overall environment is fairly immersive if not a bit underwhelming when you see the limited size of the map. Hopefully this gets expanded with further updates. The biggest pain point would definitely be the dated looking graphics but I like seeing the improvements being made in that regard. Ill be exploring more and watching the development with anticipation! Gameplay: https://youtu.be/8QlZ78-rwbY FYI: The games save system is not "brocken". There are 4 game slots and the game works on autosaves, no manual saves. You just need at least a partially functioning brain stem to realize this, but hey.

Enjoyable first gameplay. With more time and development, I can see this game becoming a really good survival game. Bugs and glitches are to be expected from a newly released game with less helping hands to fix them. As a fresh new survival game, it is fun and has lots of potential, so I'll definitely keep playing. Additionally, I love the African biome and there haven't been any survival games based on this region yet so I'm eager to see where it goes and hopefully it'll become a fully fledged survival experience soon :D

Not sure how others got it to run, but it crashes on load constantly, not been able to play it so I give up

I had to request a refund. I am a left-handed mouse user and need to remap the keys on every game I play. The remap keys were locked with no apparent way to change the default WASD. Also, the game ran very poorly on my machine. I have a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU (8 GB). There was no reason for the terrible performance. This game is currently too under-developed and should be either pulled from the market or a large patch issued. Either way, save your money and wait a bit. It's not ready.

Do not buy the game unless you understand coordinates, latitude and longitude, and can read a compass better than a boy scout. No waypoint markers, no location markers, no base markers, and no "you are here" marker or icon. Buy this game if you enjoy being lost at an abandoned South African tourist location. It does not yet feature a story mode, definitive "end game" content, or a functional co-op mode.

I enjoy survival games set in regions like Africa a lot, and appreciate the way this one leans into the setting! There's definitely quite a bit that's jarring here. Animals can break into full sprints really quickly, snakes are *way* too hidden in grass (to the point where even if I hear them, I can't *see* where they are to get rid of them), rocks are too rare even along riverbeds, etc. With that said, it also has a lot of charm. I really appreciate its more grounded approach to a brutal wilderness survival scenario. Alternative games like Green Hell have vaguely similar environments, but that game diverges from the usual survival game formula a lot in its crafting, building, and gameplay in general. As a result, this game offers that more typical experience but in a similar setting. I found myself spending a while focused on actually *surviving* before I could start to build. Usually in games like this, I get straight to building and trying to create a more extravagant base. I could really feel the risk though, and always felt like I was working towards something to make it easier for me to be self-sufficient before I start to build. My first play session ended when I was tired of endlessly looking for rocks and having no success. My hope is that when I return, more rocks will spawn after the save reload. My two main gripes really are how impossible it is to see snakes in grass even when you hear them, and how difficult it is to find rocks. Otherwise, it's a super fun survival game and addition to my library. Thanks to its setting, I actually think it'll be a new mainstay for me that I keep coming back to over time!

I don't like to write a review after such a short play time because even if it's a "meh" survival game I can usually power through it, if for nothing else but the building and exploring. When I'm in the mood for one, it doesn't have to be very good for me to get some kind of enjoyment out of it. But this game just doesn't really have anything IN the damn thing and its just a janky meh-fest. It's a pretty open ended game that really doesn't have much in it, I mean you have a couple little things you can build to craft a few things but it's all EXTREMELY basic and bare bones. You have this kind of workbench to upgrade tools and a few various food items like for cooking or drying items, you've got some basic storage. (Though I admit, it is cool you can pick up your storage containers directly and carry them else where) But beyond that there just isn't anything to strive for or to do. I'm not sure if the dev is going for a minimalist survival experience here based on realism, or if it's just so early in development that there is nothing advanced in the game at all. Because beyond a couple drying racks and the upgrade table, a couple traps and water collectors, with a few farm plots, there is nothing beyond that at all, There was a clay working station that I didn't mess with, but there is no stone working, no metal working, no forges, no advanced weapons, nothing. There is a bow and an upgradable wood axe, full stop. As an example of the basic nature, there is a type of fiber you can collect. When you open your inventory (Which is only a small radial menu) you can just click on that fiber material to craft it into rope. Because the fiber doesn't do anything else other than craft rope, and then that rope is used for virtually everything. So you've got wood, rope, and loose stone. There are so few items and so little items to craft that you can just click a resource to instantly craft it into the one thing that can be made. This Open World Survival CRAFT game forgot about the CRAFTing, I guess. Right at the beginning food isn't made clear at all, there are one or two fruits you can get lucky and find, and if you follow the beaten path at the spawn you will come across food as loot. But it's just BARELY enough to keep you going long enough to figure out you need a bow and that you need to hunt. So if you go off in some other direction or don't happen upon a fruit it would be real easy to not have any idea how to feed yourself at at the start. Ironically right after you get situated with a bow and hunted a bit, you'll start a small base, ya know, as ya do. Then realize you can build a bird trap that will catch a new bird every 30 seconds, and now boom, food no longer matters. Oh and the bow is no skill, it hits directly where the crosshair is no matter what, every time. Which is odd if this is, indeed, supposed to be a minimalist survival game. Those usually rely on in-depth hunting and bow mechanics for that realistic, immersive, feel. What ended up making me stop playing was once I built my small little base, apparently some kind of cheetah/jaguar looking thing (I could barely see what it was) spawned right near the base. Then it did some kind of charged, long range, speed dash attack at me, directly at me, directly through the walls of my base. So not only did this, whatever it was, have the special ability to no clip through my base walls..... But this insane speed charge attack also meant I could also NEVER see where it was or where it would be coming from because again, I'm in my base surrounded by walls. So I had no chance to try and dodge it, or attack it. Hell even if I could see it, I doubt my arrows would have also gone through the walls anyway. HELL, WHO KNOWS, maybe they would! I never actually tried. I mean seriously what the hell is that?? THINK about that for a second.... YOUR BASE DOESN'T PROTECT YOU AT ALL. Like.... come on now. You shouldn't even build a base in this base building game because the base doesn't do the base thing by being a relatively safe spot to set up shop. *facepalm* Why am I going to keep wasting my time on this when an enemy can just walk right through my base walls and kill me? Why would I ever recommend a game when that is going on?

Foarte frumos jocul și arată minunat cu setările grafice maxime!

Yes