The Game
The Survivalists is a pixel-graphics survival game by Team17. You are stranded on a deserted (or is it?) island in the middle of the ocean with nothing but the clothes on your back and the wreckage of your raft. It’s up to you to build up your base and arsenal of tools and weapons and eventually make your way to other islands and even back home. The game shares a lot of similarities with other popular survival games (like Don’t Starve), but is also quite forgiving and can be quite chill at times (rather than the hectic panic that other such games induce). There are regular attacks by the goblin natives of the islands – you will always be warned the evening before these occur and you’ll have a good amount of time to prepare yourself for the impending attack.
Where The Survivalists really comes into its own is it’s unique monkey buddy system. While exploring the islands you will run into monkeys who will need your help – sometimes they’ll be capture in a cage that needs breaking, other times they will need a specific item. Once you’ve helped them they will join you on your adventures and quite literally follow all of your orders. The monkeys allow you to automate production, construction, resource harvesting, combat, etc. as you can teach each monkey to perform one of the roles described above. This is quite a unique mechanic and makes for some pretty interesting scenarios, especially as you amass a bigger and bigger following of monkeys.
The game also features vaults and labyrinths, which are basically dungeons with cool loot and secrets to be uncovered. These are scattered throughout the world and up to you to find on your adventures. The labyrinths will require special keys to be purchased from the Mysterious Stranger. There are a few other NPCs and some quests that will keep you busy when you get bored of building up your base and gathering resources. If that’s not enough for you, you can also play cooperatively with your friends online (sadly no couch co-op options available).
The Survivalists_20210816210306 
The Survivalists_20210816212013 
The Survivalists_20210816212414 
The Survivalists_20210816213708 
The Survivalists_20210816215557 
The Survivalists_20210816215737 
The Survivalists_20210819170231 
The Survivalists_20210819171734 
The Survivalists_20210819181524 
The Survivalists_20210821230252 
The Survivalists_20210822103159 
The Survivalists_20210830152648 
The Survivalists_20210831190428 
The Survivalists_20210906193715 
The Survivalists_20210906193740 
The Survivalists_20210906193755 
The Survivalists_20210906193805 
The Survivalists_20210906193824 
The Survivalists_20210906193843
Worth it?
The game has all the classic survival game mechanics you’d ever want and the monkeys give the game something truly unique. I would even argue that they make the game what it is – they take away the tediousness of crafting and resource gathering and allow you to focus on the bigger picture problems like layout out your base, exploring or even just watching them to all the hard work while you take a nap. The game will generally set you back around £20 but is often on sale for around £10 (you really can’t say no to that). I played the PS4 version and have very little to fault it on there.
Overall it’s a very enjoyable game with a great amount of depth to it – it can be quite chill at times, at other moments you may be fighting for your life. As with all such games, things to tend to get a bit repetitive after a while and the loop of finding better materials for better tools to get better materials starts to become a bit tedious – that would be my only major criticism. Other than that the game has some truly unique elements to it and will keep you busy for hours on end. It also has that addictive moment where you just keep thinking to yourself: “one more day, one more job” and then you find you’ve actually played a few hours longer than expected.
Tips
- Only go up 1 difficulty when moving to a new island, otherwise you won’t be able to gather resource and will probably get killed.
- Gather as many monkeys as you can.
- Setting monkeys to follow you and giving them weapons will allow them to fight alongside you.
- Vaults aren’t too difficult, especially on the first island – they often contain monkeys as well.
- You can give a chest to a monkey to carry as a way to have more storage space when out in the world.
- Try to get to the 3rd difficulty island asap as you will find the materials for portals there – this will help you massively with navigating the world.
- Find the Mysterious Stranger to buy the Mysterious Chest (36 slots) for 500 Doubloons – this will help you massively when adventuring.
- Complete 3 quests for the Beastmaster to unlock the first backpack upgrade to be purchased from the Mysterious Stranger – these will then appear on the 2nd page of the crafting menu.
Useful Links
Random Game Reviews 