EXPEDITION ZERO Demo Impressions

Expedition Zero is a horror survival game developed by Enigmatic Machines and published by tinyBuild. To start this demo truly left a great impression on me for the release on March 24th. There are parts of this demo that show a promising game surrounded by some bugs that I encountered.  

The game takes you in a first-person view as you go through the forest and the not forgiving wilderness of Siberia. The basis of the story, which usually isn’t the strongest aspect of these types of games, is around your character being an engineer that is trying to survive to get back home. The premise of getting lost on an expedition leads to your character having to survive the tough area around him, the Siberian wilderness

A big part of this experience is the survival crafting that revolves around you turning a lot nearby you into scraps with the tools you have. These scraps are used for crafting to create certain other tools to help with your survival. Like many survival games, you break down the materials around you, with certain tools, which gives you the crafting materials that are needed. These materials allow you to build a 3D printer, the object that allows you to create components, that starts the component process. Then you take the components to a crafting bench, which will help you create more tools to help you with your survival. A lot of these need blueprints to build the tools that help you. These blueprints are gained by building up research points from the world around you to unlock more blueprints. This is a pretty basic crafting system, but comfortable for this horror setting to get immersed in.  

Of course, this is a survival game so there will be aspects of your character that you will have to monitor. These stats revolve a lot around body temperature, being in Siberia, and hunger, which is pretty self-explanatory. The only way to obtain food seemed to be at camps, but I’m hopeful this will be expanded on with the release of this title. It doesn’t end there – you have a stamina meter, which comes super important later running from the monsters you face. While an inventory weight limit is in place so that you can pick up everything you see, some management will be needed as you can’t go back to base when you have too much.

So that’s the survival aspect of Expedition Zero. Where does the horror come in? This horror aspect revolves a lot around using the atmosphere and music that tries to raise the anxiety meter. A jump scare will happen now and then, which did get me once, I’m not gonna lie. The main part is running from a monster that will come out and chase you. This is where some anxiety comes in, as there is always this constant fear that this monster will come after you at any moment. Like many other horror games, such as Outlast, you hide from this monster with certain cabinets and tables. Even Dead by Daylight makes an appearance with the use of a generator which will distract this monster. This horror aspect could be great with the great atmosphere created by the game.  

I feel Expedition Zero has the chance to be a pretty solid survival horror title. I have experienced way worse narratives in these types of titles and I enjoy a good survival game experience. The horror aspect of the game needs some work with balancing and sometimes struggles to fully immerse me at times with that aspect. Overall, Expedition Zero will hopefully bring Survival horror and crafting fans a game that they can enjoy coming March 24th.

To wishlist or play the demo, visit Steam.

Related: tinyBuild’s Happy’s Humble Burger Farm Now Out on PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam

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Mark Krueger-Van Oyen

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Gaming has always been an outlet for me to interact with different people and explore all kinds of possibilities. I play a wide variety of games always willing to try different mechanics and storylines that developers are trying to create for their games. I grew up delving into MW2 and World of Warcraft, I miss the Wrath of The Lich King days, and as I have gotten older I have found a love for RPGs and strategy games, my favorites being The Witcher 3 and Total War. Always looking forward to the next great game.

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