Inquiry: Surival Games?

[stray]

Is there anything like this? Or anything that has at least some elements of it?

*Not "Survival Horror" mind you, but just general survival.


I'll watch survival shows on Discovery from time to time, and often think how good of a game some of those situations would make (not to mention how more educational they'd be than TV). Like last night, there was a show displaying what it would take to survive dehydration deep in the Australian Outback. For finding water, some old Aborigine guy advised to "Follow the birds".

Sometimes the lessons in these shows are just generally about how not to waste and be confident in existing technological conveniences (like lighters and flashlights) and how to depend on the environment first, how to tramp frogs in a swamp, how to lure other animals with their carcasses, etc., etc..

One interesting show was recently about Katrina and floods -- It touched on the dangers of contamination, how to salvage food, what and what not to eat, how to best get the attention of rescue workers, or how to best break out of a submerged vehicle. All could be made into pretty cool games.

[MisterNoisy]

There's Lost in Blue for the DS, but I think you're looking for something a bit grittier.  Ubi is rumored to be working on a title ('Alive') revolving around surviving after an earthquake but I can't find any real news about it aside from shitty blurbs that make vague references to it.  Something called 'Disaster:  Day of Crisis' used to be on the Wii software page, but I can't find it any more.

[schild]

Replace the australian outback with a mall, water with orange juice, an aborigine guy with a janitor, and animals with zombies and you've got Dead Rising.

You want the cloesst thing to survival ever put out by a game company though? Disaster Report. Unfortunately we'll never see the second one since Agetec fucked up the first release (Yea, it's pretty buggy). But it's a damn fine game all things considered.

[stray]

Ubi is rumored to be working on a title ('Alive')

Retarded Joystiq Article

Wtf?

[edit] Eh, my bad. Looks like it was the Ubi CEO herself who called game concept "feminine".

Either way though, it's pretty silly.

[Soln]

there is the  DS series "Lost In Blue" that is survivalish and puzzlish, but not Survivor big S.

[stray]

Yeah, Mister Noisy mentioned that. I might check it out.

Definitely don't want "Survivor big S" though. That's a game show. By surival shows, I just mean the various documentaries that air on Discovery and Discovery science.

There is a "Survivor Man" TV show, however. It's owned by the same company as the game show, I think, but it's about real survival. Nothing to do with games.

[Yoru]

Shit, there's some Scandi game about hardcore survival. It's mostly ascii-mode graphics, but with occasional bitmaps. I completely forget the name though.

It's like nethack but with more deer mutilating.

[Strazos]

It's like Nordic too, right? I use to have it bookmarked....

[climbjtree]

The game Yoru's speaking of is Unreal World. Would be about 10x cooler if it was real time.

Official site: http://www.jmp.fi/~smaarane/urw.html
Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnReal_World

[Fabricated]

No one here remembers "Disaster Report"? There's a sequel as well I believe.

[Strazos]

Those ASCII games came out before my PC days.

[schild]

No one here remembers "Disaster Report"? There's a sequel as well I believe.

You want the cloesst thing to survival ever put out by a game company though? Disaster Report. Unfortunately we'll never see the second one since Agetec fucked up the first release (Yea, it's pretty buggy). But it's a damn fine game all things considered.

[Fabricated]

Whoops.

[Yoru]

The game Yoru's speaking of is Unreal World. Would be about 10x cooler if it was real time.

Official site: http://www.jmp.fi/~smaarane/urw.html
Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnReal_World

Yes, that would be the one. It defines 'unnecessarily hardcore' in the ascii adventure genre.

[Mr_PeaCH]

This got me immediately thinking of an old Avalon-Hill boardgame from my past.  I couldn't remember the name but Googled it up in no time.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/1511

Heh.  Didn't realize that in old school game geek circles it is still revered as the worst game ever put out by AH.  I do remember it being nigh unplayable.  Read the forum thread called "It really is that bad" for extra credit.  (As noted in the thread, the board itself was the coolest thing about the game.)

But on the surface, it was a game where the goal was to survive or be rescued or find someone and rescue them.  In the wilderness.  In a boardgame.  Oh noes!  wandering grizzly bear!!

Seems ripe for portal to PC or console to me.

[Nebu]

This got me immediately thinking of an old Avalon-Hill boardgame from my past.  I couldn't remember the name but Googled it up in no time.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/1511

Wow... memories.  I owned that game and quite enjoyed it.  Of course, it took some serious rule mods to make it playable but the premise was wonderful.  I'd love to see this adapted to the PC.  Oregon trail was about as close to a survival game as I've seen since... well... if "type BANG" = survival.

[Furiously]

Roadwar 2000?