Survive the Blackout

Narrative driven game that doesn't deliver well on the narrative. The story is quite dull. The events do not evoke any emotions. Most of the time choices don't lead to any relevant outcome. It sometimes seems very absurd to give the player four different responses where each leads to the same conclusion of nothing happening. Then there's the issue of event text not making much sense and perhaps it's an issue of bad translation.

[i]"When the world goes dark and everything goes to the dogs, that's when you'll see a human's true nature."[/i] [b]Survive the Blackout[/b] is a narrative-driven, post-apocalyptic-themed yet realistically-grounded survival game that takes place in a world struck by a mysterious power outage, plunging the world into darkness and its people into chaos. Most would throw away their humanity in the name of survival in this situation but there are some who retained their decency. Which group of people you and your group will fall into will be determined by your choices as you try to make your way through the devastation to a coveted safe haven, the only remaining place on Earth that seemingly retained its electricity, called the Light. What awaits you there? Well, I guess we'll find out :) [h1]Watch me play![/h1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUKvu_suXh0 - My second playthrough minus the QTEs and on Easy mode, and still I didn't make it to the end... 9km more to go... so close yet so far! In terms of its gameplay, Survive the Blackout strongly reminded me of [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/467960/Home_Behind/?curator_clanid=33780629]Home Behind[/url], albeit with a much tougher difficulty. Note that I was able to complete the game (Home Behind) in my first playthrough but I wasn't able to do so here. There's the resource management aspect where you're expected to ensure that your group of 3 survivors are well taken care of. You are expected to scour places for items but every time you search a drawer or table for loot, you'll produce noise and the danger meter will increase. Unlike This War of Mine, there's no way for you to be stealthy about it, so obviously, you'll want to leave the place before the danger meter caps out or you'll find yourself staring down the barrel of the owner's gun. There are various random (?) encounters (note that encounters may be repeated within the same playthrough) that may be beneficial to your group as well, such as finding new resources or gear, or not, like encountering a group of robbers. You'll usually have more than a single choice to choose from whenever an event pops up, but unlike Home Behind, this game isn't as transparent, and you won't know the percentage of success for certain options. I should also point out that each option you get in these encounters seems to have a fixed outcome, and sometimes a predetermined though hidden "cost". Due to this, you can actually memorize which of the options given is the best one and choose that for your subsequent playthroughs. In a way, this makes the game rather predictable but the game does have a nice variety of encounters and unless you jot them all down, you probably won't be able to remember all the best choices for all of these encounters. I'm not a fan of its Quick Time Events (QTEs). I was completely caught off guard the first time it popped up and although I can read pretty quickly, I can also understand the dilemma of some other players who like to take their time to read both the scenario and all the options provided, and have enough time left over to consider their options carefully. Thankfully, you can choose to disable QTEs prior to starting a playthrough. [h1]Pros[/h1] + Multiple difficulty levels - Normal can be quite challenging. I'd recommend starting with Easy so as to get your bearings. + Can disable QTEs. Not a fan of those! + Pretty nice art and graphics + Has a gamebook-style gameplay + some resource management + Some of the dialogues between the characters are rather fun to read (in camp). [h1]Cons[/h1] - Poor translation work (I'm assuming). Plenty of broken English to go around. @Devs - you guys really need to get a proper editor to go through all the text in the game. For a text-based, narrative-driven game, I assure you... this little investment will help to improve the game tremendously. - Can only choose the leader and not your team mates. Personally, I think this is a con, but I guess this point can be subjective, and may vary from person to person. - Scavenging in this game seems to depend on luck and not skill. You'll produce noise no matter what, and the amount of noise produced seems to be pretty random. Every place you scavenge seems to have an owner or some other people nearby who will confront you if you make too much noise. I have yet to encounter a place where the noise you produce doesn't matter. - Fixed outcomes makes the game rather predictable, especially once you've played the game through a few times and memorized all the best options. - The options that you can choose from can be rather vague as well sometimes, leading you to choose options that you wouldn't have chosen in the first place had the game been a bit clearer about what you can expect. Oh, and there are also options that will, without warning, lead to a sudden death of a character, which sucks... a lot. - Although the game has sufficient replayability, $10 might be a bit on the expensive end. You can probably complete a long playthrough in an hour or so, and for the game to be worth the cost, you might need to play through the game 9-10 times. - Encountered repeated events during the same playthrough. [h1]Overall[/h1] Survive the Blackout is a survival game that can stand pretty well on its own. The game will oftentimes put you in morally dilemmatic situations and, more often than not, you'll encounter situations - or mini-stories as I call them - where you'll get to experience, by putting yourself in the characters' shoes, what it's like living in a post-apocalyptic world as illustrated in this game. It's probably not as great as Home Behind and definitely isn't able to measure up with the likes of This War of Mine, but I still think the game's plenty fun to play and is worth buying at a discount. [h1]Side Note[/h1] [quote]If you like this review and would like to follow me for more, please feel free to drop by my curator page: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/33780629-The-Midcore-Gamer/[/quote]

Expected a survivalist minded game. What I got was a woke game full of cartoon villain POC beating raider-cops and survivalists equated to raiders and a whole bunch of nonsense woke false dilemmas. The game is also railroaded with little to no freedom. You usually have a choice between multiple dumb ideas and no option to just walk away. You also usually have to choose between multiple options that don't in any way conflict instead of doing multiple actions and no indication that the game considers them mutually exclusive. Search this ruined store or read this piece of paper laying here in the store? Well I'll read the paper and then search the store. Nope, I completely forget about searching the store for no reason after reading an entirely insignificant piece of paper and starve. Refund requested.

I like it, I was pretty engaged with it. actually came back to play it after i finished the first few runs. u can get different endings and your choices somehow matter. fun lil game

Bardzo ciekawa gra, Polacy pokazali klasę - świetna, klimatyczna, pixelartowa grafika, bardzo dobrze wyważone zagrożenia, dźwięk i muzyka klimatyczne :) Można się wciągnąć! Jak gra paragrafowa, które uwielbiam. Plusy: - grafika pixelart! - fajna fabuła - ciekawe zarządzanie grupą - jak gra paragrafowa! Minusy: - przydałby się Polski język, jak na rodzimą produkcję ;)

cool

I've not played much, but so far I like it. I've found it challenging but not difficult and it reminds me a bit of "This War of Mine" but the story changes for your group to be on the road often. Having you make decisions on what to explore and in what manner you'll approach others, sometimes you get lucky and sometimes not so much. There is very little to almost no voice acting here, so it is all text and reading, but it's not an overwhelming amount that shouldn't really be a bother.

I think there are some good aspects to this game. You get to choose the leader of your party and they seem to have some different skill sets, although the characters who accompany them appear to be random. The story in basic, but compelling enough that I wanted to try to accomplish the main story goal. Although the story is written, the English language version leaves a lot to be desired, it's sometimes written in broken English and needs to be rewritten, although you can generally understand what they're trying to convey. The biggest part of my frustration lies in the seeming absence of weapons for our protagonists to wield. If the world ended and the result was a lawless distopian wasteland, why the Alabama trailer f#ck wouldn't your characters carry some kind of weapon? Why can't they go into the woods and make a spear or a club? Why can't they find a pipe or use a baseball bat? These characters know the world around them has disintegrated into chaos and have chosen to wander around unarmed. After playing three times, I still didn't have any option to start with or find weapons. I searched dozens of buildings and towns, but to no avail. No intelligent person would be unarmed in this violent and dangerous world. Which leads me to believe our heroes are actually cast from the Special Olympics and are relying on the sympathies of the stories antagonists to shield them from danger.

Oh boy! Those tough moral choices!

Поддержу эту инди-игру. Да, она понравится не всем, в ней нет русского языка, а читать придется много. Да, у нее проблемы с интерфейсом, далеко не сразу понятно, что происходит и как это влияет на ситуацию. Да, диалоги и сюжетные события повторяются. Но у Survive the Blackout есть главное качество для подобных игр: атмосфера. Атмосфера апокалипсиса, которая выражается не только в том, что на тебя нападают немытые рейдеры со ржавыми ружьями в руках. Здесь ощущение конца света волнами проходит сквозь игрока и заставляет его принимать действительно сложные решения. На что ты готов пойти, чтобы добыть еду, без которой скоро умрешь, в мире, в котором большинство уже сделало этот выбор? По жанру эта игра представляет собой текстовый квест, где игроку дается несколько вариантов действия. Также приходится следить за ресурсами, обыскивать заброшенные дома в поисках еды, медикаментов и других полезных вещей. Конечно же, этих самых ресурсов в мире осталось очень мало. Если вам нравится тема пост-апокалипсиса и выживания, вас не напрягает читать тексты по-английски, то могу порекомендовать эту игру. Она как минимум необычная и эмоциональная. Но учитывайте, что это, все-таки, инди-игра, сделанная маленькой командой без большого бюджета.