Survival video game

There's some really elegant game design in there. The use of retro models and textures allows them to create a far more rich, detailed and alive world with good performance than they otherwise could have. Making food a buff rather than something you need to stay alive while forcing you to have a varied diet is a genius evolution of the survival genre, abstracting characters from worlds so you can visit your friends without having to juggle multiple characters and allowing you to restart without losing all your progress is such a huge QOL improvement over what we've had so far (despite it actually being old fashioned), the crafting menu is perfectly curated to give you an optimap balance between ease of use and flexibility. It's a technically well executed game (for it's budget) with a good strong theme and the right pricing that happens to have been in the right place at the right time but it's the choices they made in the design that really elevates it to a great game and is what all those other things have allowed the opportunity to shine. The other factors have helped drive the sales, but the amount of hours played and the player reviews are driven by that design. I really want to check out the lead designer's earlier (probably less refined) work cause I'm very impressed.--- PiersPlays 11 hours ago