Survive the Blackout

Interesting idea of a game but there isn't much more beyond your first hour of playtime. I would've liked more to be fleshed out. Or even something as simple as being able to pick my squad of people. You can only pick one of your 3 squad members.

Narrative driven game that doesn't deliver well on the narrative. The story is quite dull. The events do not evoke any emotions. Most of the time choices don't lead to any relevant outcome. It sometimes seems very absurd to give the player four different responses where each leads to the same conclusion of nothing happening. Then there's the issue of event text not making much sense and perhaps it's an issue of bad translation.

Expected a survivalist minded game. What I got was a woke game full of cartoon villain POC beating raider-cops and survivalists equated to raiders and a whole bunch of nonsense woke false dilemmas.

The game is also railroaded with little to no freedom. You usually have a choice between multiple dumb ideas and no option to just walk away. You also usually have to choose between multiple options that don't in any way conflict instead of doing multiple actions and no indication that the game considers them mutually exclusive. Search this ruined store or read this piece of paper laying here in the store? Well I'll read the paper and then search the store. Nope, I completely forget about searching the store for no reason after reading an entirely insignificant piece of paper and starve.

Refund requested.

Boring characters and story, tedious gameplay, and for a game that's 99% reading; the grammar would make a middle-school teacher cry. Everything about this game hurts my nonexistent soul.

Was excited for its release, but was left disappointed.

1. The story of the main game and the characters are boring and uninteresting. I tried reading all the character dialogue at camps at first, but they're just boring and bland. The main story is also full of stale breadcrumbs and uninteresting plot. Not captivating at all.

2. Camping UI is cumbersome. Every time you try to do something a dialogue box pops up and slows you down or adds unnecessary steps towards what you are trying to do. Every time you try to use a consumable item(which you have to do it often), an extra dialogue box pops up and keeps asking you "do you really really want to give that item to this character? Some other character might really really need it!!!!1!11" Yeah i get it this game has resource management very hard choices oh wow. A more concise and organized UI would have sped up everything, it's not like these dialogue boxes add anything good. I stopped trying to read character conversations because of this, it's just a chore.

3. Small amount of randomized events makes you quickly memorize them and it becomes tedious. I've played this game for exactly 3 hours and I've gotten all of them.

4. Some characters are clearly better in 95% of the randomized events. Pretty imbalanced.

5. Food is king because sleeping drains so much hunger. But loot is random. No food for 4 houses in a row? Have fun dying after 8 hours of sleep because you were hungry.

6. Mood is extremely easy to manage, making mood boosters pretty much useless. Have fun looting mood boosters instead of food.

7. Near the end the game will straight up kill you for choosing 1 choice wrong.

8. Sometimes the characters will have a conversation during randomized events. If you are busy reading what's actually happening during the randomized event, it's easy to miss this entirely. Even harder when it's a quicktime event.

9. What's up with the meaningless choices before leaving the area.

10. The game doesn't explain anything about certain status effects. Sometimes your character will get sick. But not only does the game not tell what causes this, it also does not explain what the supposed debuff actually is. This also applies to several other status effects and I have no idea why the devs chose to do this.

Final verdict : Not worth 10 bucks.

I had this game on my wish list ... wish I hadn't. Broken English, boring story, lack of an overall game ... thank god I only lost $10.

Had to refund - I knew immediately that this game was not for me because of the AWFUL translations. I don't know what language it was originally in... but it's not english, and for a game that relies on words for story telling that's completely unacceptable. I love this kind of game, but this is a HUGE let down. Completely unplayable in its current state.

So its one odd little game. It has a story, I am sure, but it was difficult to follow, and the dialogue is awful. Really. Awful. . The translation for this game is poor and there are parts of the dialogue that simply do not make sense and are clunky to say the least... Unintelligible at worst. They should have used a native English speaker for the translation. The entire game is based on the Old Style reading storyline, but the information you are given is so limited and cryptic, it is not engaging. I don't mind the retro graphics, and the music fits the genre. The REAL problem I have is the fight decision tree. You have to make the choices soooo fast, you often are not sure what choice you made. You cannot read the three or four choices fast enough before time runs out and a decision is made for you. Completely RUINS the story. I could not immerse myself because it is a race to click game. The moral/game choices that the player has to make are just dumb.-- not really moral dilemmas at all. There is also little feedback from the choices you make in the story line, you have no idea how they might affect the story. My guess is they don't. The randomness of the team you are stuck with is annoying. The Perma death made it totally NOT fun.

Pros
it was cheap
Sounds and music are good
Original Story if you can piece it together
fair backgrounds/backstory on the characters.

Cons
no immersion or connection with the story or characters you simply could care less
Super fast decisions required. No thinking about anything
Got kind of boring because of the aforementioned lack of immersion
cannot pick your team- only the leader

cannot recommend. wish I could.

Gameplay is simple, but engrossing enough. See some complaints about the RNG nature of it, but it works overall.

Game plays somewhat like an Oregon Trail game. At the beginning you choose a lead survivor, and then get two random additions. Each survivor has unique personalities and abilities that will occasionally come up during an encounter. Your band of survivors auto-walk from left to right occasionally triggering events, such as a new building to loot, other survivors, or some sort of hazard. During all this you have to manage your survivors health, food, energy, and morale.

I suspect this is where most of the RNG complaints come from, as I'm sure some people are getting burned being unable to find the specific loot they need. I lost one of my survivors early on myself simply due to not finding any food for a while, but honestly this just adds to the tension.

All in all, if you want a simple, replayable point-and-click survivor game, this is pretty good for the cost.

I really enjoyed this game!
As soon as I start it, I’m hooked for a few hours. The story is mainly told through text, combined with well-made pixel graphics. A lot is left to your imagination, that’s what makes the horrors of the post-apocalyptic world so powerful.

He atmospheric soundtrack is fitting; it creates a feeling of hopelessness. You try to keep your little group of three alive. It’s a new challenge with each attempt at finishing the game and reaching the mysterious 'Light'. The game has great replay value because with different characters in your group you get new dialogue options and choices. Plus the events are somewhat random, so you never know what will happen next and whether you’ll be lucky or not.

The grammar and spelling could still be a bit polished, at least in the version I played. Everything is understandable though, so it’s not that big of a problem. I encountered some minor bugs while playing so far (version from 07. Feb '20), but no game breaking or really annoying ones.

The devs announced that they’re still fixing and improving lots of things. They’ll also add new content for free, which I think is a great mentality!

Conclusion: Absolutely worth your time and money :)

Kept an eye on this title for a while, the initial gameplay left a really good impression on me, and I was really happy when it finally launched! That's why leaving this rating saddens me.

Since this is the studio's first title and it's small in scale, I'll try my best to leave good constructive feedback. Perhaps the game can be fixed but there are some fundamental flaws in the design that may need severe reworking.

The game goes for roguelike gameplay, where you start off each run with a random crew, go through random encounters, and if you die it's back to the beginning with all progress reset. I think a comparison to Faster Than Light is appropriate, and it shows why Survive the Blackout failed to execute the concept. The main 2 reasons are:
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1. In FTL you can have 2 completely different playthroughs with entirely different encounters, and even if some of the encounters are repeated, its reliance on combat keeps the gameplay fresh since enemies will typically have variations and the combat itself is more dynamic. Furthermore, even narrative encounters have outcomes that rely on RNG so you're never quite sure what's going to happen.

STB, on the other hand, seems to recycle the same encounters in each area, where you are very likely to face repetition on each playthrough, and rather than being alleviated, the problem is exacerbated because STB is almost entirely story-driven and there's nothing else to keep the player engaged. Also, as far as I can tell, a lot of the outcomes in encounters are deterministic, so if you remember the choices, you'll get the same results each time.
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2. In FTL each run is built around improving your ship - buying extra upgrades and beefing it up in different ways, so each run you can try a different strategy with different effects. This seems to be entirely missing in STB, the items have pretty minuscule effects and seem more like an optional part of the game (and you have very little control over what you get). There is no incentive to start a new run to see how you can "build your crew", that concept doesn't really exist here.
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One other thing that really really bothered me were instant death events. I maintained my crew so that they were all in relatively good condition (green/yellow) and made it really far, only for the run to be abruptly ended by an instant death (of the entire crew) caused by a wrong choice. This happened with 2 different events, and I'm scared to think how many more of these there are in the game.
So the gameplay then works as follows:
Start run -> Progress, manage resources, make choices -> Make it far -> Instantly die regardless of how well you were doing because of selecting 1 wrong option -> Start over from the beginning -> Spend a lot of time going through the same story again with little variation -> Hope that this time you pick the right option, if not, start over.
Does this sound like fun? 🤔This is such a huge oversight that I'm genuinely surprised it made it into the final product. It feels so cheap, like the game really doesn't respect my time, or me, for that matter.


Final words/advice:
Since the experience is so story-driven, and because of the way that the gameplay is currently structured, taking into account the amount of repetition currently present, the only way forward that I can realistically see is to ditch the roguelike model almost entirely. It seems like a bad fit that's only there to artificially stretch out the length of the game. Add some kind of checkpoint system so that the entire run doesn't have to be restarted from scratch. Perhaps once you clear an area you can start from it on the next run, or at the very least from the area before it.

I was looking forward to this game- it reminds me of This War Of Mine and Sheltered. But it's not that. It's... boring. And kinda tedious.

First of all, you can't choose your starting team- it's always 3 people and you can only choose the Leader, the other 2 are random. Meaning if you want to try other characters, you have to Start New Game a bunch of times, until you get who you want.

There seems to be a finite amount of events, each comes with a few choices. After your second or third playthrough, you pretty much know what to choose, as outcomes seem to be the same 100% of the time when picking something. After the event ends, you get 4 choices of what to say before moving on, which don't seem to do anything.
So the replayability is rather low.

Loot is also random- sometimes you'll consecutively keep finding food and meds, sometimes no matter what you do everyone will starve to death, cause you just aren't finding food. There's no real resource management, like in Sheltered or TWoM, as you can't take a break from your main objective and just tell your people "Search the area for food", "Go fishing", "Find fruit", anything that will keep them alive. No matter how low they are on stats and resources, they'll just keep marching forward until they all die.

The timed events are way too fast, or I'm reading waaaay too slow. I had to turn it off, cause I literally couldn't read the choices presented before the time ran out.

It's just repetitive and frustrating in how little power you have. Technically that's the point of all those survival games, but in Sheltered and TWoM you can at least TRY to survive, TRY to get enough resources to sustain everyone, while here you and your group just sit idly as everyone is slowly dying and that just doesn't seem realistic, or fun.

It was fun at first, but quickly got boring, you just need to memorize all outcomes. It says rpg but there are no levels, perks that you can get randomly only 1-2 which probably do nothing, and at the end of each encounter there is a choice to say 4 different things that do nothing. what is the point? i forced myself to play just to see maybe i am missing something so i can strategize, but meh it all falls down to rng, and memorizing outcomes
1/10 won't recommend.

I like the concept and storyline, but the broken English and nonsensical choices in some spots as a result really hurts the game and pulls me out of it. Wish I'd spent 10 more on This War of Mine.

I forgot how I heard about this game, but decided to buy it right away as it looked good. While it looks nice, the game is boring, and pretty much none of the choices have a clear outcome. At a certain point, I got bored just reading the choices, because my characters were just dying off anyway, without getting any equipment (looting sucks, you just click until there is an enemy contact for making too much noise no matter the location). With this kind of game, I usually get at least 20 hours of playtime before moving on (or more based on achievements the game has). But even with the nice price, I cannot keep my self playing more.

It's like William R. Forstchen's "One Second After" adaptation into a small, decision-based indie gem.
I really love the focus of the game on characters and their interactions.

Unfortunately, the game doesn't run well on higher resolutions and I encourage the devs to fix this asap.

Putting this one aside from it is a solid post-apoc story and a game with cool replayability values.

TL:dr;
Say hello to another walking simulator, supposedly about survival in post apo world, where you have no weapon, your team members die because of reasons and all this in "trendy" pixelated art with no savegame system.
80s called, they want their game mechanics back.


Edit after finishing the first run:
--- a lot of save scumming, and despite doing a lot of good, denied entry. Also, achievements not unlocking, not a single one of them. Bugged, short, boring. ---

Review: 4/10, fukken disapointment.

Graphics: 7/10,
- while I like pixelated art (childhood memories), I'm pretty sure that making it a little bit more decent/varied wouldn't hurt.
- UI is a mess with diamond selection instead of list or something. We could use regular inventory management system to save on all the clicks and confusion.
- game is pretty uneventful. Little fires, shots, explosions, blood, just some generic smears here and there.
- just dialogue choices with static screens and animated walking in between. Move along, nothing to see here.

Sound: 8/10,
- average plus, music is kinda okay-ish, sound effects are quite a few.

Gameplay: 4/10
Welcome to the pixelated post apo survival.
A dangerous place, where you toons walk around with no weapons. Despite scavenging full houses, taking a leg from a chair or a broomstick to have improvised sharp/heavy stick does not occur to them. NO WEAPONS!
Or perhaps your Sarah looses enough morale and slits her wrists - with what, exactly? Bad Jokes? Good Intentions? She had NO WEAPON!
Doesn't matter there are stones and sticks a plenty, all around them. Rags ang glass or metal shards that could be combined into makeshift shivs or clubs. NO WEAPONS!
Meaning, every bitch that wants to rob your survivors, may succesfully do so. Because in the world, where everybody is armed, your group has NO WEAPONS!

And of course, while humans can go on without food for weeks in real life, here they die soon after you food gauge runs out. Because, you know, fukk hundred of thousands of years of evolutionary adaptation for survival in hunter-gatherer way of living.
In the world, where most common plants have edible roots, you run out of canned food and you die, plain and simple.
No scavenging on the road/in camp, because, you know, it's post apo, so no.
And no hunting, because, of course, you have NO WEAPONS!

Party banter is cr4p, no way to motivate inside the group and have speeches that raise morale. Eating food while hungry does not improve morale and resting only improves by tiny few percent. Otherwise, to get into good mood, you have to drink booze, I mean - "mood boosters", yeah. Even if you are a kid, you can't be happy without a bottle. Only, Ann can't use them, so down the black hole of depression she goes.

All in all, this is a walking simulator, where you make choices. Very little stuff to scavenge from some random locations, while danger meter grows with every action - why exactly, I did checked out before entering. Where did this band of bandits came from?
Your folks die for no reasons (I had a laptop obscuring food meter and Ann didn't complained about being hungry, she just dropped dead) with no warning or after making a single bad choice - because that is what our human kind does - let us ignore our ancestors living through ice ages, supervolcano eruptions, floods, wars, plagues and what not.

Game has zero realism that could justify anything related to survival in it's name. It consists of walking animations, static screens with dialogue options and some very basic resource management.

Recommended on massive sale only.

I like the idea for apocalypse presented in this game - no zombies or nuclear war, only global power outage. I wish it explored further social or political aspects of this realistic situation, instead of putting player in scenarios typical for survival genre. Nevertheless, Survive the Blackout is well executed game with intriguing story, grim atmosphere and tough moral choices. Yes, it's quite simple in terms of gameplay and graphics, but I think it's worth a shot for $10.

Today it finally got released: hooray! Couldn't wait for it to be out when I first saw it showcased on Mr Falcon's youtube channel.
This game is one of my first I purchased instantly on the release day and so far I can say, I dont regret it at all.
The game throws you into a postapocalyptic world where humanity seems to be lost, only you and your group of survivors left with some hope and faith in restoring humanity.
Gameplay is all about decision making with a good random factor of outcome, small side stories and one goal: the light at the end of the tunnel.
The atmosphere is crucial but still brilliant in its manner, it manages to give you the chills while playing the game. Excellent!
Replay value is also real, after you fail the first time the next story will be totally random again.
The game was worth the wait, worth the 9 bucks Ive spent. Looking for something different? Give this a try.

A simple but engrossing game about survival during a worldwide blackout. My only complaints are that sometimes the layout of choices are confusing (I would prefer a vertical list rather than the weird diamond shape thing going on) and a tutorial is badly needed, as in my first playthrough all my characters starved to death because I didn't know you had to set up a camp to feed them and equip items.

Despite these complaints, this game is really, REALLY good. I LOVE the style of the graphics and I will keep an eye on this studio's future releases.

7/10