Hide & Hold Out - H2o

I bought and paid for this game a few years back. Stopped playing for awhile, then, decided to try and play again. Unfortunately, I cant play it because there are no servers it will let me play on.

As soon as I down loaded this game, I tried to play. You are not able to play by yourself and there are no servers to play on. don't waist your time. I had to try and play for a total of five minutes just to be able to do this review which was also a waist of my time.

Don't buy this game.
Spent 20 dollars on it and not a single server or single player mode.
This game is deader than JFK and i wish someone would blow a hole in my head because i bought this crapfest of a game.
The devs only care about your money, Do Not Buy.

Do Not I repeat Do not buy this game every few months he pops back up and says hes doing more work on it to get people to buy it but he does nothing I will never buy another game even associated with this developer bottomline just a scam to get peoples money Do not buy it.

Dev admitted the game was dead. It really is too bad this game had a lot of potential. Sorry to see the game go but I want to add to the reviews so people stay aware that this game is completely done..

I have had this game since it's release and it has definitely had its fair share of bugs and cheaters. Recently the Dev released an update to get rid of the cheaters within the game and so far the results have been amazing. The game UI has been completely revamped and the whole game was converted to server side.

I am super excited for the potential this game has and I really hope that people start becoming active because the Dev is active and there are huge plans for this game.

You should be allowed a refund at any point during the development of a game that seems like it is not progressing. This one is a perfect example of why steam needs to start holding devs accountable for their actions and put an end to this disease.

This game has great potential, especially for fans of Waterworld. I did very much enjoy the hours I sank into it until the inevitable lack of content (which is fine) at this time got too repetitive.

However, the developer needs to seriously sort his priorities out. He is providing a product to paying customers (for a rather high price of $17.99USD considering) and needs to stop acting like this is that five year old project you have rusting away in your shed. People have paid money for this game with the expecation that development will continue. We are not asking for you to finish it today, tommorow or even anytime in the near future. But what we EXPECT is a good line of communication where you keep us up to date on what is happening rather than the current weeks, months with no communication and then occasionally dropping in and blaming it on your internet...seriously.

All in all I wouldn't waste my money until the developer sorts his stuff out. Steam needs to stop allowing these cashgrab and runs, games that have been adbandoned should be removed from the store (ie the developer must do weekly/monthly check ins for early access games).

***EDIT (08MAR17): Developer seems to have made some progress with some re-coding and seems to have some good plans in store. Progress seems to have began again and we are being informed. I'll revisit the review again soon.

Ok so here is my review. I love this game! Awesome crafting, zero lag, building and breaking into bases. Gun boats jet ski. Fishing, whaling. (yes Whaling). Machine guns, Diving. Basically you build bad ass bases where you craft boats ships jet skis ,and all your stuff , then you attack or defend your base. Servers are starting to fill up now to. I wish more games had as much thought put into them as this little gem! OH yea! Helicopters and planes too! AND ITS STILL IN ALPHA! did I say no lag at all!

As of Sept 30th 2018 - Several months ago the dev stated he was working on the game again. Its been months with no further word from him what-so-ever. It seems like he was just trying to con people into buying the game. No salt here, it would have been a good game. To bad.

DONT BUY.

Old Review:

The concept of this game is amazing! Its a fun and unique take on on survival and base building game and I hope that it someday becomes what it was intended to be; however, it has serious work that needs to be done. On a constant basis one or more of the 5 offical servers is down - and lets face it, no one wants to be on multiple servers working for hours on end just to get to the level you were at on the other server. These servers will sometimes stay offline for days and give no warning of going offline. Secondly, hackers are a serious issue in this game (as hacks are easily available for the layman online). Like most games in alpha this game has its fair share of bugs - boats or planes easily get stuck and cannot be removed (time consuming to replace), characters glitch and can become invisible while their physical character sits idle somewhere else on the map. Additionally, this game is only being done by two devs and a team of 3 moderators (who I have yet to see on or recieve a response from) - don't expect a response from a team that is either super busy or has lost interest in the project.

The last thing I will say is this: don't expect to be online with more than litterally 3-5 other people at one time. With all the hours that I have put in on two offical servers, I have spent only 6 hours or so online with someone else. Gets kinda lonely and boring.

Take home message: wait until this game starts getting a lot of improvements. Look online from time to time and see if guides / hints and tips are out. That may be your first indication. Goodluck!

Hello Fellow SURVIVORS!!!!!!

Hide and Hold Out - H2o What is it you may ask>? is it like rust? is it like all the other "genre type" games out there nowadays??????

Well here is my take on it,

First off - Dev team this is to you, A fist bump and a super high five to both of you! (only 2 guys are making this fyi)

I have a list of games that goes on and on with the survival you start with nothing and craft, build and repeat style gameplay examples: rust, miscreated, arma z, ark, ect ect ect.............

this game mixes the best of all the games that have been out and adds a super twist to the gameplay.

think: waterworld meets rust for the older crowd for the younger survivor out there think rust meets borderlands with the majority of the map covered in water.

you may think this is a disadvantage for the player but believe me its not, this makes the small amount of land VERY valuable and this game makes the play own an area decent enough to not allow others to build up and in to your base, lots of great new content on the way and this game is fully functionable, obviously some glitches happen now and again it is very new. but the devs put alot of effort into making this game meaty with hours and hours of fun.

I highly recommend this game to all my friends and fellow survivors out there, just think of the hours you have spent in other games that didnt amount to much pvp or constant thrills, this game offers content for all types of players come take a look the best 18 bucks you can spend on a game.


LuckyCharms

After being an avid player in Rust.... TIll Ark Took over my life and I still think ark is an amazing game but once I got into H2o I was Hooked Here are some of the things I like about the H2o compared to my past experience with other survival FPS' that might Apeal to the average gamer.

GAMEPLAY IS BUTTER SMOOTH compared to any other Survival Game Ive played. I run an older but still powerful R9270X Iv always played my games for performance over Graphic quality pertaining to settings no matter what game I run Ill turn it up till i see if effect my fps then Ill turn it down a touch further so I dont lose any frames I rock a constant 150 On high graphics compared to arks 60 on the lowest settings.

Development LUDICRIS QUICK! Ill tell you what the developers of this game must be robots because it seems like these guys are constantly updatinng the game or talking with players and server owners on their devlopment page. Alot of Updates have included Player Ideas and have been successful in game in my experience.

The physics are getting tweeked and perfected but Im telling you the 2 Primary Developers in this game Get more work done in a week than the ark or rust developers might be able to get done on a GOOD MONTH....

That being said there are still bugs... IT is still in development............. You will lose things and possibly have to start over in the future due to updates.

The Transportation in this game is Really awesome and something Ark could not or would not do.
The Fuel Economy and Base building is really Spot on along with the Harvesting resources.
Crafting is Fun and Detailed yet alot more simple than Ive seen in other games.
Electrical system is Unique!
The Underwater Play is also Great.

If you Purchasing the Game as EARLY ACCESS "STILL IN DEVEOPMENT" and expect anything more or are unable to handel this without giving a RAGEVIEW then Wait till you grow up a little bit and can put on your big boy pants. Don't just go and cut this amazing game down because your to Stupid to understand the concept of EARLY ACCESS "Still in development and lost all your shit due to an update.

But if you can handel it

Be ready to Enjoy a Great game that still fairly early in development but still compleatly functional and playable and Join us on the Quest to Final Release its going to be a Exciting Journey.

~LEAF|Estakin

Come Play!

SERVER:
(US Central) WATER WONDERLAND

Great concept ,a bit like rust in waterworld . The game is missing somethings but its still early alpha . Once you have a gyrocopter or plane the map will seem a little small . when the servers are more populated things will pick up. There are the usual hackers that appear but they go away , other than that , a little polish and it will be a great game.

great game, i think this game is great because of the constant updates and how the devs listen to what the community say, this game is kinda like a water based rust. with a few large updates i think this could be a really great game.
my rating
7.5/10

-Pros
*Gives that "rust at launch" feeling.
*Waterworld type premesis is more interesting than the other dayz/rust clones offer.
*Fair amount of stuff in underwater, giving you a new way to explore.


-Cons
*Hackers, Hackers as far as the eye can see. This game runs on Unity which has boatloads and boatloads of hackers, both figuritively, and litterally.
*Advertised Battle mode is not in game, which was a main buying point for me.
*Virtually no game population. I saw a peak of 8 players on the most populated official server. Theres 30+ servers, and maybe 12 players online in the whole game.
*Many exploits and bugs that happened in H20 are indentical to ones in Rust at launch.

Verdict : I want to play this game, I really do! But the same reason I left Rust, H1Z1, Aftermath, and such games remains. There is no effective anti-cheat, and it looks very much like this game will be plagued by hackers for its lifetime.

*Note - As of this writing, Hackers can do the following, Spawn any items, Instant kill whole server, teleport to players, and ESP. Furthermore, according to offsite game forums, you can use cracked versions of the game to play online, grant yourself admin powers, and disable showing your steamID. Bans have no effect, as hackers can just generate themselves a new fake ID to continue playing.

I enjoyed this game a lot so far.
The graphics are average, but ok. The balancing (weapons, strength of walls, rescources, Sharks etc.) is very well done and the amount of content is absolutely ok for an early access alpha game that has just been released. On top of that, patches come out very frequently and the devs and admins in the forum seem very friendly and communicative.

But I'm not going to recommend to purchase this game atm, because it is absolutely overun by hackers. I played a lot of survival games and I've seen cheaters in a lot of these games, but this is far beyond playable. I played on very different servers (PVE only, Official Servers, private PVE/PVP servers) and there were hackers around at least a couple of times a day. I lost all my stuff by flying/through walls going hackers so often that I'm forced to stop playing this game. It says that with the latest patch the anti cheat system got improved. It took less than an hour to loose all of my stuff to a hacker after I downloaded the patch. You can't release a game that is obviously so vulnerable to cheating. I'm really happy to change my review into a positive one if this is solved, but for now I'm forced to avoid this game.

EDIT: As of now the game is pretty much dead. I checked the server list 3 times on 3 different days and there were less than 15 people playing the game across all servers worldwide. Cheating and admin abuse ruined this early access game imo.

Great game, awesome concept with lots of potential. With the vehicles it's simply Rust on steroids. For an alpha the game runs fairly smooth. Being able to fly AND drive ships gives clans a lot of room to play with different startegies.

Word of advice though: Wait a few months before you get this. Right now there's just waay too many hackers (from the classic aim bot all the way to blowing up everyone's ships and manipulating other players' inventory - easily available from sites like these https://goo.gl/qxYGmy) and players abusing admin privelages on private run servers (giving themselves 100x rockets so they can go grief, etc.). There's even a pirated version floating around with hacks already integrated, which may explain the abundance of hackers across servers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IoCZbzvBDQ). Right now there's only 4 official servers with barely any admin oversight. If you don't want to wait you will be able to find the occasional empty server that allows you to explore and experiment with the game.

Until the game is actually playable as the game design inteded I cannot recommend the game. Should the security issues be adressed at some point I will update my review.

This review is done on (4/14/2016)

Alright... where to start... I honestly have never wrote an honest review before but here goes...

DAY 1: It was just me, and I get my bearings of how the mechanics work and this is what I found out...

1. Resouces come from only scrap piles, floating logs, sharks, whales, floating garbage piles, and other players.
2. press tab to build or craft
3. boats are your friends, if you don't have one so is land
4. The community is friendly to new players
cool right?

DAY 2: So I got my bearings and started on a swedish server and made my first hut.. not a bad hut but a shabby one made of sweat tears and a whole lot of resources. At the same time I buy two more of this game for my friends so they can see what I talk about on how cool this game is.

DAY 3&4: My friends join me in my hut we build walls, weapons, and finally jet skis, which in turn made gathering alot faster and more profitable. We met some friendly Canadians, and we weren't ready to defend ourselves so we didn't engage alot but we held firm, we got off for awhile and when we get back we realize we have been looted while we were gone and I realized I didn't build any windows to stop people from crouch jumping into our base so I did some remodeling to plug up the gaps. My compadres decide to use their newly built guns to exact revenge but hilariously they started this while there was a 3-faction war happening in the middle of the map between the "elites","UWS", and the "DOGS" and boy they had the guns. shortly after they lost our skis and their guns and whatever they had on them at the time, a raiding party of the "elites" had a massive ship and two skis come and loot us. The next part was hilarious to me when the second raiding party of the "UWS" came with a gun boat and two skis, we had to break the news that we were recently raided and had nothing to give them and pointed out that half of our tower's walls have been blown to smithereens. So in turn they went on their merry way east back to the warfront.

DAY 5: From experiencing the previous days I decided I was going to be the leader and vouch that we would have no personal weapons outside of our base other than harpoons and it has been peaceful since then so far. afterwards we focused more on electricity and base defenses rather than personal arsenal. the first defense was a tier 3 anti tank turret that could fit on a warship(we put it on a tower) and its ammo is stupid expensive but at least its devastating power is gruesome, plus if we don't have ammo at least its daunting. we made a windmill and now are currently focused on whale hunting and agriculture because we have realized we are actually not the biggest fish in the sea.

So those are my five days of gruesome playing and when I look back on this, this seems to be more of a story than an actual review... hopefully this gives kinda a picture of what it is like such as progression and for now notice these days are not real days but game days. We have actually been playing it about 3 days now and only 2 of them was with my friends so the progression and mining isn't too bad. I hope you enjoyed my drearily long review/story and I HIGHLY recommend this game more than most I play and definitly more than ark and this doesn't require a supercomputer to play.

ENJOY!

-JangoXIII

First thing first, this game is fun. It is a LOT of fun. That said, it does need a whole lot of work. That is stating the obvious, as the game literally just came out a few days ago. Do not get discouraged by the glitches and bugs, as these are very normal. That said, my experiences have been mostly negative.

I started the game, which loads amazingly fast and runs like a dream for me, and found myself a nice quiet server to play on. The people on the server were extremely kind and quick to help me learn how to play and what to do with things. So off I go, mining up debris from the shore and being completely lost and confused in this amazing archipelago when I realized.. I'm about to starve! But that's ok because I have a busicuit! So I eat my tasty little bit of bread and realize.. I also have a raft! Sweeeeeet!
A tiny bit of trial and error and a few embarassingly silly questions into map chat later.. and lookout world, I am afloat on the most AWESOME rigged up raft ever! Then things get even better when I find floating trash. WOO HOO! I got myself some string and a car battery, couple other odd things.. and now I can make a fishing stick! I won't go into detail on how long it took me to figure out that cooking the fish makes them much better to eat.. but it took a while. I will go mention that at one point when I got off of the raft, I was attacked by a shark. I know what you are thinking.. "Hey, stupid, you just get out of the water." but no.. I tried that. You see, this shark was ON A MISSION! So there I am, squealing in panic, as this shark HOVERS out of the water and up a hill after me. It was very intense for a little while, but I did manage to pickaxe said smiley shark in the face.. to death.. and got some super tasty "Shark Chops" for my effort. Yummy.
Now at this point I have a pretty good stockpile of resources from my adventures, and I will tell you now that it does not take long at all to build in this game. Four hours into the game and I had enough resources to build anything I wanted. So I build a small base and figure out how to make a small shipyard, and I made a jet ski. That's right! SPEEDY BOAT! And boy is it fun. There are whales too.. and you can jump these beefy guys with your jet ski for almost endless fun! And then.. get shot in the head from half way across the map by someone with a sniper rifle who you never even saw. Well that's ok, it is a "survival" game after all. Just.. you don't have to survive the world, you have to survive the people. That's fine.
Back to the base finally because I forgot to build a cot, but the devs are kind enough to respan you with another super raft AND A BISCUIT! I found my jet ski again and got it home and then built myself the big ship yard. Now things are getting VERY good. Took me less then two hours to be in the big gunboat. I got to say.. driving that thing is FUN. It actually takes one person to steer while someone else runs the engine for you, making it a loooot of fun. Puttered around for a bit, refueled it at the refinery, went to head back home in the pitch dark. Now I didn't think much of this because I had a friend on the front of the boat with a flashlight.. then I am suddenly looking at the respawn timer again. Another headshot.. IN PITCH DARKNESS INSIDE THE CABIN OF A BOAT!
By now I am somewhat annoyed.. but what the heck.. My buddy and I respawn and get the boat home.. only to find two guys waiting for us outside the base. Only.. we didn't know they were waiting for us. Because while we leave our game settings normal, meaning when it is night time it is DARK.. some people can still somehow see well enough to get two head shots almost instantly. They kill us, steal our boat, and leave.
This should give you an idea of the player base. There are diamonds in the ruff, but within four hours I have been killed a half dozen times and every sintle one was a headshot. That doesn't seem like a coincodence to me, so be ready for that if/when you do start to play. All the same, we trundle on. By now I have about.. 12 hours in the game and I've built and driven pretty much every single vehicle in the game. Some are more fun than others, but all of them have their uses. I've also had most of them stolen from me. The game desperatly needs some sort of anti-cheat. Not to mention that the moment you log out, someone will come by and somehow demolish your metal walls in a few minutes, take everything you worked for, and be gone before you get back.
Pros : The game is FUN. Really fun. Even if you do loose everything, it doesn't take long to get it back. It is fast paced and when you loose something, it really is not a big deal. Aside from the sea plane, the vehicals are realistic to drive and a lot of fun to use. Flying sharks! Yes, I am counting that as a pro because it was so absolutley terrifying and hylarios to see that I think everyone should experience this.
Cons : Cheating. Watch out for the players. A lot of them are legit.. but the cheaters are out there. No lights for your base. This means the cheaters can see you in the dark but you will not be able to see them coming for you. Base defenses MUST be manned to work. There is no automation so the moment you log out, everything you have is forfeit and will be taken from you. Not might be.. not could be.. but WILL be. You will have to start from scratch most days.. but at least it doesn't take very long.

I would gladly promote this game to anyone who wants a nice fast pased game, but I would never label it as a survival game. It's very much more a FPS game with construction elements in it and a food bar you have to keep full with a very occasional bite to eat.


***UPDATE***

I logged back in after a good long break from the game just to see what was going on and wow has it been updated. They have overhauled the UI, worked over some of the crafting, and sadly.. the sharks no longer fly. I do miss the free shark meat delivery, but I suppose I don't mind dipping a toe in the water now and then to kill another one. Sadly, thef is a HUGE problem still, even on PvE servers. They do seem to have some sort of anti-cheat as well which is nice, though I'm not sure it works. Honestly, nobody plays this game any more. I suppose it was a combined issue of not enough content and rapid progression. You can build everything in a few hours if you put your mind to it and have some help and then you find yourself with nothing else to do. The development team seems to be extremely small, another sad factor which has drasticly slowed progress of the games development. I still hold out a lot of hope for the future of this title and the forums have a little activity on them here and there so at least someone else is enjoying it.

This game has alot of potential, very fun

Pros: Interesting gameplay "Aka, you have to search for your goods, not chop down a tree"
crafting system
the island chains
battling over oil flats

the cons

Flying shark glitch,
items will disapear out of crates and inventories
ships will eventually explode for no reason
people have already made hacks for this 3 day old game


8/10 alot of bugs, but it has alot of potenial Good luck devs :)

I jumped into this game purely out of curiousity and my experience was alright actually.

First thing I noticed going into the game was the graphics. I definitely felt like most of these textures and objects were some of the default textures but I looked past the graphics since the game is in alpha. The server I spent my time in was nice and quiet since I am not big into PVP in survival games so I was really able to explore and figure out the mechanics of the game since there is not really any instruction or tutorial to the game. The next thing that caught me off guard a little is the fact the if you get sharks close enough to land they will literally begin to fly around in the air as though they are swimming and will follow you relentlessly which one did to me for a lot longer than I appreciated. The day and night cycle is nicely spaced out although nights are VERY dark and whenever I tried to go into options I was instantly faced with a "Are you sure you want to keep these settings" screen which left me unable to actually change anything. The game is nice enough to start you off with a pickaxe and a flashlight at least so you are not completely alone in the dark. The game follows pretty much any other survival game mechanic in that you must salvage metals and wood to build however one thing I really appreciated about this game is that you do not need to build every tiny item in order to build your goal item. If you want to build bolts to build a door you can, otherwise if you have the material needed to build the bolts and the door already then you can just build the door and the bolts will be constructed automatically as well. It took me a while to figure out how to build a base in order to fully feel safe in this game but I appreciated how blind I felt to everyhting. For still being in alpha I can recommend this game. It is the right amount of challenging and fun and as long as the developers keep to their word about the future additions I can see myself playing more of this.