A surprisingly fun survival game that launched into early access.
Head back to 10,000 BC and show you can survive in Neolithic Dawn.
Developed by Neolithic LLC, this virtual reality (VR) game takes you back to when the Great Lakes region of the world was younger and more unforgiving, to ultimately fulfill your purpose.
While there are a few different survival games out on the market – Green Hell VR, Song in the Smoke – this game introduces multi-generational permadeath. This means if you die, your character is gone and you’ll pickup 20 years later as your now grown child.
The game launched June. 27 into early access, with the team already aiming big with their roadmap, detailing the full release later this year.
In Neolithic Dawn you are on a journey to become what is known as the “Star Seeker.” Your quest will take you across five different open world maps, each brimming with dangers and a harsh landscape.
To survive, you’ll need to craft your own weapons and manage your resources as you engage in physics-based combat and tame animals.
Now that we know what this game – which makes one reminiscent for Far Cry Primal – is all about, let’s jump into the details.
The game starts you off with a tutorial as you learn how to turn a rock into the business end of a spear, harvest the stuff to wrap your weapons, and then put it all together once you’ve chopped down a few trees.
From there you’re taught how hunt a VR deer and cook some VR meat. Although the deer technically disappeared before learning anything, luckily there was some meat already near the fire pit. Who knows if the computer happened to be kind and magically do all the work, but it’s a survival game so doubtful.
Since we’re already on the subject of glitches we’ll stay here, because there are a few and they seemed to become more persistent.
After learning how to start a fire – which resulted in more smashing controllers together than one should probably do – the tutorials never started again. There wasn’t one that went over any of the statistics – sure you learn how to see them, but nothing is fully explained and there’s no detail on things like filling your water bottle.
Eventually, however, every time the button to see the stats appear resulted in them popping up for a brief second before disappearing. It was here when it became pretty difficult to keep playing as stats like water and heat would drop too fast and you couldn’t track it.
There were many times when, despite putting food to your mouth and pulling the trigger, the character would not eat. This also resulted in a death or two; hint, for when the stats thing is fixed: don’t let your hunger get to a dangerous level.
Another issue that happened often was the spear you’re trying to throw, ending up attached to your backpack instead of throwing. There probably needs to be a more defined motion or something to this effect, because throwing a spear is an infuriatingly difficult task here.
The backpack is also sort of difficult to use, with the shoulder for grabbing your weapon switching through the playthrough.
Now remember this is early access and the hope of the team is to keep building alongside your exploration of the world, so the issues aren’t everything.
For the most part, the game is fun and does most things right. It’s challenging to have to pay attention to your statistics and makes the more “caution to the wind” gamers realize that they need to change their tactics. While it seems like sometimes your stats will drain far too quickly – pretty sure people don’t go from completely hydrated, to dying of thirst in the span of 30 minutes – this is something that can be tweaked.
In your quest to find the disappearing mammoths, you’ll come across a number of different types of animals. This includes a slew that want you as their meal.
But fear not, as you can tame the animals and take on your journey with a buddy like a wolf by your side. This is sometimes a hit or miss addition to games because, yes, people enjoy petting things in VR. However, are these animals added to aid you or just there to be a background character that you can scratch behind the ear.
When the hunting system does work it’s very well detailed. While this may not be something that everyone enjoys, it is part of the game and tasks you with actually working with the animal to obtain all the necessary materials.
This usually means taking your blade and working until the progress bar fills up, but the level of detail there is remarkably high.
A few final thoughts as we wind down on Neolithic Dawn.
Firstly, the game does get confusing as there aren’t always clear directions for you on where to go and what to do. The world is big and there’s a lot to explore, but chances are you’re going to wander off and those pesky stats will lead to another death.
Graphics are what you would expect from an early access game, a lot of flatter textures and less refined scenery, it’s not a game killer but it’s not reflecting the graphics shown on their website.
Finally, this game is a good start. There’s a lot here and with time – and maybe after being ported over to a headset that supports better quality – it’ll become the best version of what it can be.
Neolithic Dawn is a new take on the survival genre that doesn’t just let you pick up from where you died. It’s got every intention of being a challenge to your skills and with an ambitious roadmap that includes new content both pre and post official launch, there’s every hope for the developers to see success.
