Character Customization & Then A Fresh Start! : Rend Survival Game! (Steam Alpha PC Gameplay Review)
Channel: LIFE RPG
Date: 26/07/2018

OK, we actually did get a key to try out Rend. I seem to have some luck with things like this so I wanna thank you guys for getting my channel to the level that it is currently! I talked about Rend a couple weeks ago in the Dayton Dispatch, and now? Rend has finally arrived!

Extremely excited to boot up Rend, I jump into a recording with minimal idea of what I'm doing for a blindplay sort of series. Rend has a lot to learn so I'm not sure Rend was the smartest series to pick for a blindplay, but learn we shall! Survival and crafting dead ahead!!

Well, maybe not so much survival. Rend is fairly tough but the learning curve doesn't seem too steep. At least I only have to play with character customization once. Rend definitely will test my mettle. We start off on a fresh server and pick our faction... Awww yes!

Rend will become available for all your survival/crafting needs on July 31st!: https://store.steampowered.com/app/547860/Rend/

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How Ark, World of Warcraft, and League of Legends come together for a new type of survival game.

As Steam Early Access chokes up with ever more survival games, differentiating one from the next isn't easy. For the first few minutes of watching Rend, I thought it would be just another emaciated face in the crowd. But then Frostkeep Studios co-founder Solomon Lee turned his character to face a gargantuan tree that dominates the skyline in the middle of the map.

Etched in the tree's bark is a magical meter that charts the progress of each of three player factions vying for control of the map and its resources. If a faction can protect their Divinity Stone long enough to fill the meter or destroy the other teams' stones, they win. The server resets and all three teams start again. Rend might be a survival game, but its League of Legends inspirations are clear. 

Rend, a survival game that blends the RPG progression of World of Warcraft and the competitive nature of League of Legends with a gooey survival-game filling as its heart. Instead of waking up naked and alone when making a new character, players automatically join one of three factions and spawn inside that faction's home base where their precious Divinity Stone is located.

Rend will feature a lot of the same ideas present in other survival games—chiefly punching shit until it breaks into craftable shit. But before long, Rend's unique features take the game well beyond the normal gather-craft routine players are familiar with.

Instead of just copying basic survival game features wholesale, Frostkeep Studios is reinventing the wheel wherever they can. Take taming for example, which in Ark means standing around for minutes to hours while a subdued animal slowly eats food. It's a system that's boring as often as  it's frustrating. There's a reason why most private servers have jacked the rate at which animals tame through the roof.

In Rend, however, taming opens up a portal to a world of possibilities—and I mean that literally. While killing animals in the wild, there's a chance that their departing spirit might open a rift to a spirit world that is a spectral mirror of Rend's own map. Inside this world, players will need to chase down the animal spirit to siphon its essence in order to call upon it as a mount while dealing with deadly spirit monsters. But the spirit world isn't just a place for taming, it has its own rare resources that can't be found elsewhere. What's more, players can enter and exit at different locations, opening up opportunities for sneak attacks on enemy factions.

If there's one aspect of survival games that Rend won't be subverting, it's the trend of nearly every survival game going through Steam Early Access. Despite Milizia's insistence that Rend "won't be on Early Access forever," it's the same thing we've heard from other survival game developers before. It means that, even if performance is top-notch like the team says it will be, players will still be beta testers in yet another unfinished game. And if other survival games are anything to go by, that means likely enduring bugs, growing pains, and an overall lack of polish.

Aside from the obvious caveats of being Early Access, almost everything about Rend seems unique and thought out. It could just end up being the push the survival genre needs to stop resting on the same tired designs with each new game. For now, Rend has me feeling optimistic about a genre that I'm quickly tiring of. - PC Gamer