Derelicts

Years after an ancient and enigmatic mechanism flooded Earth with radiation, you and your team are tasked with investigating the source of the incident. Build, craft and explore alone or with friends in this hostile, mysterious wasteland, using the power of electricity and water to survive.

Game Details

Developer: Romain
Platforms: Steam, Console ports planned
Link: Discord, Twitter, Patreon
Release Date: Possible Early Access release in 2023.
Status: Developer is hopeful to have it up in some type of Alpha/Beta status by end of 2022.

Planned Features

• Chop down trees, find metals and gather resources to build a cozy base to defend yourself from mutated wildlife.
• Use the power of wind, sun and water to generate electricity and power up your base by building water wheels, wind turbines and solar panels.
• Brace yourself for weather changes that will affect your electricity production (frozen rivers stopping your water wheels, night affecting your solar panel production…)
• Build wooden gutters and use the water pumps & pipes to transport wood logs to your sawmills, automating your system to make planks.
• Explore the world and find new recipes to make new tools and build parts that will allow you to progress further.
• Be ready for thunderstorms, blizzards and other forces of nature affecting your daily life.
• Find a dog companion to join you in this survival hell and help you fight.

Visuals

Game Bytes:

• While the Developer has (clearly, based on progress) been working on the games development for over a year, he took a year off work starting in September of 2021 in order to pursue the development full time. (Discord Source Link)
• The Dev imagines the game as a blend of The Forest and Satisfactory (Reddit)

2/5/2022 Developer Livestream Community Q&A (Link)

• First, and perhaps most importantly, the dog cannot die. However- it can be knocked out.
• The map will be, in estimation, around twice the size of the map in The Forest.
• The developer will look into Random Spawn Points and Player Hosted Servers. No promises made.
• While the Hunger mechanic will be impactful, he doesn’t want it to be a pain in the ass. Envisioning somewhere between Green Hell and The Forest.
• There are Normal and Hard modes planned, no further details. There is also some type of Creative and/or Pacifist mode planned. The developer is interested in the idea of Permadeath, and will explore how that may fit into the game.
• An Alpha, Beta, and Early Access is currently planned. Timing and access may be largely dependent on a future (possible) Kickstarter campaign.
• He does plan on offering both male and female avatars, but possibly no customization beyond gender.
• Enemy AI will ramp up over time, in terms of difficulty. Think similar to The Forest. Potentially base attacks from the AI, there could be mechanics or player behaviors that encourage more AI attacks/engagement. Bases will be relevant and useful to survival.
• Inventory layout/mechanic in terms of carrying quantities will be similar to The Forest.
• When you die, you’ll also drop your backpack of gear, which can be recovered.
• Price point at release is planned along the lines of $17-$20 USD.

My Thoughts (Updated 1/2)

I’m pretty intrigued by this game based on these crazy detailed videos & images. I’m not typically into high end complex building – electrical grids and the like- but it looks like he’s putting enough twists on things that it will be fresh & new. The water system videos are slick, it looks like there will be immersive tool & weapon usage – hell you can even run around with a dog! I’m cautiously optimistic on this inventory system, which closely resembles The Forest’s never-ending magical tarp system, though with a Derelicts twist. In Forest, it ended up being pretty clunky near the end and I’m hoping we don’t fall into that same disorganized mess.

I’d like to see more information & details on the enemy AI. While we’ve been able to see how they add to the atmosphere, the variety of forms, and even a little of how they might work in packs– I’d like to know more of how they’ll tie into the game experience. The Forest AI, to me, was the pinnacle of creepy engagement- the way they operated in groups and scaled up over time helped justify the multiplayer status. I’m always worried about balancing with multiplayer survival games because sometimes there’s just not anything for the group to do.

I’m also curious about the depth of the survival mechanics- things like food, cooking, hunting, etc. In The Forest, as we all remember, it was preeeettyyy basic and fairly clunky. With the detail & complexity of the systems we’ve seen so far, I’m hoping that the survival aspects receive as much love.

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