The Pioneers: Surviving Desolation, developed and published by Supercube, is a space simulation game currently on Steam Early Access. At first glance, it reminded me a bit of Astroneer – the only other space game I know of. With that in mind, I definitely came into this more excited/hopeful than I ended up being.
I think the premise of the game is really good, and people who are into simulation type games will really enjoy it. I’m neither a fan of or against them as it all really depends for me. So, I’d say in this game, I’m pretty neutral towards this game. However, I will say upon starting it I found I was really frustrated. There isn’t a lot of handholding in this game. They give you a main goal and some tutorials for parts of the game, but other than that players are left to their own devices.
Before the start of the game, players select three pioneers to play with, and upon entering the game, you only have one and have to find the two others. This is a cool idea, but also a crutch since some pioneers have better skills than others in certain areas. Additionally, the pioneer you start with at the beginning of the game is completely random. The first pioneer you need to find is relatively close to your spawn, so it isn’t all bad. However, one point of frustration for me was I wasn’t able to just explore the map. The Pioneers: Surviving Desolation has a feature where if you scroll too far from your selected pioneer you lose network signal. At first, I thought it was a cool feature and added some realism to the game, but the more I played the more it became frustrating because I couldn’t really plan what I wanted to do next or see what was in the area. Sadly enough, that contributed to a lot of my deaths in my time playing. I’d go out to explore and see what I could collect, then some natural disaster would happen while I was away from my station, and I wouldn’t be able to make it back in time. The rest after that is history, and the restart button became my best friend.
Besides that, I think the building and being able to capitalize on the different pioneers’ strengths was really fun. Getting to expand the station was honestly my favorite part of the game. I think it’d be cool if there was a sense of autonomy for the pioneers you aren’t currently playing with. For example, if their hunger was really low and there was food available, they would just go back to the station to eat, similarly with hunger or oxygen. This would allow players to focus on whatever project they’re working on without worrying that one of their pioneers would suddenly die. Perhaps maybe even set a level of autonomy, so they aren’t randomly building things either. I also think having a list of goals players can come back and look to see how far they’ve progressed in their mission and what they still need to do.
Other than potential additions and my points of frustration, the foundation of the game is good. I can see a lot of people liking it, as there’s a lot to do and needs to tend to – almost like a more intense version of the Sims. I look forward to seeing how The Pioneers: Surviving Desolation develops during and after its early access stage.
The Pioneers: Surviving Desolation is available for PC via Steam Early Access.
Related: Reviews by Maryanne Fadonougbo
"I've enjoyed gaming since I was little, playing games like Pokémon, Rayman, and Naruto every day. Besides that though, I've always had a love for writing. Now I am combining the two for the best of both worlds! My ultimate goal is to do narrative design for video games."
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