UAYEB: The Dry Land

Impressive work for a game created by only 1 developer in 3 years. More than 30 hours of gameplay for a beginner to finish it. The survival and crafting part is fun and the puzzles are hard enough to be interesting without being rageful. Tips: - Crafting a car asap is indispensable if you don't wanna run for hours in the desert. - Dont go to a mayan site if you are not full in food, water and bandages.

UAYEB. Have you heard about it? No? Well, me neither until I got it in a pack of games from Humble Bundle and decided to give it a try. After many fruitful experiences and spent 35h later I can give some answers what it is about. +The world is wide and beautiful (I approve CryEngine) +Long lifetime (30-40h) +Nice mixture of puzzles, platforming and first person shooting +Cool story +Numerous resources to collect and things to craft +Quite unique experience all the way -The world feels empty -Crude enemy AI which seems to be blind, but then when facing you it detects you through the thickest of bushes -Some nasty occasional bugs -Stiff first few hours -When voice acting is not bad it's amusing UAYEB is a survival game based in a post-apocalyptic world in near future where Mayan indians actually foresaw it correctly that world ends in 2012, but the way things happened were slower than originally was presumed. Whatsoever you play a guy called Uayeb - one of the few survivors in the world where only friendly contact seems to be a woman named Joanna. The game begins when protogonist wakes up from freezing chamber where he has spent more than a short while and has lost his memory. I could immediately feel first person puzzle game elements strong and reminding me of games like Myst and new Tesla Effect while wondering inside the large apartment and hunting items. Things change however after you step out of the house you woke up. 16 square kilometer area is free to be explored technically without limits, but there is not much point in it at the beginning at least because you must take care of thirst and hunger and you can't go wondering in the desert before you have proper supplies and a map. Being developed with CryEngine, especially the nature look astonishing and with the successful landscape designs the look of the game really pleases an eye. Excluding my graphic card my current computer is not brand new and it still could deal the game without bigger lags. First few hours of the game can be frustrating, even painful for minimal supplies, resources and not much clue what do to. You might feel pushed in the deeper and colder end of the pool, but when you get the hang of it - it begins to go better and better. Joanna will reward you with useful assets like map and blueprints to craft things like solar panels, bandages and even a car powered by sunlight. To craft things you will need materials which also becomes easier when you find right places because every material (excluding very rare gold) spawns back after a moment. (Also it is good thing to note that when I played, in the beginning there were no quick saves, amounts of resources were tinier. Moreover the hunger and thirst became more quickly) The main point and sugar or should I say gold of the game is 20 Mayan artifacts which each lie in different places in the world and each one is an unique scenario where you need to use your head and equipment to leave the trophy in your hands and in one piece. Some of them can be very tricky because usually clues do not enlighten things a lot, but still it never did feel unfair. Indiana Jones movies seem to have improvised the game a lot. As long as you got enough drink and food supplies and travel during daytime it helps a lot already. The storytelling walks hand in hand with the artifact hunting and while there is not any face to face conversation the audio tracks which Joanna sends are interesting to listen when the identity of the protogonist is revealed bit by bit. It goes without saying that I liked UAYEB a lot, but I still wouldn't say it was a GOTY material. There is very much cool things, but also several shortages. Usually when we are talking about open world games there should also be the point or motive actually go in places. For example in recent Far Cry games you can find yourself on the top of the mountain looking in a horizon and seeing some ancient construction. After that you take your vehicle and travel to that place and during trip you see a lot of other points of interests which can be side missions etc. Of course the artifacts are sprinkled in different places of the map, but you can't access the sites until you have collected the related clue which again can be only collected only in certain order. So UAYEB's huge, but lifeless world can feel a bit dull for the lack of NPCs and wild animals and in its worst the game can feel a fan mod for some larger game. It is necessary to note however that the game is an indie game produced by one developer with the limited budget. And while I don't want to praise the game too much for being developed by only two hands, I say that this guy seems to listen customers and answers swiftly and politely for sent feedback. I would have recommended the game to be purchased when in sale, but after recent updates and cut of price I say that the price tag is totally reasonable. There is also a free demo available! I hope to see the travels of Uayeb continue in a future in promised Episode 2.

TLDR; fun game that is just difficult enough to keep you interested yet remains accessible to all levels of gamers. PLUS you are directly supporting the ACTUAL creator - yes ONE guy did this all on his own. Fully recommend this game. I'm careful when deciding to spend money on a game. Having been able to play this on a friends account, I realized that I was having a lot of fun and decided to purchase this game not only because of the amount of time I was spending in it but also because the game developer DESERVES and EARNED it considering the amount of time and hard work he has put in. The community for this game is very friendly and helpful and even the creator himself has reached out to players. This is primarily an adventure game. The puzzles make you think without driving you insane or want to stop playing. The crafting and survival aspect add to the fun WITHOUT turning into a hardcore grind like some other games do (just to force in-game time.) The majority of time you will spend in game will be because you are genuinelyhaving fun and want to explore. The graphics look good and there is some beautiful scenery, especially the sunsets. There are some cool details like stealth kill animations, rickety planks that will knock you off balance, and inclement weather. Certain aspects of this game are a little redundant (constantly having to back to the city, having to re-open the crafting tab to craft every single bandage etc...) The AI isn't the smartest but it serves its purpose - to keep things interesting. However, none of these aspects of the game detract from the gameplay experience. I do recommend purchasing this game knowing that you will not only have fun but that you are actually supporting a genuine person who truly cares about the enjoyment of his gamers.

UAYEB: ~~~~~ As the Mayan calendar predicted, the event that occurred in 2012 changed the world as we knew it. The world economy fell to its knees and by 2017 the entire population of Earth began to revolt against its politicians. This led to an incredible conflict, which many could see sending humanity to extinction! A group of scientists decided to freeze as many people as possible for a period of time in the hope that these survivors would wake up long after the end of this conflict and start humanity all over again. For you, it was 2019 when you were frozen by one of these scientists, who happened to be a friend of yours. Wakey, wakey - its now 2119; time to wake up in this brand new world and find the lost civilization! UAYEB is a first-person action / adventure/ puzzle game where you take control of a character who was frozen into a deep sleep for 100 years. His goal is to find the lost civilization as well as 20 lost golden artefacts. At the start of the game, your character will wake up fairly chilled, in a capsule located at the basement of his friend, Joanna’s, house. After finding a way to warm himself up, he starts receiving e-mails from Joanna on his laptop. She had woken up a week earlier, and is now giving him tasks to complete in order to progress through the story. The laptop is also the place where he can access his inventory, including craft items and blueprints, as well as anything to do with his well-being, such as how thirsty or hungry he is, and whether or not he has sustained any injuries. The only issue he will encounter with his laptop, and any other electronic devices, is that the batteries run out frequently and the only way to recharge them is to use a solar panel. There are a good number of resources to gather in the world of UAYEB, from food and clothes to minerals, and they are very easy to access and collect. He will also need to fight other survivors within this world, and it’s safer to do so using a firearm at a distance, as they will blow up when killed. Other things that can inflict injury are mosquitos, spikes, and jumping too high. The other means of death is by drowning, which can happen if he’s forced to go underwater. He will find clues as to how to reach these artefacts either at Joanna’s house or in the lost city, but make sure he has plenty of lock picks in his inventory so he can unlock doors. He also has access to the crafting table within the lost city. A tip for you; there are great blueprints in the lost city, including for the car. Maybe take a bit of time to explore it! Otherwise, they will be plenty of long walks under the sun. He can always teleport himself back to Joanna’s house if he is running out of water or food. Don’t forget to give your character a nap here and there as it will help him to recover from his injuries. As I mentioned above, it is pretty easy to follow the instructions on how to get to the golden artefacts. The difficulty is in actually getting to them, and boy, it will take plenty of time to figure out which path to use, where the spikes will come up, or simply how to avoid them. What I mean by that is if your character touches one of these spikes, his health will take a dive, or even worse . . . he’ll die! In terms of the puzzles, I can’t say too much about them right now. The reason is that there are 20 artefacts to collect and after 9 hours of play I am about to collect my third one. I must say that the first puzzle took me a while to resolve, but the second was pretty much straight forward. Now, I got the car, I know where the third artefact is and I know when the sealed door will open and close, but I am missing a big element, which is the potion that will allow my character to hold his breath underwater for longer. I guess I’ll get back to searching! Based on what I have seen and played, I truly believe this game will take you a minimum of 50 hours to complete and I must say, it’s timpressive that it’s the work of one man. Graphically, it’s pretty good, as are the soundtrack and controls. I did have some issues with reloading my saved games, which was frustrating! Positives: ~~~~~~~ + Nice graphics + Interesting Story + Good number of resources to harvest + Interesting and challenging puzzles so far + Very impressive work made by one man + Achievements and trading cards Negatives: ~~~~~~~~ - You’ll die a lot on the way to retrieving an artefact - I had issues with my saved games UAYEB will make you think and keep you on your toes from the start. Give it a go now! 7/10 Key provided by developer/publisher for review purposes. Any opinions expressed are entirely my own! 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>can't turn off motion blur >annoying bugs >fps drops >long loadings >awful voice acting >mediocre graphics >dumb puzzles it's awful, save your time and money for something else

[h1] UAYEB: The Dry Land - Episode 1 [/h1] === [Player Base: ] === ☑ Casual players ☐ Hardcore players ===[ ❤ Audience: ]=== ☐ Kids ☑ Adults ☐ Everyone ☑ Mature ===[ ♬ Story] === ☐ Doesn't have it ☐ Bad ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Fantastic ===[ ☼ Graphics: ]=== ☐ Really bad ☐ Bad ☑ OK ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful ☐ Masterpiece ===[ ☼ Difficulty: ]=== ☐ Easy Peasy ☐ Easy to learn but hard to master ☑ Medium ☐ Hard ☐ Dark Souls ===[ ۞ Game time/length ]=== ☐ Really short ( 0 - 2 hours) ☐ Short ( 2 - 8 hours) ☐ Average ( 8 - 12 hours) ☑ Long ( 12+ hours) ☐ Endless ===[ ☣ Requirments: ]=== ☐ Toaster ☑ Average ☐ Solid Medium ☐ High end ☐ Unoptimized ===[ $ Price: ]=== ☐ Full price ☑ Wait for sale ☐ Don't do it ☐ Free ===[ § Bugs ]=== ☐ Game itself is a bug ☐ Lot of bugs ☑ Few Bugs ☐ Nothing [u] Gameplay [/u] UAYEB is a singleplayer story-driven adventure and puzzle game, with survival and crafting elements. Players take on the role of Uayeb, a game developer in a past life, now lost in a forgotten land retaken by nature. With the help of your friend Joanna, you will explore and survive in this hostile environment, unveiling clues and artifacts leading to the lost Mayan civilization. [u] Review [/u] I'm taking into consideration that this game was developed by ONE person and from what i've played of this game.... it's pretty impressive. The game does have some flaws but what do you expect from one person? It took them over 3 years to make this game so his put a lot of time and effort into this so he deserves a lot of credit. I recieved this game from a bundle so I didn't out right buy this game, nor would I since it's not my kind of game. (There's no real guide in the game which I find very off putting) It's not worth it's full price but you should consider getting it on sale. If this was made by a team I would be giving this a negative review but since it's by one person, he deserves this game to be played. ■■■■■□□□□□ 5 / 10

Обычная индюшатина на CryEngine. Просыпаешься голым и вперёд лутать, крафтить и заниматься "томб райдерством" (нужно собрать 20 артефактов) Дешевая прорисовка интерфейса и падения фпс обеспечат вам незабываемый "экспириенс") В игре куча багов. Урон от многих прыжков. Летающая лодка в конце (снижайте настройки графики) и прочее Графон в большинстве отличный, но отсутствие детальной настройки графики вызовут затруднения на определенных картах (дают только пресеты лоу-миддл-хай-верихай) Геймплей к середине наскучивает, но некоторые ловушки быстро оживляют сердечный ритм) В добавок вам нужно есть, пить и следить за температурой. В игре легко умереть, сохраняйтесь чаще. Локализации нет, для начальной помощи юзайте видосы в обсуждении темка закреплена. Я бы поставил ладонь без пальцев (равно?), но т.к. нельзя, скорее палец вверх, но если будете брать, то только по большой скидке. Пойдет. 5 аптечек из 10

Poorly written game. It doesn't even run as a game, but windows sees it as a background task, so alt F4 keeps the game sound running. You have to go into task manager to completely shut down the game. First 'puzzle' to open the door is a what should be a straight forward turn the electrical boards to connect the entry and exit. This guy then decided to add arrows to it, which makes that easy puzzle even easier, but a lot more time consuming and annoying. Then in that should be simple to program puzzle, sometimes it doesn't turn the board you click, but the one alongside, even though you click well within the boundaries of that square. Then you come to a part where steam is blowing out of a pipe, with a very obvious broken floor where you obviously need to go it. Right as I want to go in there, game stops me to tell me that the steam will probably kill you... Alright, that annoyed me even more, so I decided ♥♥♥♥ it, lets try anyway, because I probably will stop playing this game anyway. Guess what, didn't die. Then I stumbled upon these floating broken wires that of course are deadly if you touch them. Let it be that there is a ton of space to shimmy past. Of course the dev don't want you to do that, so kills you anyway while not being near that wire. ♥♥♥♥ experience, poor programming

In short: get it, if you like raiding tombs, massaging your temples, surviving, reloading after falling to your death for the fifteenth time and don't mind the amateur-hour jank or repetition. * * * Almost not worth it due to lack of polish, occasionally cryptic puzzles and general repetition of the game loop (find a clue > go to a temple > solve a puzzle > get another spoonful of story from your NPC partner > rinse, repeat), but for the current asking price you might find it tolerable. There's definitely some level of passion put into certain elements, like, weirdly, interaction icons, level design, the whole concept of a post-post-apocalyptic first person survival puzzler with an amnesiac protagonist exploring the ruins of an ancient civilisation on top of the ruins of another, slightly less ancient civilisation, and the basic understanding of how to keep the player going with a dangling carrot of future equipment upgrades and tightly rationed bits of story-telling, sloppily hacked together from all the apocalyptic cliches of 2010s. Certain issues could've been addressed with a little bit more testing. Some puzzles might prove artificially cryptic due to lack of explaining the "rules" of the puzzle (for example, you see the photo of a rock in your hints section, but you can only randomly guess to try shooting it to dislodge it, because the game itself never signposts that you can do that - the rock seems firmly stuck in the ceiling, barely peeking out, and until that point you'd never shot anything else, but live targets). The game could also use couple of essential 'quality of life' features, like: - the ability to turn off the eyestraining motion blur (can not be fixed - the config file in the game folder won't react to Cryengine's motion blur commands); - custom controls (only a default layout available, but some prefer to use E for action, Ctrl for crouching, C for inventory etc. - can be fixed with an Autohotkey script) The developer's heart is in the right place - deliver a "feature-length" story-driven first person adventure journey - but doing it single-handedly is a nigh impossible task without shipping the project with a bundle of annoyances that'll put off many less tolerant players. It suffers from pace breaking repetition in the second half of the game, lackluster user settings, janky save-load system (don't ever reload your game with an UI icon on screen or else it'll get permanently stuck!), and the puzzles could use more polish, both in variety and, at the very least, better integration into the environment. By the end of the game don't be surprised to see a stone lever suspended in the air and growing out of a wooden plank that somehow operates a giant stone on the other end of the map. But the core concept - solving puzzles and surviving in the desert - is good, so here's a recommendation with a lengthy list of provisos. P.S. Oh yeah, the voice lines from the protagonist might become unbearable, when they recite an entire blog post on the bag being full whenever you try to pick something up (a tiny "error" sound effect or a single-phrase "nope/already full" line would suffice). The only delivery that consistently makes me fully sympathize with the player character's unhinged anger is whenever the lockpick breaks for the third time in a row. Contrary to the industry standard, the female voice acting was above the board and even good at establishing a well-composed companion that you're never quite sure whether or not you should fully trust.

I'll put a thumb up, for now, as I've played not much (but longer than shown) and I understand is a one man project. The game start promising, but there are a few annoyances that detract from the overall experience, so far. * Laptop charge is a just a pain. I didn't find a recharge station, and I need to press this "k" button to recharge, far too often. I mean... let me charge the laptop up to 100%, so I do it less often. Is not realistic, not an interesting action to do... over and over again. * Thirst ... I dehydrat far too fast. Again: survival is good, but having these machanics accelerated to a point where you need to take care of these too much, is just getting into the way. * Day cycle start about 9AM and by 16PM is already dark. Again... too short a day, especially in Mexico.... you can't sleep so much, otherwise you gonna die of thirst and hunger. * Saving system... please introduce an unlimited "save". I don't know when I need to bail out of the game. And I'd like to save the game when I want, without "40" slots. I have my peace and my enjoyment. * Plant "hit box": way too large. Cactus and other plans hurts (really bad) unless you detour frm them.