IfSunSets Preview
Over the past decade or so, survival/crafting games have exploded in number and popularity. The genre’s mechanics have become so ubiquitous that they find their way into action games like Nightingale or MMORPGs like New World. At the same time, there’s a whiff of staleness too, as so many games are content with recycling formulaic ideas. IfSunSets is a new survival crafting game now in Early Access. Much about it is familiar, but it has a diabolical twist.
Monsters Come Out at Night
Most games in the survival genre start the player in unfamiliar surroundings with minimal gear and supplies, before setting them loose to forage and build. Ditto IfSunSets. After a Kraken attack at sea, your pirate self is washed up on the shore of a lush and mysterious island. You do what the game — and many others like it — teaches you to do. Satisfying hunger, thirst and the need for shelter are obvious goals, so you collect, forage, and craft tools, cook food, and build a simple shack. All these things are pretty efficiently accomplished and at first, there aren’t too many challenges. Oh, and in the first of many nods to Peter Pan, you have a tiny fairy companion. She becomes a useful ally, including in combat.Â
IfSunSets should really be called WhenSunSets because at some point — like, every hour or so — daylight turns to night and that’s when the game reveals its twist. Namely, hordes of undead arise to attack the player. Luckily, even at the start, the player can build some basic defensive structures like spiked barriers and crude weapons to keep the monsters at bay for their five real-time minutes of attacks.
Under the Surface
From those early hours, IfSunSets widens and deepens. It widens to include a considerable amount of exploration and the discovery of a home-based fortress, and deepens in the number of crafting and combat systems at play. There are NPCs — both friendly quest-givers and enemies — and a wide range of monsters and wildlife to hunt and fight. Still, you can’t always hide from the night and there’s always increased danger when venturing out after dark. In addition to the game’s narrative, the catalog, and complexity of the crafting systems get pretty deep and demanding. Additionally, IfSunSets folds in RPG-like mechanics, so that the player and ally fairy can improve combat and survival skills.Â
Some games split the player’s stats into multiple facets of survival and make it a constant chore just to attend to basic needs. IfSunSets is pretty forgiving in this area, focused only on hunger, thirst, and health. Crafting, exploration, and combat get most of the attention. The loop feels similar to the Conan MMORPG, minus the PvP elements. IfSunSets can be played in a four-person co-op mode.
IfSunSets comes with all the elements of an Early Access AA title. This means plenty of jank and performance issues, of course, and some expected missing features. Graphically, IfSunSets isn’t state-of-the-art by any stretch. Figure models and animations are its weaknesses, but the environments are interesting to explore and lush with vegetation and wildlife. The game’s audio and music are pretty understated.
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At this time, IfSunSets does not support a controller. One really welcome feature is the ability to create the parameters of a custom game. You can dial in almost every aspect of gameplay and mechanics, from night length to enemy density. There’s also a game mode in which the monsters don’t spawn at night, allowing the player to focus entirely on the story, crafting, and PvE combat.
IfSunSets jumps into a very crowded genre and at the start feels very similar to other titles. However, gamers willing to give it some play time will enjoy the way it iterates on open-world survival/crafting mechanics. Nothing’s new under the sun — whether it sets or not — but IfSunSets pulls together elements from other games and makes them mesh. Fans of the genre willing to overlook some Early Access stutters and rough edges should definitely check out IfSunSets.
Thank you for keeping it locked on COGconnected.
