It’s been a mere month since we did a launch-piece on Team17’s The Survivalists, bemoaning the lack of ‘castaway on a desert island’ simulators on the Xbox One and Series X|S. We should have known that, as soon as we said it, another one would be peaking into view. Welcome to the Seeds of Resilience!
Seeds of Resilience is out now on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S to join previous drops on Switch and PC via Steam.
To be fair to Seeds of Resilience, the approach couldn’t be more different. Where The Survivalists is colourful, wacky and full of hats and tearaway monkeys, Seeds of Resilience is about pure survival. Can you and your fellow survivors weather the weather, hold out against disasters, and gather enough food to live another day? This is the complete flipside.
Seeds of Resilience plays out as a turn-based strategy, which is a fascinating take: you make a certain number of actions during the day, in the desperate hope that you’ve done enough when you press the ‘End Turn’ button. Your best bet is to build a camp and outfit it, giving you a safe haven to hold out against the Acts of God that the game will throw at you.
While there’s an edge of realism to the approach, there are also some fantastical bits too. At the start, you’ll be building rudimentary axes and huts, but by the end you’ll be fashioning waterwheel-powered mechanised workshops. You didn’t see Tom Hanks do that in Castaway.
It really does seem like this is one is for the crafting hounds out there, who look at Skyrim and Fallout’s systems and wish there were more knobs and levers to pull. You’ll have extreme levels of customisation, with the freedom to plonk your creations wherever you want. We are reliably informed that it’s all got parallels to the real-world, so you could feasibly survive on an island yourself, once you’ve given this a go or two.
Features include:
- Turn based: Take all the time you need to plan your actions. When you’re done, end turn and start a new day.
- Detailed building construction: Choose natural resources according to their properties. Use them to craft the materials needed to assemble a building.
- Realistic medieval construction and craft techniques. Everything could be made in real life the same way.
- Observe the environment response to human activity. Maybe you should avoid fishing everyday at the same spot or cut down the whole forest.
- Survive in a harsh environment where storms and other natural disasters occur way too often.
Seeds of Resilience is out now on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S and starts at £11.74. It’s also out on Switch and PC.
Game Description:
Build a village on a deserted island, and prepare for merciless natural disasters! Learn to choose the right items, understand nature’s patterns, use real medieval construction and craft techniques in this turn-based management game. Build your civilization step-by-step: From stone axes and stick shelters to waterwheel powered mechanized workshops! All with realistic technologies and constructions.
