edit: updating review. evidently its getting some attention, so I figured I might as well expand and clarify.

tl;dr edition: neither good nor fun. do not buy unless its deeply discounted.

I can not refer this game in good faith. There are 2 major things wrong with How to Survive.

Firstly, take a look at the DLC. If How to Survive truly is an indie game, control of the project has been overtaken by greedhead corporate dumb think leadership. Someone (likely 505 Games) has opted to make DLCs out of basic features that should have been part of the basic game. Examples are an extra harder difficulty and a hardcore feature. Other DLCs (Heatwave) resemble what would have been unlockables for games only a generation ago. Lastly there are the DLCs that suggest the core game was released unfinished taking the cutting room floor scraps and selling them off as DLC when they got to them later. I don't know if the nickel and diming customers business model bothers you, but it sure as hell bothers me.

The second problem is the game itself. Its not good. How to Survive is a perfect example of the tidalwave of schlock being put out by the burgeonning indie industry. It is an inferior imitation of mainstream titles like Diablo and Torchlight. It tries to be unique and original with additional survival features like hunger, thirst, and sleepiness, but they're implemented in a way that make the game tedious and annoying. The quality is painfully amateur and inconsistent. Struggle as a melee character, but have 2 triple bladed boomerangs and you're so golden the game gets dull. The content is particularly slim. Each island is painfully small. And the game itself manages to be as repetitive as Diablo and Torchlight, but in the most flat, boring, and completely unrewarding manner possible.

How to Survive lives up to its lousy meta score. No idea why this game has such an overwhelmingly high positive customer review count. The $15 asking price with the lazy DLCs is crazy to me. Other games How to Survive is trying to be are the same exact price and offer more and better quality content minus the annoying survival gimmicks and DLC. Specifically either of the Torchlight games.

Honestly, my recommendation is to not buy How to Survive at all. If you absolutely must take the plunge, as stated in the tl;dr above, buy it when its 80-90% off. That way you won't feel too ripped off when you find out how painfully below average it is.

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Click for Gameplay Trailer - Review

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I Like:
+ easy control
+ three characters with skills development
+ creation of weapons, armor, medicine, etc.
+ equipment is shown on figures
+ some nice finsiher
+ day and night cycles
+ two levels of difficulty
+ offline & online coop

I Dont Like:
- no tension, no thrills
- characters all play the same
- much too small islands with automap
- unnecessary because half-baked survival elements
- too much ammunition and material
- simple pickup and delivery quests
- story is a joke

Caribbean and zombies? Is the Dead Island for arcade tourists? After a shipwreck you are stranded on a beach with little more than the clothes on your back. The game treads pretty familiar ground in its premise of playing as a survivor in a zombie apocalypse.

How To Survive is a guidebook that teaches one the basics of survival. You need to craft items, hunger, thirst, and exhaustion, all while fending off the limitless hordes of brain-eating zombies.
You can choose between 3 classes, Jack the typical bruiser, Kenji the assassin, and Abby the nighthawk. Each have own strengths and abilities and specific items they can craft. Weapons are more entertaining to craft, even if most blueprints you find aren’t that exciting. Armor crafting is very important, as more armor means less damage from zombies. By combining various bones, tires, and metals a nice set of armor. Many combined items can be disassembled without a penalty, so you can take the components of a weapon that you no longer use to build a new weapon. Ammo could have offered one, but it’s unlimited. Bullets are everywhere, and arrows easily crafted/retrieved.

Experience is given for killing enemies, crafting new things, and obviously for finishing quests. This is when you will see How To Survive’s light RPG mechanics come into play to use on skill tree of the character with each level providing a skill point.
Missions begin simply: find a canister, fill it with gasoline, and looking for other objects that will help you to leave the island group.

My favorite part in the game is the coop mode. Your survival partners use separate characters, each with their own saved progress. The game will use the host’s checkpoint so keep this in mind when hopping into different people’s games. The game scales very well for co-op, as more zombies will join you when partnered up. But... Characters are tethered to each other by the boundaries of the screen, so you can’t wander to different parts of the island and must stay fairly close to one another.

How To Survive is an nice take on zombie survival. The crafting is the most interesting part on the game, and the co-op definitely heightens the experience. Its not perfect but a great little coop romp.

Score 63 / 100


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NOTE that for the record I use a Xbox 360 Controller for this game 100% of the time. There will also be a bullet point Pros/Cons review near the bottom of this.

How to Survive is in my opinion a well done game to say the least. The game has a simple yet elegant combat system that I found satisfying, it takes patience to truly master zombie slaying as you must take time to zero in your aim for those rewarding headshots. This is better then many other games as it adds a touch of needed skill to it. The game also contains a decent variety of zombies to slaughter including some undead animals that prove to be quite scary when encountered. Many zombie types also require you to change up your strategy as a nice bonus, while you normal zombies can be dispatched with melee weapons, zombies such as Fatties require a ranged approach as they will otherwise blow up in your face upon death. One issue I had here though was running zombies tend to get ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ when right on you and I found it hard to aim at them as they attacked while running circles around me. The island settings also do nicely, between varied terrain and well done lighting the game's presentation is both beautiful and terrifying. One of the game's strongest points is its well done crafting system, playing the game I constantly found myself wanting to find new items to combine to produce more deadly weapons and armor. This is further expanded by crafting and adding attachments such as scopes for homemade guns to decrease aim time or pulleys to give your bow more damage. Another nice mechanic the game has is a day and night cycle where at night an abundant number of more mutated and aggressive zombie type foe come out to play, what really sets this apart from other games is your ability to fight these off by simply staying in the light. With a campfire your safe and to travel you can simply grab a torch from the fire, however you will drop the torch to the ground if you need to use any other weapon, and while you can use a flashlight with a weapon it is a directional light, so if your not careful these creatures can come up from behind you and attack. The game also sports a decent Hunger/Thirst/Sleep system that adds just a little more spice to the difficulty, however if you acquire both skill perks to double these meters you'll find yourself rarely having to maintain them. The game contains a few different character to play as each with different stats and available skills to acquire. A couple of which have a unique ability to craft a specific item only as them. As said the game does contain a leveling system in which each level grants a skill point of your choosing, however out of the 12 or so skills I had playing Jack I only found 4 or 5 of them to actually be worth something. While the story isn’t the best it was still rather entertaining and when taken the time to scavenge and keep yourself properly equipped the main story ran about 15 hours for me across 2 days of constant play. Now though the game lacks any sort of structure building mechanic the game does allow you to drop items anywhere and will never disappear which really came in handy as I tended to have a hording problem in this game. I have a friend that I got to also get the game and together we found the multiplayer gameplay just as fun, you can either to a simple challenge which is essentially an island with a single goal such as finding a plane to escape. You can Co-Op the story, this part was especially cool as while my friend was just starting his story I was well into mine and I retained both my stats and all the items on me allowing me to easily aid him in his story. All in all I'd say this game is worth trying especially for any fan of zombie and/or survival game, to those of you I'd say you wont be disappointed.

So in a nutshell:
Pros:
-Satisfying combat system
-Addictive crafting system
-Well done setting
-A decent story both in quality and length
-Enemy variety
-Day/Night cycle
-Hunger/Thirst/Sleep systems
-Level and skill progression
-Multiple playable character
-Rebindable Controls

Cons:
-Zombie AI can be a little wonky but rare
-Camera style made some areas extremely difficult to navigate
-Some what low variety of melee weapons
-Controls for aiming seemed to be off at times (Xbox 360 Controller)

One final note is that I found that getting information on more advanced stuff was hard, especially seeing how typing "How to Survive..." in an internet search engine usually found unwanted results.

My finally score for this game as a long time zombie and survival game lover is a solid 8/10, while its of course not a AAA title it does very well with what it has and I find myself strangely addicted to continue playing and watching as my character started as a hopeless shipwreck survivor and evolved into the perfect survivalist.

Pretty good game, but camera work ruins whole gameplay in a cooperative mode. It's just annoying. It really bothers me and many other players too (i have seen a few posts about it, players actually begged developers to fix this). However, single mode is interesting and provides fun for couple of hours and i think that if you like zombie survival type games (and playing alone also) you will like this game. Is it worth buying? For single playing only, yes.

Diablo 2 meets Fallout meets DayZ.

The result is a fantastic coop experience!

1) Gameplay
Well, it's rather classical. Using either a mouse + keyboard combination or a gamepad, you're hitting / slashing / shooting zombies. It works just fine with both, and you can switch to an axe with a simple press if you're getting swarmed with your bow. Obviously the game is an hack'n'slash with zombies so you can expect all its traditional elements: special zombies and bosses. How To Survive also features a neat craft system, so you can gather as much crap as possible in order to make the weapon of your dreams. One issue with that though, the inventory tends to be full most of the time since it's so small. As for the survival, you can hunt, gather plants or fruits, water, then cook it all before heading to bed.

2) Story
You're a survivor, so you meet other survivors who just happen to want the same thing as you: survive in order to escape the zombie outbreak. Though the game is rather humorous, guess we'd all turn out crazy if zombies started to invade the streets.

3) Graphics
Nothing much to say. The game looks nicey with "realistic" graphics, which somehow manages to feel refreshing. Hooray, no pixel shading!

4) Coop
It's as good as the singleplayer: there are more enemies and they tend to hit harder since you're two. Yes. Two. That is a bit disappointing, but at least they did it right. Well, almost. Both players have to stay in the same "screen" in order to progress, so don't expect to finish a quest while your partner is farming xp.

5) Conclusion: I picked it up for almost nothing and didn't actually expect the game to be that good, def one of the most pleasing hack'n'slash and coop game I tried. The survival elements and the crafting system tend to spice up the gameplay, which is just what the genre needed to last longer. I'd love it even more if the game was a little longer though... 8/10

Addicting. Stayed up all night playing this with my husband. We lost track of time, so he got 3 hours of sleep for a 12 hour day of work.

10/10

I really tried to give this game a fair try. It simply wasn't as interesting or enjoyable as it appeared to be in the Steam store. The premise is neat but the execution is lacking. Crafting could be cool, but most of the time your tiny inventory is full up with junk. You have no homebase so there's nowhere to store excess stuff. Also, where you sleep for the night is highly limited and really annoying. There is usually only one secure bed shack per island. And for some reason, when you go to try and use it, a red light and alarm goes off every time, alerting tons of zombies to your location for no real reason. The most entertaining aspect of this game is watching the short "Kovac's rules" videos. Save your money and buy State of Decay instead for a much deeper zombie survival crafting game with a better plot.

God I play a lot of zombie games... I wonder what the new "zombie" will be and how long it will take to get here? Oh well, I shouldn't let that get in the way of telling you about How to Survive! HtS is actually a very enjoyable little game, kind of like Zombie Driver, Alien Breed and Diablo II ran a train on Krater. I can't put my finger on it, but it really did feel like I had played HtS before, and to me that's a really good sign that a game is made properly (at least to my liking, anyway). I found it challenging, but not so much that I wanted to go Super Saiyan on my screen, and was genuinely interested by the plot twists and creative story. I found this surprising because HtS, at first glance, looks like your run-of-the-mill horde grinder, but upon closer inspection I found it to be much more.
The crafting system is elaborate enough yet easy to understand, that it is not only enjoyable, but essential to the gameplay. The environments are colourful enought that you don't feel like you've been sating at ants scurrying across tea-stained paper for hours, though a little more variation like cave systems would have added a bit of contrast. Everything worked, no bugs, no pulling my hair out looking for fixes or walkthroughs, and the in-game tutorials on how things work were humorously done, adding an element of comedy that you don't often see in survival games.
If you're beween AAA titles and you're looking for something casual to break it up a bit, How to Survive has to be one of the best little games I've played in a long time. Fun, interesting, satisfying.

I was originally quite interested in this game until I saw the low Metacritic score, which I am EXTREMELY glad I overlooked, because this is now one of my favourite games. I just wish I had ignored the low score earlier. METACRITIC IS WRONG.

I am seriously amazed that the Metacritic score is currently sitting at 60%, I would definitely put this game at a 90+%.

Basically I was looking for a game that I could play Local Co-Op with my girfriend, and this game does not disappoint, her and I love it. She is not an avid gamer either and it is not easy to get her into a game.

I can wholeheartedly recommend this game to anyone looking for a great Local Co-Op experience.

As you can probably see from this review, I don't typically do this, but I felt compelled to give this game the respect it deserves. IT IS AWESOME.

I want to write more, but it's late and I have to go play How to Survive instead of studying for my exam tomorrow morning.

So I guess the main issue I have with this game is that it's ruining my grades at school and keeping me up until all hours of the morning.

If you have somehow managed to read to this point, STOP WASTING TIME AND BUY THE FRIGGING GAME ALREADY.

not expect from the next "game about survival" something completely new, but still the gameplay is pretty interesting, especially in coop with a friend. also big plus is the presence of the storyline, humor, good execution.

highly recommend

I really like the game, it's fun, beautiful graphics, the combat system is fast paced, the crafting system looks really good with endless possibilities and along with all that, Kovac's humor is very entertaining.

If it feels like there is a "but" coming, to me there is.

The game is great, has very well thought out elements, but it's a little more hack and slash, action game, than a survival or RPG.

Has all the elements of a great RPG, skill tree, crafting, but, it always feels very linear.

You have a story to follow and a path to follow and although you can go back to pick an extra herb or gather more resources, you feel you don't really need to since the game is progression in front of you and behind, is behind.

The DLC available adds two game modes that feel a little more "open end", but, still feels like this could have been huge and falls just short of it with the constrains imposed by the design followed.

Good fun though, and with co-op you can laugh with a friend while hacking through hordes of zombies, that die in countless ways.

This game is pretty kool !! I like the Diablo Style Play and the crafting system! I picked this up on Sale for the xmas sale the Storm Warning Edition for only $1.99 !! Well worth the price if you love a Diablo style zombie killing game with all the DLCs :) I say give this one a go !!! Bigtime if you can get it cheap !!! And dont forget your Guide !! :P

I started to play this a bit more and man this game can get uber hard at times :) It was at night and low sleep so needed to rest and man it can get crazy trying to clean a sleep/save zone out lol I also love how you can hunt the deer/boar and track the blood if you dont kill it in one shot!

OK, I had in the back of my mind that I had seen a bad review about this game ages ago, so never thought about buying it.

But seeing it on sale today I thought, sod it, just try it :) And im glad i did. Its pretty bloody good, if your into this sort of thing. Its a different take on all the low quality first person zombie games that we got flooded with this year, and that in itself is refreshing :)

I havent played many hours though, so I cant comment in detail on the games mechanics, but Id say its easily worth the £1.50 I paid :). Thats a bit harsh actually, now i know what it is i would have easily paid £5 for it :)

sadly it isnt a very long game which is a shame because the game itself is extremely fun imo, i've just invested in some of the dlcs on a 90-91% sale to help the longevity of the game, but even now i dont think ill get many more hours out of it, good thing they were cheap.

great game if you buy it on a good sale, definitly not worth the full price in comparison to other games when comparing potential play time vs price.

I write this review when it's holiday sale 2014. This game is really worth the price, I get it when it was 90% off (around $1.1 in Indonesia at the time). I purchase the storm pack and I also purchase the rest of dlcs available. I had played for 11 hours before writing this. Ok this game is really great in concept. I thought it was just a meh game, but it's not. It's actually very good.

this game is kinda like diablo 2 with zombie as it's theme. you are a survivor that cast away in remote island and trying to find a help and keep survive

pro:
- cheap
- a lot of customization
- great scavenging element in zombie survivor game
- great music, environtment and kovak's unique video tutorial :)

con:
- repetitive
- npc meet zombie, and zombie ignores them like they are statue..
- text for island is hard to read :( I know it's minor thing but for a guy who is bad in sense of direction like me it's confusing if you don't know the where you stand now
- there should be a button to display item scattering on the ground like diablo has
- silly quest.. why do we have to get parcel. it's zombie apocalpse , we don't have time for that :(
there is santa zombie that will explode when you shoot it. I'm not sure if it's like that. I played it during winter. it's highy recommended!

I bought the Storm Warning Edition on 2014 Winter Sale for €3,79 and its totally worth that money. Im glad i didn't bought it for the €18,99 it normal cost. Thats to much money if you ask me. It's a fun game and it keeps you bussy with crafting, exploring and surviving. Grab it on a sale and don't look at the 60/100 Metascore i think this is before they fixed a lot of problems.

An incredibly boring, unbalanced game, that fails to deliver anything meaningful.

First, the crafting: This is the game's only true strength, but it's still lacking. There's only a handful of weapons and minor upgrades to them for you to create. A weak machine gun, an average machine gun, a strong machine gun. A rifle. A wooden bow, a metal bow, two upgrades to add onto them. Everything boils down to a couple of tiers of equipment that do the same thing.

Second, balance: The difficulty curve is all over the place. At the start of the game, you will get mauled, guaranteed, by all the zombies. You'll only have a stick to defend yourself with, which is slow, weak and inefficient against the sheer number of zombies. Then you can finally get a ranged weapon and the game becomes yawn inducing, followed by the second island, where helmeted zombies might actually land a hit on you if there's several of them.

Then you get to the third island and, despite further upgrading your bow AND gun, find that neither are all that effective against the zombies there. How ineffective are they? It takes two perfect head shots to take them down, assuming they don't have a helmet. They also come at you in droves and your movement is slowed by the swamp.

Then you find the recipe for an upgraded boomerang. This weapon outperforms bows and guns quite easily, in terms of speed, damage and lack of ammo consumption. It's only weakness is that you have to wait for the weapon to come back before you can throw it again, but this didn't cause me problems at all. Between the long effective range, high damage and hitting twice, it's often able to take out multiple zombies per throw and the delay is actually pretty low.

Third, the enemies: There is nothing remotely interesting about any of them. There's regular zombies, progressively faster and stronger zombies, fat (explosive) zombies, head crabs and giant zombies. Nothing new to report. Oh, and there's also zombie deer and what I believe are emus. The birds just zerg rush, so they're also boring. The deer attack by charging and can stun you, which makes them one of the more interesting enemies, if only because their speed means they'll actually hit you.

Fourth, the plot and characters: The plot is bland. You're marooned on an island and have to survive. The characters are all varying degrees of insane and unlikable. I'd guess that the game was aiming to be parody, but it's just so unfunny and overall dull that I honestly can't tell if it's being sincere or not.

Fifth, the quests: Every single one is a fetch quest. If it's not a fetch quest at first, it will become one soon enough. Also, get used to failure, because it's guaranteed. Unless it involves getting to another zombie infested island, you're not actually accomplishing anything.

And then there's the monkeys. With pet parrots. Who give optional fetch quests, because clearly we didn't have enough of them already, right? These are what make me wonder if the game is meant as parody, because they so clearly break the bleak mood of the game. Unfortunately, all they accomplish is changing my mood from apathy to annoyance. The squawking really gets old.

Sixth, bugs and nitpicking: One bug I keep running into is that, after I took the skill that showed certain plants on the map, some of the plant icons would remain after harvesting while others wouldn't. A similar problem I kept running into with the skill to see animals on the map was sometimes the icons for them didn't show up, despite the deer being close enough for me to see its antlers.

Also, there's a sound bug with the boomerang. Sometimes after throwing it, the sound continues even after it returns, which gets annoying very fast. Usually it happens when I open the inventory menu while it's still airborne, but sometimes it just happens.

And one last, little annoyance, of no real significance: The voice acting doesn't match up with the dialog boxes, like they were using two different versions of the same script. The ideas are all the same, but the words are different.

really nice game

The fat zombies are dressed up like santa right now.

Welcome to the Holiday Steam Sale Guide, Chapter 93: How to Shop

Step 1: Buy the Storm Warning Edition
Step 2: Do not buy the game and then the Storm Warning edition

Your wallet will thank you!

This protip brought to you by Dumb Idiot

[---Spergs read under this line, ONLY---]

The game is great so far, for the price I (should) have paid for it. My hours did not count up for the first playthrough for some reason, so I'm taking my time making a small review for people who will complain about a 'useless' review. It's greatest strengths is in it's simplicity; find things, use things to stave off bad things, become better, win game. The most hyperbolic way I can describe the game is if Don't Starves mechanics fused with Diablo's action segments. Also, the game doesn't take itself too seriously, and I can respect this decision from a gameplay standpoint. Some goofy hazards like exploding zombies and tell-tale lightning strikes create challenging/annoying moments, and doesn't put itself out of its way to suspend disbeliefs.

The bad is also there, and become very apparent from the beginning. This game was meant for consoles, and plays as much. This becomes apparent in online multiplayer, as both players are confined to the same camera. Do not sprint to the bottom of the screen; you will land in a pile of zombos. Having controller support is great, but the game will immediately assume you want your button prompts from your game pad if it is plugged in, even if you've been playing with Mouse and Keyboard the entire time. As for interacting with the world, it has a problem of hiding objects simply by placing brown items against brown floor, which is abundant on this island. There is a faint notifier via bloodstain, but that isn't really explained and you just kind of have to figure that out.

Then there's crafting. Quite possibly the biggest aspect of survival in the game, and it is also the biggest upset. Let's say you want to make 200 stacks of arrows. You need twenty sticks, and a sharp object. If you want to make them all, you have to click the stick, then the Craft button, and then the sharp object. You're going to have to do that twenty times. Later, you find out that you can improve the arrows further with feathers. Guess what? Click those arrows, then the Craft button, and then click the feathers. Twenty times. ♥♥♥♥IN 'ELL YOU CAN CRAFT MY ARROWS, JOHNATHON. Perhaps it was made this way on purpose to create tension while crafting in the middle of the field, but with the earlier problem of a shared camera in multiplayer, it becomes a groan worthy exercise in busy work and trying your friend's patience.

Can't say I've gotten in far enough to judge the game for the initial price it asked for, but it is functioning/not crashing/not boring. For $2.00, it's worth getting into. As for why I suggested buying the Storm Warning edition, it's because it comes with all of the micro-DLC, which are basically updates that should have come free (new difficulty settings, new game modes, etc.). The skins I can see as being small DLC, but asking money for things like game modifiers and difficulty levels is beyond homosexual.