Outbreak Island

• Explore a mysterious island full not only of dangers, but also of useful resources and beautiful scenery.
• Craft weapons and improve your equipment. Find and extract food and medicine.
• Camera is your main ally. Distract the infected using a flash. Keep track of the situation from a distance to observe the behavior of local inhabitants. Shoot everything suspicious to obtain evidence and investigate the accident.
• Move stealthily or fight face-to-face
• Survive under the burning sun or in the pouring rain, on a clear day or at a foggy night.

Pending.

In 2022 I came across this game while browsing demos during a Steam Next Fest. Unfortunately, I got fucked by scheduling and never tried out the demo. However, the descriptions and screenshots painted a picture of a gorgeous & atmospheric entry into the survival niche. I like the twist of making the camera a pivotal part of the gameplay! The in-game camera mechanic snippets they’ve shown (via gifs on their Twitter) are both terrifying and intriguing.

The most recent trailer seems vastly different from the original footage and trailer. I skip passing judgment this early in the process, but man, oh man, the comment section for their YT trailer is filled with fucking morons. Also worth noting- the game's description has vastly altered at some point.

Original: Outbreak Island is a survival game with detective elements. Investigate the mysteries of an island and stay alive at any cost using a camera, handcrafted weapons, and deduction.

Current: Survive on a remote Island, where a mysterious Outbreak awakens bloodthirsty monsters at night. Craft, build, and defend your base in the brutal world of Outbreak Island, an open-world sandbox survival horror game. 

Game Notes

• Outbreak Island: Pendulum will release on August 22nd.
• Tiny Magicians, the development team, are a married couple! (Dev Diary #1)
• The game is intended to have both a story and survival mode. The survival aspects will encompass food & water, an injury system, and crafting. (Dev Diary #1)
• From what I can piece together from sorting through Discord, they (or at least the male half of the duo) used to have a game called Withstand: Survival, a well-received survival game on Steam. It’s no longer available for download; visually, some aspects look similar to Outbreak. While normally that would prompt some ‘cash grab’ concern from folks, I will say that the Dev is on record in the Discord as having said that those who own Withstand will get Outbreak for free. So that’s good? (Outbreak Discord Server, Dev post)
• If this animal/AI movement makes it into the live game, I’m so stoked – it’s so smooth! (Dev Update)

Website Changelog

• 3/26/23- Updated trailer and a bit of the Hashtag review notes.
• 3/09/23- Changelog added.