UnReal World Review

I don't know, WHY you want my trousers, but... we CAN make a deal. As foretold in the "Darkwood" video, it's now time to talk about the woods of Finland. This is where "UnReal World" takes place. It holds the record as being the planet's first open world survival game, but that's not all.

It also holds the Guinness record for longest updates support in a game. It started development in 1990, and finally came out in 1992. So at time of this video, it's been ongoing for near 30 years. The first iteration was a more typical fantasy ASCII roguelike game.

You run around in a D&D-like world, fight elves, get treasure - all that good stuff. Well, some mechanics did stay and it's changed very drastically over the decades. Chiefly, we're no longer in homebrew D&D, but instead Finland during the Iron Age. This choice came from creator Sami Maaranen, who was inspired who was inspired to make the game more about the history of Finland.

So, for the past 27 years, and with some help from his friend Erkka Lehmus, he's done just that. And has no plans to stop. That isn't to say this is an Early Access game or something like that. Versions of the game, that are years older like this one, are still full of content.

Sami just has a lot of ideas when it comes to things he could improve or things he could add in. Who knows what the next years could bring? But I'm here now, so let's head as far north as we can go. Making a character requires a lot of steps that you'd usually expect from an RPG.

Your first big choice will be your culture. I think that ancient Hawaiians and Finns had wars over who could control all the vowels in the world, but I don't know. You can always pick something more vanilla, like the Owl-tribe. You pick what your character will look like, you pick your starting season, and now we're at the stats.

These will affect your skills and you can reroll them as many times as you like. For the most part, your culture will determine which ones are favored. You're then informed what spells and rituals you know. We'll talk about that more later. Skills, there are...

A lot of skills. You can tag 5 to get bonus points in. On lower difficulties you can even reduce them. Now you can minmax and be a Big Dick Bushcraft God. Either way, up next is world creation. You could go into the game or pick a new location to start in or re-create the world.

Now you can see where the tribes are. The people of Finland would rather be devoured by bears, than live too close together. This spirit carries on in the country today and you could see it by visiting any bus stop. Sadly, you can't start wherever you want.

You have to click "randomize" until you get somewhere close to where you were looking at. When you pick that, you can finally - FINALLY - pick your backstory. This decides how the game starts, so you can look at it as a play style decider and some more difficulty options.

Once you've done that, now you decide how much help you want. As you can tell, customization is the name of the game. The tutorial actually will teach you a lot and it gives you free items, so there's no reason not to take it, if you're a first-timer.

NOW... We enter... But it doesn't look like this. The game looks like this. Yeah, that whole section was just a lie. Alright, so let's talk about the gameplay- Alright, so let's talk about the gameplay- Jesus Christ- Let's talk about the presentation.

On a technical level - what can I say? It's an old game. The art style is very simplistic. A lot of the sprites in the environment are well detailed, but it's nothing I'd call incredible. I think it looks its best in the forest, which you'll likely be spending most of your time anyways.

Without all those trees, it's a lot easier to see how repetitive the tiling on the ground really is. The benefit is that once you're used to it, the game is easily readable. This is a game where you need to collect items off the ground or hunt animals by following their tracks.

Now, considering how far out you can zoom to see everything, it makes sense not to have the terrain too cluttered. Still, there are some nice environmental effects, like rain and snow, and it's pretty neat seeing the environment change along with the season.

Villages might have different styles of building based on their culture, and that's about it for what I can praise, really. Even compared to something like "Space Station 13", you should temper your expectations. Your character sprite won't look different depending on what you're wearing or what you're holding.

Whether you're fighting, or making a fire, or building a cabin, the only animation is violently wiggling. Whether you're fighting or making a fire, building a cabin, the only animation is violently wiggling. There are tiny few exceptions, but expect wiggling.

Having a mix of game graphics and live action photos is also a bit odd, but you get used to it quickly. What can I say? You should know what to expect. Sure, it would be nice, if all the characters had beautifully drawn 90s adventure game artwork, but we're working on a near one-man budget here.

It can lead to some unnecessarily surreal moments, but for the most part it's okay. Wait, is that me? As for the sound, there's also not much of it. There are some occasional ambient sounds, but not a whole lot of variety. For the most part, instead of just having random sound effects of birds and wildlife, "UnReal World" wants you to actually pay attention to them.

A strange sound is worth investigating. There are roughly three or four music tracks in the game and they don't play often. Two of them sound very similar and are less than a minute long. They are fitting for the setting, and I do wish there were more of them.

In fact, one of the older versions I played did have additional music, but I understand why it got cut. So, for the most part, this will be a very quiet game. There's no main story or anything like that - "UnReal World" is what you make of it. That doesn't mean there's no quests and conflict, because, boy, is there.

Now I'm gonna get into the gameplay. The number one goal of "UnReal World" is survival. There are plenty of shitty ways to die. You can starve to death, freeze, get killed by animals, get killed by people - the list just goes on and on. Every moment you're alive is a moment that you're winning.

There are two ways to move through the map. You can move through the regular world or use the overworld. You can shift between these at any time. The overworld is useful for travelling long distances. You can see animals, NPC's, villages and landmarks.

It'll also mark where you've built a shelter or left a trap, so you don't get too confused by things. So, from time to time, you could just pop out to get a look at your surroundings. Travelling like this will eat through your hunger and thirst faster, because you're covering more ground.

So you could also just move through the regular game world. You can find useful resources this way, but the terrain is harder to navigate. Regardless, you'll spend most of your time here. The game leans heavily on the realism side of survival. Getting water is easy in summer and fall, but come winter and early spring, you might have to dig through the ice to get it.

That means needing the right tool, unless you want to spend hours doing it. This could also depend on your skills, how tired you are, how nourished you are - there's a lot at play. A simple task in other games could take weeks in "UnReal World". Let's say, building a house.

Making a simple shelter could take less than an in-game day, or a few minutes for the player. If you want to make a cozy cabin - you have your work cut out for you. You need to find the location, then use your timber craft skill with an axe to actually chop the trees down, then you need to haul the trees, then after that you carve them into logs.

This will be a time-consuming process for each tree trunk, and you need several to make even a single wall. You still need to eat and drink and sleep during this. You can also overexert yourself working and need to take a break. Which is, of course, affected by a weight system depending on all the stuff you're carrying.

The actual act of building a wall could be the most stressful part of all, depending on your skills. A single segment can be a project taking well over a day. Frankly, building civilization is atrocious, but the rewards for getting it done are great.

A place where you can sleep comfortably, a fireplace to cook food. Instead of catching and eating all your food in the outside shelter, and then waking up to Winnie the Pooh ripping your testicles off. and then waking up to Winnie the Pooh ripping your testicles off.

And then waking up to Winnie the Pooh ripping your testicles off. As I hinted at before, there's also going to be a lot of wrestling with the controls. There's a key for just about everything and they're also case sensitive. So while pressing "t" will throw a spear or shoot an arrow, "T" will take off equipment.

If you go in your inventory and press "d" to drop an item, it won't do anything. "d" opens a separate "drop item" menu. So you can't drop something from your regular inventory. The learning curve for this kind of thing is high. It's not "Dwarf Fortress" high, but it's high.

Going back to the log cabin example - a LOT of buttons make that cabin. I think, it might actually be handier than radial menus, once you get the hang of it, but I don't think I'll ever master these. Each one of your skills can have so many actions tied to it, and there's so many skills, and it...

It just goes on. You might be thinking "This sounds awful, why would anyone play this?" And I admit - I was thinking that very thing while playing this for a while. Then there was a magical moment. It was like my brain was injected with something illegal from South America.

I realized just how expansive this game really is. I gave some examples of ways to die, but there are many ways to save yourself as well. I had a good playthrough going: I bought a dog from a village, I named him, I had a nice camp. It was all good. Then I decided to risk crossing melting ice in the spring and, inevitably, I drowned.

Character - dead, playthrough - gone. There were many ways, besides just not crossing the ice, I could have saved myself, but it didn't happen. I could have been less tired and could have been carrying less. If I had a spear equipped in my hand, I could have pulled myself out.

I could have crawled across the ice to spread my weight around and not have it collapse under me. This is all besides the obvious choice - put more points in swimming and climbing. Then again, it could have practiced those skills to level them up or maybe I could have helped an NPC with a task, who knew more than I did, and could teach me a thing or two.

There's rarely a single way to do something. Let's talk about hunting. ♪ "Ug-glug-glug ya! Ug-glug-glug ya!" ♪ ♪ "Ooooo Caribou!" ♪ In some games with the hunger meter, you just need to go and kill an animal, cook up the meat, and then you have food.

Life is not so easy here. You'll either need to lure animals or be lucky enough to happen across one by chance. You're probably not gonna no-scope the thing, but instead hunt it like ancient men did. You throw a pointy thing to hurt the bad deer, then follow after it like the Terminator, while it gets tired and bleeds out.

The in-game tracking skills aren't just Batman detective vision. You also need to look at the tracks to figure out when they're circling around, how it's doubling back, where it's trying to lead you off from. It might be easier to see prints in the snow, but come another season, that could change.

If you didn't zap them hard enough, not only do you not get to eat, they also get a spear or an arrow that you launched at them. So on my Kevin McAllister character, I made a gigantic trap wall. It covered a sizeable area and I filled it with pits. Instead of screaming at the elk like Fred Flintstone, I'd scream at them still, but it would be towards the traps.

Get over here, Lunchables! "A-ah!" "Cloak engaged." With that comes the task of skinning and butchering the animal. Other parts like the bones and fat are also useful. Cleaning the skin is quick, but it'll take several days to cure, even longer than that to tan.

The meat will spoil, if I just leave it out in the dirt, so I build a cellar to store it in. Sadly, it's too humid out to dry the meat. I ended up cutting up some of my clothes to make cord, so I could hang it up to smoke in my cabin. Just another perk of having a cabin.

I bring the fur into a nearby village and I trade it for a crossbow. The successful hunt doesn't just fill up a meter - it's an entire event. Really, the game is only as tedious as you choose it to be, outside of the controls. I could have gotten food from fishing or farming or berry picking.

Or you know, maybe I'll just raid a small village. "D-ah!" On one character I murder a society, then on another I join it. Do some quests for the locals, people like me - I don't need to build a cabin. We have sleepovers now. I make a dumb boy, who happens to find a master work sword.

It doesn't end well for the locals. Magic is subtle. Think of it as "stepping on every other floor tile or something bad happens", but something bad actually happens. Roundhouse kick trees to cripple squirrels. Dunk a fishing rod before fishing for more fish.

And you know what? The magic works sometimes. Maybe the gods are real, but I'm not looking it up. Hire companions for an adventure, trade with foreigners. Actually, this weird foreign metal is insane. Activate the woodsman discount. Now it's all free.

Be a cannibal and worship dark gods. It's all up to you. Let's compare. While recording "UnReal World", I also played another survival game I like called "The Forest". It's gorgeous, intriguing and chopping down a tree instantly turns it into logs. You walk up to an animal, you whack it, you instantly skin it, and there's dinner.

There was no real hunt - I filled a meter. I was going to leave it at that, because there's actually a lot I like about this game, but birds kept landing on my house and giving me free food. It was actually getting annoying how many birds kept landing on my house to die and give me meat.

I never really wonder, if I'll be able to find food, playing "The Forest". "UnReal World" is terribly dated in presentation. Its controls are terribly dated. Anyone can pick this game up and immediately see where improvements could be made. But it's simulating so much and has so many mechanics that are so in-depth, that I still found it more compelling, than some other survival games I've played in the past few years.

Even little things, like the fact there's no money in the game, and you have to kind of haggle based on people going "Ehh, that... that's close enough..." or "You're getting there..." is an interesting idea. There are countless things that are clunky about it, but if it looks like something you might enjoy then it's an easy recommend.

The game is on Steam, but it's also free on Sami's website. It used to be entirely free based on donations, but the man had to eat. The latest stable version will always be here, but betas with some neat stuff in them will be on Steam. I used the 3.6 beta for this video and I've found no bugs.

So try the game out and, if you like it, consider buying it or donating this madman some money. You'll get to see some fun little "thank you" videos. October is soon... I'll see you next time. This was definitely one I had cooking for a while. Let's go into questions.

Salty Skramz: "What's your opinion on immersive sims and your favorite of the genre?" As far as the choice goes, I'm not too crazy - it's just "Deus Ex". Frankly, the genre scares me because it murders so many studios who put their foot into it. Undead: "What are your thoughts on "Humankind"?" Honestly, the game sounds like a mess on paper, but if anyone could pull it off, it would be Amplitude.

Cptwad: "What are your thoughts on the state of VR?" I don't know a ton about it, but it still seems years and years and years away from really having that killer app and being interesting and affordable for everyone. I haven't seen anything that makes me want to go buy a set.

Peter Hager: "What's a video you're looking forward to doing, that won't be in the immediate future?" Uhhh, one would be a mediocre PS2 game called "Legion: The Legend of Excalibur", which might not be mediocre, but I didn't have a good time with it when I rented it.