I had a Strong Melee Hacker, with lockpicking, a crowbar strap, and a box cart. None could stand in my way, not even the Detroit Mercs could withstand my maniacal crowbar swinging techniques. I was immortal. I confidently strode through the Michigan wastes knowing that I could never die. I came across some water in an urban location. I was a bit parched and decided to sate my thirst on the water. I didn't need to boil it, I was immortal! I drank the water, and a few hours later my charcter began to develop severe diarrhea as my skin turned a horrific shade of blue. I checked my supplies, I had no antibiotics, I needed to get to the health clinic. I desperately made my way to Detroit. 3 hexes away from gate 11 my character died from Cholera. I lost everything and died because I was too lazy to boil my water. 10/10 would play again.

I don't normally write serious reviews. I'm one of those undesirable pricks that uploads the "11/10 uninstall function works great" review, but NEO Scavenger will be my exception. You have no idea how hard it will be for me to not write "I murdered a naked guy while wearing a clown mask", but I will get through it, for this amazing game.

Let's start with the basics; you're some random guy (avoiding spoilers) that has just woken from cryogenic sleep during the apocalypse somewhere around the city of Detroit. After a friendly interaction with a lovely creature known as a "Dogman", you step outside to experience the outside world of Michigan... and dang, it's cold. Like, "Oh my God I can't feel my feet and I'm feeling really sleepy" cold. After a few deaths and several hours of learning the basics (don't eat random berries or mushrooms you find unless you know they aren't poisonous, that guy with the broken bottle really wants to eat your leg, and yes, it's cold, put some pants on) you really get into this game.

As others have said, however, an ungodly amount of time can be spent on this game, and it can never be taken back. In a sense, it's like DayZ. You spend 3 hours finding a weapon, finding your friends wherever they are on the map, and end up faffing around until some gruesome death by either a glitching zombie or a player that only speaks Russian. This, I believe, is another selling point of NEO Scavenger. In the beginning, you get used to dying. After a while, however, you end up living longer and longer, until one life lasts you hours of real life time. Everything is peachy until that one night you decide to sleep in a forest and forget to set up a noise trap or hide, and you're stabbed to death by some plague-ridden nutcase in your sleep. After a day or two of angry avoidance of the game, you decide to give it a second chance, innocently, you pour more hours into it, only to die in a similar manner. It's a beautiful circle of life (death)!

With such extensive content already and more updates to come, NEO Scavenger is one of my favorite games of all time. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys hardcore survival games, and/or murdering innocents with his/her bare hands whilst wearing nothing but a Ronald McDonald lookalike mask and a hospital gown. (Damn, I said I wouldn't write that.)

Introduction: How long can you survive the post-apocalyptic wastelands of NEO Scavenger? This may be the ongoing question asked of the player by it's developers yet, I guaruntee you will be asking youself this each time you load Neo Scavenger regardless of your experience with it's unforgiving world. Even in it's early access state Neo Scavenger accomplishes what many other developers desperately attempt to attain yet fail to accompllish, an incredibly solid title built in a believable and atmospheric world, all the while laughing in it's large budget competitiors faces because there is yet more to come.

Overview: Neo Scavenger is a post apocolypic turn based survival strategy game that honors such classics as Fallout and Wasteland while retaining an identity all it's own. Set in an incredibly atmospheric world, the protagonist has recently emerged from a cryo chamber without a memory as to how he got there, who he is or what state the world is in. Within seconds he recieves the answer to the latter in a very unwelcoming way.

You soon realize that you will desperately need to scavenge this unhospitable world if you intend on your survival and will have to leave your moral bindings behind if you're to be successful. While traveling you will be encountered by an assortment of undesirables that intend on their own as well and will achieve this at any cost, whether it be thievery, murder or deception. To assure your own instead, you will need to do the same.

During your journey, you'll be presented with decisions that must be made and many times without prior knowledge of what may occurr based on your actions. You will pre-emptively strike what you deem to be

Gameplay: As stated above Neo Scavenger is a turn based survival strategy game with a wide range of varying elements that will affect each new journey you begin. You will be presented with an attribute screen where you must carefully select each according to your playstyle. Each will directly affect what skills you have available in given situations that will come about so, one must choose wiseley.

Once your travels begin you will need to manage multiple aspects in regards to your health such as hydration, hunger, restfulness, health/illness, injuries, environment temperatures, weather and more. The decisions you make will directly affect the protagonist accordingly so, one must manage these elements with confidence or otherwise you'll be swiftly presented with a message that you will assuredly see quite often, the death screen. This will come often and without warning aside from your available character management system. With that being said make sure you obsess about the details because, it's all that stands in the way of you and the grim reaper.

Aside from illness, fatigue, hunger and the like, you will of coarse encounter a variety of enemies along your journey that also as stated above intend on your demise. Combat is performed via a turn based system which, issues you an incredible assortment of options depending on your original skill/attribute selection which, I must reaffirm must be choen wisely! The options presented during combat range from hide, melee, , kick downed opponent, headbutt, sneak, ranged, retreat, offer/demand surrender, offer/accept cease fire, attempt to talk and countless other available options that are once again available depending on you attribute selection.

Do I need to remind you to choose them wisely once again? I do? O.k check it out, this one's gonna hit home a bit more....Unless you carefully choose your attributes, you may within seconds contract any one of the following unpleasant status illnesses or diseases:

Blindness, Blisters, Blue Rot, Cholera, Coughing Blood, Crippled Limb, Defoliant Exposure, Diarrhea, Gastroenteritis, Heat Stroke, Hypothermia, Hypovolemic Shock, Poisoned, Sepsis, Shock, Vomiting

Sound fun? No? Then choose wisely my friends, trust me.

You will without a doubt die and die often, yet during each playthrough you will obtain more knowledge in regards to how to survive and future strategies that come of it.

Graphics: The graphics of Neo Scavenger serve their purpose. They are in no way revolutionary and aren't intended to be, nor needed to be whatsoever. Yet if there were one weakness of Neo Scavanger this would be it. As mentioned above the graphics serve their purpose but, that in no way means that the options available should be so barron. The options available are as basic as it gets and are as folows:

Full screen, windowed, 16:9, 4:3, frame rate limiter, filter and stretch.

Pretty uneventful to say the least and due to the graphics engine's limitations they do not scale. So expect the presentation to be a bit lackluster. Yet, once again they serve their purpose and it will not ruin your experience whatsoever. So take this section with a grain of salt because, if you're in the market for a game in this genre, graphics are the least of your worries.

Sound: The music and sound effects although they may not present themselves often are perfectly crafted to create a tense and fitting atmosphere. Given the situation, the music will accompany and heighten your feeling of desperation within this incredibly depressing world. With each fade in the music will most definitely add an element that most other games cannot match. Considering so, the developers deserve an award for knowing when less is more and Neo Scavenger is a perfect example of that. The echoing sounds of the barron wilderness accompany the simplistic soundtrack design and add to a believable experience.

Story: The story although seemingly simplistic and unoriginal at first is where Neo Scavenger will surprise you at every turn and leave you wanting to know more about our most unlucky protagonist. Although at first sight it may seem minimalistic, you will be proven wrong as you progress further into this world of chaos he so sadly awoke to. The story contained in Neo Scavenger will most assuredly be a driving force behind your desire to continue multiple play sessions to discover more about what happened to this once populated land. As you can see by my vagueness, I am doing my best to protect any insight as to specific story elements which, should serve as a hint that it's most definitely there and is most definitely worthwhile. Trust me when I say, there will be many more than one occasion that will leave you in awe and in horror.

Replay Value: The replay value found in Neo Scavanger is second to none and I am by no means stretching my imagination out of bounds to come to that conclusion. The very fundamentals of Neo Scavanger are built to lure the player back into it's world of dessolation, no matter how many times they've played before. With each play through, you will gain knowledge as to how your next session could possibly last longer and you will most definitely feel an urge to apply it for a "better" outcome. What will give you an even more increasing desire to launch it again is that, even after you believe you have mastered it's many facets of gameplay.....you will die and die you will, often and mercilessly. Yet regardless, you will most assuredly return once again to the world of Neo Scavenger and enjoy every gut wrenching second.

Final (Early Access BETA) Review Score: 8.3/10
Although still in Early Access form, I in no way feel it to be a hinderance to come to a determination that Neo Scavenger should find a place in the library of any gamer looking for a title that will surpass their expectations and leave them in shock that they haven't played it before. The developers at Blue Bottle Games have poured an incredible amount of love and attention into their world of solitude and despair which, I guaruntee will leave you feeling the same. If you're in the market for a survival game, give Neo Scavenger a chance!

someone was playing fallout and thought "what if my guy got gonorrhea" and then this game was born

Hunting Rifle with strap and scope: $500
Pair of mismatch shoes: $60
Bottle of Wolverine Black: $200

Being beaten to death in your sleep by hobo who wants to steal your stuff and eat you: Priceless

11/10

I spend most of my time walking around with only one shoe on, carrying crinkled shopping bags full of cloth, litter and empty plastic bottles. One time I found a full bottle of whiskey and nearly died of excitement.

I am a hobo.

And this is my story.

How I LOVE this game!
It has the extensiveness of a great exploration and scavenging game, but it actually has a -goal-, including stories, quests and npc's but without revealing everything in the first 5 minutes of playing. In fact, after almost 18 hours of playing I get the feeling I'm only scratching the surface of finding out what's really going on - who I am and what I am supposed to be doing. The guidance you get is intuitive but directions are given sparingly. There are loads of stats kept, you get an idea of that when you die - everything you achieved is being summed up, giving you hints of events that have been set in motion.
Gonna start another round right NOW

I see lights off in the distance. I make my way toward them, starving and shivering. I learn to light a fire to keep warm and then attract a monster which proceeds to chew my face off.

I start over.

I head toward the lights again, this time I have a spear and can eat berries to stay hydrated and full. I drink some water which makes me crap my pants. I die in a pool of poo.

I start over

I do all the above but make a point of boiling my water. I finally make it to the city, eat a meal that I cannot possibly pay for and do a runner.

10/10

Would run again.

NEO Scavenger is a turn-based, roguelike scavenging game. I like it a lot, because it's gritty, fairly in-depth and more realistic than almost every other survival game.

NEO Scavenger first asks you to choose your perks/flaws: Botanist, Strong, Myopia, etc. There are no XP and levels, so, mostly, what you see is what you get. After selecting your starting skills, you are thrown into the game barefoot and with only a hospital gown.

Your first order of business is finding the basics of survival: shoes (one left and one right!), warm clothes, a lighter, a crowbar for scavenging, a sleeping bag, tools to obtain clean food and water and something to carry all this stuff around. In fact, the very first treasures you'll scavenge are probably disposable plastic grocery bags. They're very fragile, but they're tiny, weigh nothing and will serve as your first backpack. Those bad boys are little life savers, you have to love them! We should probably produce and dump more plastic bags all over the place for fututre survivors, right now. What do you think of that, environmentalists?

From then on, you'll also need to find all the other things you need to survive: clean rags for wounds, alcohol for disinfection, antibiotics, painkillers, a firearm with ammo, gloves, a gasmask for polluted areas, crafting tools, binoculars, noisemakers to warn you of intruders during the night, etc. One of the game's main qualities is that the list of things needed to survive effectively is very, very long, but you can also make do with just the essentials.

Contemporary technology is surprisingly useless. A found computer might have no battery, then a found battery might have no charge in it, then a charged battery will reveal the computer is password-locked, then you'll hack it (if you picked that skill)... only to discover the computer only contains pictures of cats. On the other hand, a cheap plastic bottle filled with safe drinking water is always a useful commodity. Is that social commentary or what?

Weapons are also imporant, but not nearly as much as in most survival games. It's possible to completely avoid all combat with a peace-loving build.

Speaking of which, combat is a strange numberless affair, where you choose broad actions (run forward/back, take cover, trip enemy, threaten). The only numeric value is range, which is enormously important depending on your fighting style. What you do get are surprisingly graphic descriptions of your situation: "You have passed out from unbearable pain" or "You have died from acute bleeding to the lungs". Ouch. As in real life, he who strikes first usually wins. It's also possible to win a fight and die from your injuries not long afterwards. All in all, fights are terrying (as they should be), the results are sometimes unpredictable and fighting fair is always a stupid idea. Did I mention you can be killed in your sleep (and vice-versa)?

There's also crafting, there's always crafting. Except here it's realistic. You're not going to craft an assault rifle with rocks in NEO Scavenger. In fact, a good ol'fire is probably the number one recipe. Sorry, no fire by friction if you haven't chosen the Trapper skill at character creation. Making fire without an external source is really not that easy without training. Another essential crafting recipe is: Fire + Water + Receptacle = Boiled (sterile) Water. Don't tell me it's boring until, weakened by diarrhea from drinking dodgy water, you are punched to death by a hobo. By the way, the game doesn't tell you what makes you sick: you only know you messed up somewhere when symptoms start showing up.

The game leaves the player with three general survival strategies: use nature's gifts to provide for your needs, scavenge cities for pre-apocalypse technology or... murder every survivor in sight for the contents of their shopping bags, RAWR!

The game has a main storyline, but as of right now it's pretty short. And did I tell you THIS GAME HAS NO ZOMBIES? Yay!

The game has two main flaws. First, the game could do a better job helping you find points of interest. The map is very large and it's not obvious where the important areas are. The second is almost a praise: I want more of it! I want more items, more weapons, more unique areas, more special encounters, more animals. MOAR! The possibilites of common household items having ingenious survival uses is almost endless. Variety in this game is good, but not great, but things are still being added to the game (and there are mods).

While I recommend NEO Scavenger, it is in Early-Access at 99% complete, so it might be worth waiting a bit if you want the best first experience possible. Yet even right now, it's still a pretty great game and an impressive achievement as the work of a single man.

In conclusion, I'll quote Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Graham Smith which sums up the game's worth pretty well:
"NEO Scavenger is the only survival game that feels like it has anything to do with survival."

Some bandits force me into a limo with a woman giving birth... Since I had the medical skill I saved her newborn child from dying and in return I got a pat on the back..... 10/10


But in all seriousness this is a pretty damn good survival game. Worth the 10 bucks.

NEO Scavenger has that "special game" feeling. By that I mean, a game where the possibilities seem limitless, and you're carried away into a new world on adventure. The last game to do this for me was Crusader Kings 2.

It is also an example of classic "simple to learn, hard to master" design. Most of the systems (combat, crafting, movement, line of sight etc.) are very straightforward, and easy to grasp. But put them all together, and almost everything you do is a meaningful choice that will continue to affect you throughout the game.

Also, my favourite contemporary novel is The Road, by Cormac Mccarthy, and this is as close as you are going to get to experiencing that chill when someone asks: "What are you eating?"

I was rudely awakened by two dogmen. They did not seem to appreciate my fur coat.

10/10 would die again.

Have you ever beat a man to death with your fists? I have. His shoes were made of pure gold in my eyes. As I beat him slowly as he tried to stand back up all I could think about was his shoes. "An extra move maybe I can make it to detriot now" I thought. Finally he was unconscious, I could have just looted him but no. What if he woke up? I kept kicking him and kicking him untill I heard his last breath. I killed that man... later I ate him pretty good. 10/10 It was okay -IGN

In the 1st 24 hours of buying this I added it to my favourites list. It's one of those games, if you're not playing it, you're thinking about playing it, you lay in bed wanting to get to sleep faster so you can wake up sooner and play it for longer.

There are so many reasons to buy this. I'm not going to bang on too much. I will say that it's games like these (and Prison Architect, Kerbal Space Program, Papers Please etc) that restore my faith in game development. You don't need AAA budgets and staff to make a game that will grip people and make them want to play. You just need gameplay, care and attention and immersion. That's what this game brings to the table, in spades.

You're alone in the wilderness. You'll die, a lot, but it'll feel like winning. In every game you'll see something new, try things a little differently, last a little longer sometimes, die within hours at other times. Nothing is ever bland. The graphics, though basic by standards today, detract from the experience not a jot.

You know those games where you buy them in a sale and never play them, only to try on a rainy Sunday and realise you've been playing it all week? This is such a gem. £7 is a steal. There's nothing more you need to know. Buy it now.

Hands-down one of the best single player survival games. Never underestimate a hobo with a sauce pan.

Okay, Take the classic Fallout games and Combine them with Dungeons and Dragons.
Now you have NEO Scavenger.

NEO Scavenger is an overall fantastic game.
If you enjoyed the classic Fallout games or if you enjoy playing tabletop RPGs such as DnD this game may appeal to you.

NOTE: This review is based solely on my opinion, Do not be angry with me if you do not agree with my opinions.

Pros
- Retro Graphics to deliver a sense of Nostalgia. (Some people love em others hate em.)
- Advanced Character Creation (Very similar to Project Zomboid)
Traits and Flaws system makes endless character potential
Traits can help you survive, Such as using a skill to make fires from scratch
- Complete Open World
Move Spaces much like a tabletop RPG
- Entriguing Lore
- Awesome Choice-Based Turn Combat
- Choices in Encounters allow for Interesting Outcomes
- Good Inventory System, As well as Injury.
- Fresh Scavenging System
Use Skills + Items to increase items found, Random events while scavenging (Roof Collapse)
Cons
- Cruel Learning Curve (Not Necessarialy bad, Personally I like it.)
- Relatively Short Storyline (Still in Progress)
- Somewhat Linear Start
Would be nice to be able to create your own character and spawn at a random location
- Esscentials are difficult to find


Overall I would say this game is a solid 9/10,

This game is worth buying if you are
A: A fan of older Fallout games
B: A fan of Tabletop RPGs
C: Both
D: A Bad Mutha

This game is great...brutal and hard, but great. Imagine a turn based 'The Road' simulator and that's what they've made. Your worst enemies aren't other humans...it's cholera, cold, hunger, and infection. Infection makes choosing to fight a whole different ballgame, even the smallest injury can kill you in the long run without clean bandaging. Good stuff, worth the money!

Most 'survival' games I feel like I just need to figure out the trick to win the game. Not with NNEO Scanvenger. It feel's so realistically frustrating that I keep coming back for more.


Highly recommended for anyone looking to kill a few hours after work, then not sleeping until 3am trying to survive one more time!

This game will be a hit or miss with you. Many options to choose to do as you play, probably the most I have ever seen in a game before. Keep in mind that you probably will develop arthritis from playing this game because of the mass amount of clicking. You can die very easily in this game. I wish i could tell you that this game had a plot, but frankly I haven't lived long enough to find out lol.