Surviving Winter in Iron Age Finland
Comments (0) As I noted during my Victoria 2 review, I tend to prefer gameplay over graphics. Hearts of Iron 2 is now Five years old, Victoria is now Seven years old. Yet I have played them more in the last few years then any other games in my whole collection. They are even getting more play then their newer sequels. So it might not be surprising to find out that I enjoy games like Dwarf Fortress and a few other Roguelikes I’ve played. But another reason I don’t review is I tend to play a game non-stop for a week and then get bored and never touch it again. So I bring you my current flavor of the month:
The UnReal World RPG
The UnReal World RPG
The basis of the game is that you are dropped off in the middle of Iron Age Finland and have to survive. There are many beasts you have to fight along the way that could have their way with you. There are also Raiders from the far east looking to make life even worse. There are many ways to survive, from farming to trapping to fishing and you are given a wide open world to live in. Of course you could just walk into a village, kill everyone, eat their flesh and enjoy their goods. In the end it’s all up to you how to live. Sometimes I like to carve up the Raiders for meat, not because I need it but just to send a message.
There are scenarios and lessons to ease you into the game, which is good if you’ve never played a game like this before. The real challenge though is just to survive the winter. The winter is so cold that as soon as you walk away from a fire you will start to freeze. Unless your clothing is just right, or your covered in bear fur. It’s even tough to fish in the winter because the rivers freeze over except for the rapids.
Now the game does become tedious, and sometimes the controls are a pain (if your thirsty at a river drink enough so your not thirsty anymore damit!) but as you improve at the game you can always add new challenges in. Or you could even try starting out in winter, a position that is just asking you to die. Also the NPCs, although lacking in dialogue can definitely be fun. The world is in constant flux when your away, so you may find that NPCs have fallen into your traps and died.
It costs three bucks to buy the one time license, and considering this is just a single person’s hobby/dream, it’s money well spent. At the very least the game should give you a few hours of fun as you try to survive beyond a month. Eventually you’ll set yourself up a little too well and the game will become boring. But if you can make your own story and find guidelines for yourself to make it interesting it can be fun. Also make sure to swing by the Wiki, it can definitely give you some great tips.
