Surviving the Abyss

abandoned project by greedy publisher. the game was not ready to go out of early access.

I bought the game in early access, found it unplayable and shelved it. This past week I found it in my library and, with it being fully released, I decided to give it another shot. This is my review for the second shot. Art / Graphics The game is visually pleasant. Really like zooming in and watching the fish swim between your towering buildings. Bugs. So. Many. Bugs. Let me say, while it is buggy it is absolutely playable - just frustrating at times. The tunnel placement system is incredibly buggy. Several times buildings will complain about being unreachable, only for you to scratch your head, give up, go to bed, reopen it in the morning and now everything magically works? Storyline A city builder doesn't need a story/campaign mode. But if it does, I expect the story to be damn good. Sadly, this is were the developers really dropped the ball. The story is intriguing at first - why are we making clones? who do we work for? Why is the anomaly attacking us? What even is the anomaly? What other dangers lurk in the shadows? Sadly, none of these questions will ever find an answer. Without spoilers, it is evident that the developers ran out of money/time/patience/sandwiches and just very quickly gave an ending to the storyline. Conclusion Frustrating bugs at time and a lackluster story make this title a valuable purchase only if under 5$. Overall wouldn't recommend, 5/10.

Dont buy. Buy Frostpunk instead. Its a complete game and the Developers actually care.

I really want to like this game but I can't. The setting is phenomenal but the amount of bugs in this game renders it unplayable. Crew do not deploy where you want them, randomly unassign themselves, the voice lines are too loud, the same image of a coal deposit is shown for every story sequence, local fauna often have the wrong images & they don't even show the monster when it attacks anymore. If any of your buildings enter the darkness for a second they just seemingly explode. Please please PLEASE, fix this game and make it the wonder, it's supposed to be.

I 100% see why this game is mixed. How can a game with a tutorial that gives you so much information be so useless in helping you progress. Absolute trash of a game.

Great game, seems incomplete, went from V0.3 to V1.0 in six months.

It's good, but an acquired taste sort of good. I first played this when it came out in early access. It wasn't very much then, as you'd expect of an early access game. I first played it, like what? 2022? 2023? Somewhere along those lines. The game was different and yet similar at the same time Instead of a constant UV lighting to 'deter' the anomaly from breaking things, you would have an activatable button that surged your power usage to overdrive all lights into UV, and it was a toggle rather then a construction you slap on everything. I miss this. While I agree that yeah, crashing your power is unideal, that's why we could possibly have batteries as a research that could store power over time and make a nice buffer if you accidentally go into negative power. The game's in a playable, and enjoyable state as it is at the moment, but it won't appeal to everyone. I genuinely enjoyed the early-to-mid game pipeline of having very limited crew resources, expanding out to make your crew last longer and replace them, but there was an uncomfortable period of just sitting around in the endgame where i had perfected my clones [i probably could have achieved the infinite lifespan clones earlier tbh] with only the odd minor flaw, and this was where the game began to break down a little Sometimes crew wouldn't take jobs, sometimes they refused to move into a house. It sounds bad, but it was easily fixed by fiddling with priorities and turning buildings off and on again. The ending was... lackluster, to say the least. A bit of a letdown. After all we worked for, that's it? That was what we got? I'd at least like an acknowledgement if you had managed to perfect your clones. And speaking of The Anomaly, it was... surprisingly uneventful. The moment I got access to 'defense' towers, I thought 'oh ♥♥♥♥, it's getting real now' and covered my entire base, including every outpost, with them. Turns out you only really needed them in the Anomaly biome anyway, since that's where it'll focus on you if you're present there. Understandable, makes plenty of sense, but disappointing All in all, it's a good game, but i don't think it's quite worth the current price tag. If you see this game for sale for 12-13 pound? That's the price it deserves in my honest opinion. You can easily sink [no pun intended] a good four or five hours on a playthrough if you play conservatively and carefully.

Game had potential but seems to be abandoned, no updates since October of last year, no word on updates, and a focus on two other titles they're trying to release. It's really a shame had they kept up on updates it could have positioned itself for some people waiting in between Subnautica 2 updates. If I'm wrong in the future and this game gets the attention it needs I'll change my review but I don't see that happening.

This game has so much unused potential, crying for scenarios, story branching, game modes … worth a relaxing play over 2 – 3 nights, could have been much more.

Coming from Surviving Mars, this feels like a solid early access game. If you've played any city builders at all, this game won't be a problem. Just build things as you need it, there's no real big way to fail. There's an interesting core game but it doesn't seem fleshed out enough. Also fairly short and once you've played it once, you've seen everything. Upvoted because its *just* fun enough if you get it cheap on sale to be worth a playthrough if you like this style of game.