Survive is a post-apocalyptic Management game in which we take control of a lone survivor called Isabel. She is the leader of a group of other survivors that are now finding themselves being attacked by a militant organization simply known as The Hunters. As grandiose as that setup is, it bears very little relevance in actual gameplay or much else aside from some flavor text. For all intents and purposes, you are on your own. Nowhere is this more noticeable than at the start of the game where your survival comes down entirely to luck, and Isabel will be left to starve to death if RNG isn’t on your side.
Your character has a wide variety of needs to take care of. From your standard need for food and drink to your sexual desires. Leaving any unfilled for too long will see your character unable to go outside and explore. Exploration is ordered via the pinboard that contains your portrait. It is an entirely too broad task and that’s the extent of your control over things. Simply telling them to Explore. You are unable to tell them to prioritize things or where to go. It is a complete dice roll if you’re initially able to survive due to this. Worse still is that there is a trading system where you can exchange food and drinks for other materials, yet not the other way around. Being able to trade any valuables you find for food would have gone a long way to bypass the initial starvation and dehydration cheapness.
After enough exploration, you will be able to find up to three others characters to join you. With the increase of people up and about doing things, it significantly lessens your vulnerability to sheer bad luck. By this point, you are able to turn things in your favor with good management. You can have people resting to heal their wounds, helping their sanity by doing things such as watching TV, and masturbating before they’re unable to go on missions. All these things you needed to manage just for the chance to find food when you send them exploring was far too much for a single character with meager starting resources. Running out of things to drink or eat is a death sentence as that afflicted character will be unable to do more than masturbate and watch TV until she eventually succumbs to death.
Aside from sending them to Explore, do an Activity, or Rest, you can attempt some Special Operations. These are massive undertakings that will cause a significant amount of hunger, thirst, and potential danger to a character you send. Most of them involve ways of disrupting and counterattacking The Hunters. It is not something you should tackle without building up a decent amount of supplies should you need to invest in resources to carry the mission through to completion, or treat a seriously wounded character. Generally, they offer little in the way of rewards yet are necessary to win the game. You will need to do all twelve of them before your 45-day time limit is up and they conquer your territory. They offer a nice change of pace from your RNG-based scavenging.
Each of the four characters have unique stats and abilities. Your starting character Isabel will cause other members to partially heal when you use a health kit on her, for instance. They are mostly contained to how frequently you need to drink water or worry about some stats. Some can last far longer without eating but will need to rub one out more often. While exploring, there is a rare chance of coming across DNA samples to increase your stats. This allows you to even out their weaknesses by the late game. In the grand scheme of things, they matter little, though is a nice way to have some character progression regardless.
Stats don’t matter in the slightest when it comes to completing tasks. There is no controlling the probability of the RNG. You either accomplish something or don’t. The stat meters being entirely full or nearly empty won’t affect your given outcome. When attempting special Operations there is no RNG, yet you are still entirely at the mercy of luck. The character you send can only take two items, and only if they happen to be the right ones will you be victorious. Worth noting is that the Operations don’t have descriptions. All you get is the title for the mission and that’s it. Let’s take one called ‘Military Base’ as an example. Given that name and that you can only take two items, what should you take? A gun, drone, pliers, keycard, costume, or one of the other many items? You won’t find out until first sending a character to fail and they say “only if I had a..” upon returning to learn what you need.
That brute-forcing of your objectives is hardly what I would call fun. SurVive is far too binary in your success or failure. Too much of it has solely to do with luck and patience, while planning is hardly relevant in any form. It is more of a game to mindlessly kill time than being actively engaged with. That in itself isn’t an inherently bad thing. Minus the opening, it wasn’t punishing or even challenging. It was a rather chill experience that kept me semi entertained throughout its five-hour playtime. 45 in-game days is more than enough to do everything and better yet, there are a ton of hentai CGs you’ll receive whenever a character fails throughout. With the only thing you’ll see being the hideout, having so much lewd artwork to sprinkle things up was well appreciated.
In an interesting twist, you can actually unlock the CGs yourself by booting up the in-game PC and playing Butt Impact. It is a really basic shmup where you play as a phallic-looking plant and shooting your goo into floating butts & mouths. You’ll earn credits for each enemy destroyed, which can then be used to buy the H CGs for 150 points each. Butt Impact lacks any challenge and takes too long to earn credits for it to be fun. After trying it out once, I’d highly suggest just receiving the CGs naturally and then grinding for any missed pictures after you beat the title. While you are on that in-game PC, you can freely view any unlocked lewds via the My Drive folder. This whole little Windows 7-like OS was a fun little addition that added more charm to the game. It at the very least added something to do in the safehouse as the only other interactable there is the pin-board to issue tasks to characters.
One of your constant struggles with this game is keeping track of your resources and what is going on. The UI is inadequate, to put it bluntly. You need to open up the bottom left corner to see how many and what materials you have. There is no way to tell how much a mission got you other than writing it down beforehand and crosschecking your current amount. Clicking on characters does nothing, so the pin-board is the only thing you ever need to look at. The top-right icon brings up a screen of how the first three characters are doing, but not the fourth one. It is hence effectively useless and forces the reliance of the pin-board portraits even more. More critically still is the glitch that happens if you set the game to 4K in where the save/load menus won’t function. 1440P is the max you can play it at without technical issues and being able to save your progress.
SurVive is undoubtedly rough around the edges, but of important note is its price. It costs a mere $1.90 and has a good deal of content, particularity of the hentai variety. As a game, I see it more like the type of casual experience I’d play in-between other games or just to mindlessly kill time. I can’t say I had fun, yet I can’t say I wasn’t entertained enough to keep playing either. What I can say is that the amount of CGs greatly increases the value of this package and that it is a memorable title. It is the game equivalent of inoffensive fast food with the price to match. Not everything out there needs to be a masterpiece or to keep you on the edge of your seat during its entire duration. Sometimes just kicking back and being able to keep your mind off things is exactly what one needs. If you can do that while earning tons of anime lewds, then far be it from me to not recommend SurVive if that sounds right up your alley.
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