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Neo Scavenger is on Steam (http://store.steampowered.com/app/248860/) with the now usual Early Access formula, so approach with caution as many things are unfinished especially the plot/story, but what we have here is a incredibly detailed game about surviving a post-apocalytpic wasteland in a vast Michigan area (including Detroit) while dealing with all sorts of potential problems.

This doesn't sound new, I know.

What is new (although presented in a very old style) is that you literally micro manage thousand of items, containers, conditions, and most importantly actions your charcter can undertake. You move on an hexagonal map that represents the surrounding areas and while everything is highly stylized (you never see your character, you are just a silhouette in the global map) what happens to you is expressed through detailed lines of text that you can react to by taking actions among the ones that are presented to you based on your skills, traits, items and many other things. What is surprising, as I said before, is the amount of details that seems to be tracked by the game, a task made easy by the quite complete absence of visuals (except for a map, some locations stills, and vast inventory screens).

Here's an old (2012) trailer. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2K3mihtzrA)

You start the game by waking up in a lab where you've been cryogenically frozen for years and realize that world has gone to hell and you are wearing nothing, it's damn cold, and something is coming, growling, from the dark corridor in front of you. Based on what you pick at character creation (among talents and flaws, which allow you to pick additional talents if used) you are offered different ways to deal with the situation, and get a taste of how the game always offers you different ways to do something, and different rewards based on it. For example, I started a game as a medic, and I was offered the chance to wake up people in other cryogenic tanks to distract the beast. As an electrician, I could reconnect the lighting in the place and make it my new base camp. As an eagle-eyed person I could spot a weapon that I would have otherwise missed, and as a tough mean melee fighter I could have just punched the attacker into oblivion.

The general feeling is that you are playing something between a management simulation, a roleplaying game, an overdeveloped Oregon Trail, a piece of interactive fiction and Pick Your Adventure of book. All adorned with a seemingly impressive amount of items you can collect, craft and interact with, about a hundred "story" encounters, a meaningful amount of randomization between each game, and the obligatory perma-death as in any rogue-like (yeah, almost forgot about that) inspired game. The author is super active on the Steam community, and basically jumps in to discuss and debate every meaningful topic and seems very open about ideas and explaining the gears and bolts behind it.

The UI, while clearly in need of a lot of work, is somewhat pleasant to deal with once you got the hang of it as the actions you can partake are presented to you as buttons, with new ones popping up whenever you have a chance for something you couldn't do before, so there's almost a sense of discovery that comes by playing through the interface itself. Fight is another text-buttons based thing. It reminds me of Bard's Tale and Wasteland (the original ones) but with many more options and details, which reinforces the feeling you are playing the last great game of the 80s more than with a tiny indie project from the 2010s, but that isn't a bad thing unless you simply can't deal with a lack of visuals.

But is it fun? Yes!

Rating: Buy it. (Although if you want you can try the demo for free on Steam)

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3584773/Neo%20Scavenger%202.png)


(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3584773/Neo%20Scavenger%203.png)

Strangely compelling.

If you shake your sauce pan at someone with a hunting rifle, and that someone runs away... he didn't have any bullets.

Exactly. I am sure the game isn't as smart as I like to think it is, but sometimes things happen that make you feel really good. At least until you head butt a bandit (granted, with a concussion) and instantly die by severe brain damage.

Well, you just took all the fun out of my headbutt rampages.

The demo for this is now on steam.  I'm finding this far more fun than I should.  I'm just going to copy and paste a message I sent to someone earlier:

I just died of cholera from drinking unboiled swamp water
but not before a looter tried to rob me while i was dying at my campfire
So I put two bullets in him, and watched him bleed out as I died
It was glorious

This was shortly followed by:

so I was naked except for a stick and a shopping cart, but I got ambusehd by a guy with no shoes, no weapon, and a shopping cart
so I'm all "I can take this asshole"
he starts running away from me
I chase him out of town
this goes on for a good 10 minutes
then night falls
while I'm naked
in the wilderness
with a stick
I died from exposure two turns later
and that asshole got away

That's way too long for a haiku.

Neo Scavenger is one of the games in this week's Humble Weekly Sale (https://www.humblebundle.com/weekly).

This game just got the RPS' Best Combat of 2014 award (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/12/06/best-combat-2014-neo-scavenger/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rockpapershotgun%2Fsteam+%28Rock%2C+Paper%2C+Shotgun%3A+Steam+RSS%29).  :awesome_for_real:

It's a lot of fun. I've put in a bunch of hours into the game, if you buy it and are trying to wrap your head around how to play, look me up. I'll give you some tips!

Interestingly, this has left "Early access" state and is now fully released. Price even went up: it was 6$ a year ago and now it's 15$.

Even more interestingly, it holds an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating on Steam with 96% positive reviews out of 1209  :awesome_for_real: