Off the Shelf Media

The genre of survival crafting has an old and interesting history with more titles spilling over in the last ten years than ever before. It is hard to nail down exactly what makes the genre so interesting, but I have fallen victim to more games from this genre that I will never play again than any other. 

Now, as a self-determined rule, I do not buy any early access titles and always wait at least a year before buying any v1.0 games from the genre. The pinnacle for reference is probably Minecraft. You are free to wander a vast open world anyway you like, but you need to manage some type of health or food meter, maybe an additional one for water or weather effects, and there is a massive amount of items that can be created from harvesting and/or missions. You will also often have to defend yourself in some way from enemies that seek to destroy you and what you have created. It tries to embody the realities of life as if you were a lone forager or lacked all the modern luxuries of society.

It is an incredible game theory, but has proven to be even harder to master. The most common issues from this type of game are level staging. They usually operate on the principle of slow advancement, ie, you need to harvest and forge iron before you forge steel. Valheim uses a linear method by forcing the player to defeat a specific boss in order to receive blueprints to harvest and build the next stage of materials. Minecraft has a more open format, as the game itself allows the player to explore and build in greater leisure. The impending enemies are easily dispatched unless the player decides to seek out the more difficult variants, but it is entirely up the them to do so, and the final boss battle is more often than not avoided by most players. 

Quickly, this might feel boring after a while, and thus, the genre is filled with different threats that encourage and often require the player to advance these crafting stages.

Gameplay: 1

There is a lot to unpack in terms of gameplay. 7 Days to Die was an early iteration in my own gaming history that delivers that point from the start of the title screen. Every week in-game, a massive horde of zombies will attack any players in the game, which also increases in level with time and as the player levels up. This puts an immediate need on the player to build defenses and scour for resources and gear. When the game first launched, it focused heavily on scavenging abandoned buildings for loot. Any pile of trash or steel safe could hold the needed equipment, such as a forge or a helmet flashlight. 

Now, the progression is still focused on scavenging, but it is combined with a leveling system that is just not all the way there. You have to find and read books that unlock skill points one at a time. Once you have collected enough, you unlock the ability to craft different items and higher-tier equipment. 

The more points you put into skill trees, the more likely you are to find those corresponding books. Frankly, it’s too convoluted. You never know how many of these books you will find in one go, and while searching bookcases is your best bet, there is never any guarantee you will find them. 

Rather than use a leveling system, like they used in one of the many versions of the pre-alpha, this twisted combination feels tedious and never rewarding enough, because even if you do find enough to level up, typically it’s not worth it to return to your base and build whatever you unlocked as you might find even more to gain another level if you press on. It would be more rewarding to give skill points based on using that particular skill rather than a generic level increase and a requirement to find 50 books with completely random generation. There are books that also offer one-time perks, which do feel unique and rewarding, but are diminished by their appearance being the same as the necessary level sets. I often find myself reading them and not acknowledging the new perk because they are identical.

The scavenging would also feel more rewarding if the combat were more interesting. Half of me feels that the randomness of the terrain the enemies might encounter makes their variety and movement feel unnatural and the other half feels like it was never perfected. The game has been in development for so long already. While improvements have been made, it never felt exactly correct. It has always been easy to herd the horde because they attempt to find and use the quickest route to the player. Meaning, a tunnel or two laden with traps can dispatch almost countless enemies before the player actually needs to take action. Actions that feel somewhat stiff. It needs a stronger variable of randomness in their path logic to make the combat feel less generic. It works, but only just. 

Combined with the amount of skills and leveling system, the game has never appealed to me in single-player. Skills like building, vehicles, food, and medicine are absolute requirements, and combined with armor and weapon types needed to dispatch enemies, the list becomes ever-growing. It is best to maximize these skills’ potential by having one player focus on a single necessary skill and bring them together under one roof, literally. This allows players to use multiple weapon types, thus leaving nothing to waste when discovering any type of weapon or ammo while scavenging.

The best part of the building is how familiar it is compared to Minecraft’s grid-based system. It is easy to pick up, but the variable elevations offer some difficulty as the world is designed on slopes to make traversing with vehicles easier. The slight mix makes it hard to line up squares unless they share the exact plane. It also makes vehicles feel like wet cardboard, as any slight deviation degrades their health.

While the game certainly has its faults, many more I have not brought up, such as farming returns, armor types, scopes not retaining zoom, water, structural integrity in building, and missions, the game does excel in others. The variable map size is incredible and can be heavily customized when starting a new game or using the base map ‘Navezgane’, which features one of every building type, at least it did in the early days of development. It might help new players who want to learn more about what they could encounter in a random-gen world. The enemy types are also certainly varied, even if the threat they impose is only ever felt early game while exploring. It is somewhat disappointing to not hear any news on variants that were hinted at prior to the alpha launch. 

Story: 0

The format of 7 Days to Die does not lend itself to a story, and it does not necessarily need one. Minecraft gets away with the least developed story ever created and still manages to be the pinnacle title of the genre. The focus is that Minecraft has a total understanding of itself. It does not require it because the gameplay can supplement it. 7 Days offers introductory missions that progress into exploration missions to locate other traders. It hints at more being there than what actually is, such as bandits or more targeted goals that follow a clear storyline. 

The issue is not a lack of story but the faint remnants that persist in a game that is supposedly ‘finished.’ It would be better if the missions did not proceed beyond the first trader or if there were even less to begin with. The half-hearted effort feels so faint that it should not exist, and it cannot stand on its own merit. 

Atmosphere: 2

The grid pattern building is easy to pick up for any player. On top of that, the game offers nearly limitless possible designs for placed blocks. You can really create anything you can imagine. Combined with the massive amount of prerendered structures added to the game throughout the years, each iteration has felt more realistic and believable. The environment holds as much to be discovered as well as for the player to create. 

The music is also excellent at setting the right scene and the character creation is something unexpected but fun to use, especially with friends. 

Value: 0

This is the big kicker for 7 Days. It has been in the worst type of development hell ever conceived. On the initial release, the game was only a few years after Minecraft’s release in 2009 and even closer to its full release in 2011. While that game has seen many updates since its Microsoft acquisition and updates before, they all steered the game into a cohesive direction. 7 Days, unfortunately, has had a history of going back and forth through the last 11 years before its Alpha release. All the while, never entering a period of exceptional performance. Sure, at times it may have improved, but it never ran great, and still has issues when rendering large buildings and enemies. 

The pressure for an indie developer to satisfy their audience is certainly different than major publishers. The issue that The Fun Pimps seem to have, however, is one of their own accord. The switching systems demonstrated during the 11-year development seemed to change features back and forth as if a current poll was sent out each time and adjusted accordingly. There is nothing wrong with giving fans what they want, but without any idea what the direction is to be, it changes on a whim or at least that’s what it felt like during my time playing over the years. 

With such an unstable foundation during its development, the future of the game is as unpredictable as when it was first released. I really cannot offer any type of suggestion here either for fear it may cloud the already jammed online space of suggestions. 

What the developers really need to do is determine the game they want as a finished product and strive towards that rather than look for answers elsewhere. This culmination of persistent issues and unclear future development makes the price of $44.99 completely unreasonable. It should be half that, as it honestly feels only slightly more developed than when the game launched in the first two years. 

Duration: 1 

That being said, the game does offer a lot of possible playtime. How much of that is enjoyable is up for debate, as I distinctly remember asking, “Is this fun?” while swinging an ax at a tree at maybe my 200th hour of gameplay. I have tried to play a new session to end game level every major update to see the differences they made, and have been split evenly between happy and disappointed. 

The major issue with all survival crafting games is the brick wall you hit when you get to the endgame. They almost always offer the promise of endless possibilities but as Starfield has proven, massive means a lot of empty space. Once you reach the final or near top levels and have made an easily defendable base, the gameplay does not do enough to incentivise the player. It can be said for 7 Days as well as Valheim, the major difference is that Valheim is fun and exciting almost the entire time. 

Total Score: 4/10

It’s not that the game right now today is bad. Had it actually been released last year, then it would be a fun title to watch in future updates, the price would still be terrible, but it would have more potential. Because of the amount of time and money already pumped into the game, it’s hard to justify buying it again. 

It has brought me an immense amount of joy to play with friends, but far more because it is simply an activity with people I like, and much less than the game’s stellar experience and design. At this point, as the longest-running joke for ‘leaving alpha soon’ punchlines finally left and it hardly feels different. Graphically, the game has seen incredible improvements, but it has never run well. That is to say, there have always been massive amounts of lag for rendering enemies and POI across the decade I played it. 

Asking for even more money for the title just feels disingenuous. I would also directly blame their outreach for updates. More often than not they used Twitch Streams to announce updates and nothing more; recordings of videos weren’t even released later. Typically, developers release notes directly on the Steam news page to inform their fans but they never or hardly ever added any type of transcript from these streams, even to their website, to the point where it felt like the project as a whole became a bore. As much as I can say I dislike the game, I have still put 400+ hours into it, making it the worst game I have played the longest, with that, players be warned.