The Survivalists

🔰SHREDVIEW🔰 - From someone who actually plays and finishes the games before reviewing. NOTE: If you like my work, please check out the rest of my reviews, I put a lot of work in these to offer the best overall description of what you’re up against. Thank you in advance! 🔷 ABOUT THE GAME & LORE 🔷 The Survivalists is what happens when you take the cozy pixel art of The Escapists or Stardew Valley and bolt on survival mechanics. You wash up on an island with nothing, start chopping wood, smashing rocks, and slowly building up your camp. The “story” is basically “survive and escape” with little scraps of lore in ruins and temples that add some flavor but never get deep. It’s a sandbox survival loop with the Escapists art style and a monkey army thrown in. It’s not a gripping narrative, it’s a gameplay experiment. The game lives or dies by whether you enjoy the grind of collecting, building, and commanding monkeys on some Dr. Doolitle type s**t. Still, shoutout Team 17, they are the ones who gave us worms. 🔷 THE GAMEPLAY 🔷 👉 GENERAL: The Survivalists is that chill survival game you can sink some hours into without guilt but it never escapes feeling like a lightweight version of bigger titles. It borrows a familiar art style by now and adds crafting, exploration, and monkeys but never goes deep enough to make the grind worthwhile. It’s fun for a few hours, then you realize every system is too simple. • The monkey system is its signature mechanic: you train monkeys to copy your actions and automate tasks. On paper it’s genius. In practice, it’s meh. Monkeys bug out, stop working, or half-complete jobs so you spend as much time managing them as you save. Watching 10 monkeys chop wood together is hilarious but it’s novelty not depth. • Combat is laughably bad. Weapons feel weightless, hit detection is sloppy and enemies aren’t challenging, they’re just annoying. When your survival loop involves dying to cheap hits because the game can’t register a swing, it’s very entertaining It’s just a prank bro. • Crafting and building give you plenty of recipes. Organizing your base is a pain since storage is basic and crafting stations overlap into messy piles at times. There’s content to build, sure, but nothing that feels rewarding or worth the repetition after a while. • Exploration has its moments. Temples, loot spots, shipwrecks are quite fun even if they become repetition. Every “new island” starts to look like the same island, just with different loot placement. The excitement is somewhat there. • Co-op is the saving grace. Playing with friends makes the grind more tolerable, even funny at times. Solo play feels like babysitting monkeys and grinding chores, and once the novelty wears off, it’s a s**tshow. 👉 NAVIGATION SYSTEM: You’re stuck with your little map view. You’ll travel island to island, setting up bases, marking points of interest. Boats are your lifeline, but navigation is simple and repetitive. The loop of “sail, loot, repeat” so you shouldn’t get lost around here. 👉 PHYSICS & MECHANICS: Physics don’t matter here. It’s all simple collision boxes and sprite interactions. The mechanics are what carry it, but they’re unreliable. Monkey commands sometimes don’t register, crafting stations overlap, and combat never feels responsive. It works though. 👉 GRAPHICS & OPTIMIZATION: I don’t like pixel art games but this pixel-art style is charming. Bright colors, cartoony animations, simple but appealing. It runs fine with no real performance issues. Looks cozy, plays smooth. Not much to say here. 👉 ACHIEVEMENTS & COLLECTIBLES: Achievements are grindy but doable. Most revolve around building, surviving, and collecting everything. Nothing impossible, just time-consuming. Expect hours of repeating the same chores to get them all. Luckily, when I started getting really annoyed with s**t was near finishing the last 2-3 achievements. 🔷 CONCLUSION 🔷 The Survivalists is a colorful but little too shallow of a survival game. The monkey mechanic is unique, if it would work as expected it would be great. Crafting and exploration are decent, combat sucks and achievements somewhat grindish. It’s fine in co-op for some quality time and the laughs but solo it turns into babysitting simulator real quick. It’s not the worst survival game out there, it’s decent to say the least. Fun once, play it once and should be fine. 🔷 PROS & CONS 🔷 ✔️ PROS: - Charming pixel-art style. - Monkey army system is unique. - Crafting has variety. - Co-op makes it more enjoyable ❌ CONS: - Combat is clunky and unsatisfying. - Monkeys bug out and get repetitive to manage. - Exploration becomes grindy and samey after a while. - Achievements are f**k s**t chores. 🔷 SHORT REVIEW & STATS 🔷 • PLAY STYLE: 🔳 PVP 🔳 PVE ✅ ONLINE CO-OP 🔳 Online Multiplayer 🔳 SPLIT SCREEN ✅ SINGLE PLAYER • GRAPHICS: 🔳 Fire the designer. ✅ Fairly old game, what you expect? 🔳 Not great, not terrible. 🔳 Great 🔳 Exceptional • REPLAYABILITY: 🔳 YES 🔳 EVERY NOW AND THEN 🔳 NOT SURE 🔳 RARELY / ON MAJOR UPDATE / DLC RELEASE ✅ NO • STEAM ACHIEVEMENTS: ✅ YES 🔳 NO (What the f**k man?) • GAMEPLAY: 🔳 WTF IS THIS S**T 🔳 TERRIBLE ✅ DECENT 🔳 ENGAGING 🔳 HAD A BLAST • DIFFICULTY: 🔳 DARK SOULS 🔳 BAFFLING 🔳 CHALLENGING ✅ MEDIUM 🔳 WALK IN THE PARK • STORYLINE: 🔳 A WHAT? WE WRITE CODE NOT BOOKS ✅ GOES FINE WITHOUT ONE 🔳 DECENT 🔳 ENGAGING 🔳 SHAKESPEARE AINT GOT S**T ON THIS ❗ NOTE - This is a review based on personal preferences and opinions. I always suggest you try the games for yourself before letting others decide for you. Even though we're all gamers, we are sure not the same.