1. Started in the middle of wilderness, tried to find a village, got robbed, depressed and quit living (committed suicide).
2. Started in the middle of wilderness, tried to find a village, got hungry, ate some mushrooms, died of poisoning.
3. Started near a village, traded my stuff for a fishing rod, found a frozen lake, went to fish to deeper waters, ice broke, fainted of cold, drowned.
4. Started in the middle of wilderness as a hunter, found a bear, attacked it, it attacked me, died of bleeding.
5. Started as a farmer and wood worker, got along pretty well doing safe stuff and making some wealth, built a house, winter came, died of freezing.
6. Started as a warrior, attacked robbers, killed 2 of them, one was hidden and attacked me, survived, learned fighting skills, went to revenge, found robbers, killed and looted them, traded for better weapons, got confidence, attacked Njerpez, got ambushed, died of bleeding.

Dying and learning from it hasn't ever been funnier. This game is a diamond if you can see through rough graphics. Will go and die again...

So, back in 2006 I bought this crappy sandboxy roguelike from a finnish indie developer for the outrageous sum of $49. After a week of having my characters die in days from tree falling, bear mauling, and poorly planned attacks on way better armed enemies, I upgraded my computer and for the life of me could never figure out how to get a link to another copy.

Fast forward to 2016 and I found out that this game is still being developed (with way better graphics) AND a fully free version to try out.

As far as the game:
Brutal survival, a lucky hit from an enemy can down you and getting surrounded is an easy death. Every action is a risk/reward calculation.

Good health modeling and healing is slooooooooow. My current character is a few weeks into his life after a day one fight with 5 slavers and the wounds aren't even half healed (he's lucky to be alive, though.)

Being a turn based game, the wound penalties aren't bad gameplay wise. You get heavy percent based penalties to your actions, but the player isn't burdened with horribly slow walk/run animations or real time sleep due to frequent exhaustion.

World building and seasons are fantastic.

It still plays like a DOS roguelike with hotkey commands, but there is some mouse support that improves quality of life a bit.

Best $60 I ever spent on a game.

Finland simulator Ca. 1000 AD

But in all seriousness, this game is simply amazing. The amount of detail, intricacy, love and care that has been put into this game continues to shake my very core. As someone (from Finland indeed) who enjoys outdoorsy life and camping in the wild, I have never found a more brutally honest representation of how simply awful life could be for people in past eras.

That's not to say it's 100% realistic, but it's damn well close enough for my taste and really gives you a feeling of accomplishment when you know that you are doing something farely realistic to have survived in that period. This game has transformed what I thought would be a light intrest when I bought it to a full-blown obsession.

It has a steep learning curve, and it ain't pretty to look at (at first, this changes once you get used to it, and by that point the graphics become very comfy indeed), but my god(s) has this game recieved my attention since I bought it. It's become one of those games that I just can't stop wanting to play. I constantly want to pick it up, and once I have I can't put it down again before I fall asleep at my keyboard. I absolutely recommend this game, in all it's brutal beauty, and it absolutely deserves DOUBLE of the asking price in my humble opinion.

So buy this game, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, and make sure to have a handy book of finnish swears and insults ready for all those absolutely thrilling and chilling experiences!

I have been playing UnReal World since 2004. If the game clocked hours before it came to Steam I would be in the thousands. So let's talk about URW.

URW is a roguelike survival game set in Iron Age Finland. It has been made (mostly) by one person and has been in development since 1992. That's 24 years. Talk about dedication.

You survive through the four seasons by hunting, gathering, fishing, trading, trapping and farming. You can make a huge variety of items ranging from wooden pots to your very own house and sauna. You will learn the importance of shelter, fire and the advantages of a ranged weapon. Will you be a fisherman hermit? A travelling merchant? Or maybe a proud warrior? You can play the game however you want.

There's a steep learning curve to the game since there is simply so much to do. The number of hotkeys on the keyboard rivals Microsoft Flight Simulator. The game does have a good manual and plenty of flavor text for history geeks. And let's not forget the lovely LARP pictures for all the characters.

Venture into the Far North. And don't forget to tan your hides.

Hey bud, I know you've been thinking to yourself, "Dang, I wish I was starving to death and/or being eaten by a bear in the harshest winter of unbridled and unfathomable intensity." You really need to lighten up, Champ. Dad says you've been bumming Mom out something fierce. Well Debby-Downer, you're in luck! You can now channel that real world "inner" (watch those finger quotes) masochist into something more productive. Namely, The UnReal World.

Here's what you do, roll an Owl-tribe bowsman and start in winter as a runaway slave because you're a BAD*SS. Then, promptly get kicked in the head to death by a Njerpez Housewive--(insert heavy Russian accent) In iron-age Finland, red shirts kill you!. Next, make a Seal-tribe trapper, spend 4 real life days setting up traps only to blunder into one of them and die miserably. Finally, create Driikilainen fisherman, amass immeasurable wealth, build a house, start a family, enter your sheep pen to butcher up some dinner for said family and get hooved to death by terrified sheep. Rage quit.

Sh*t just got UnReal. BOOM.

UnReal World is special in the way it combines unparalleled player agency, deep simulation and a unique, low-fantasy mythos to produce original narratives derived through emergent gameplay. It's not a game I'd recommend to anybody but, it's a game I'd recommend to you, the person who yearns for immersive complexity and depth, the person who understands that Losing Is Fun™. Be warned though, once you venture into the far north--there is no coming back.

Okay, the rest of you "survival" (mentally visualize those finger quotes) crafting games can go home now, UnReal World has come to Steam--and it is good.

What to say about this amazing game?

Just play it!

Okay, no, that's not fair... you probably want more info than that, right?


God-tier survival/crafting roguelike. Considerable learning curve. Awesome community & devs. Unlike anything else you're likely to find. Try it for free: http://unrealworld.fi/


It's certainly not for everyone... but it's also one of the most unique and fun games I've ever had the pleasure of playing (that's coming from someone who's been playing video games for over 20 years, and with over 1000 games on Steam alone).

Roguelikes, as a genre, seem to have had a resurgence in popularity in recent years; ever since Minecraft rocked the gaming world, the whole survival-crafting-building genre has only increased in popularity.

UnReal World mixes all of this and gives you a peerless roguelike survival crafting experience. There are no zombies to find here, only bears and Njerpez (not to mention the hunger and cold), but they're more than trouble enough. You'll wish you had something as easy as zombies to deal with! (except, no, hopefully not... no more zombies... too many zombies everywhere)

Despite its name, UnReal World also provides one of the most realistic survival experiences I've seen in a game to date (probably the most realistic, really).

Do you want to hang out in the highly-populated Driik lands for access to their large villages and have an easy life of crafting and trading? Or perhaps you'd prefer living out in the middle of nowhere to see if you can survive completely on your own, without help from anyone? Maybe you want to see a lot of combat and one day hope to eradicate all the Njerpez?

Any of this is possible, and so much more. It's up to you.


UnReal World won't hold your hand; iron-age pseudo-Finland is a brutal place in which to try and survive, no doubt.

A lot of modern gamers might be turned off by the initial time investment required to learn how to play the game (not to mention the oldschool graphics; no fancy 3D & particle effects here), but for those that bother, they'll be rewarded with incredibly deep survival gameplay and an experience like no other.

The keyboard-based nature of the game might seem unwieldly at first (and yes, there are a lot of keys to memorize) but it offers very smooth gameplay once you get used to it. You can use the mouse for most/a lot of things, but I'd suggest gtting used to the hotkeys; they can drastically improve your experience.

UnReal World is a sandbox. There are no set goals beyond "survive". How you go about doing that is up to you.

The map is huge, and mostly wilderness. The game's ten different playable cultures (and one non-playable; the Njerpez) all have their own "area" of the map, which determines where you can find settlements. The most interesting of these for a new player would be the Driikiläiset, which can be found in the south-west, as they are the most "urban" and have the biggest villages (which means more trading, which can make one's life much easier).

When you create a new character, you choose which culture you come from; each has their strengths and weaknesses in terms of min/max stats, which affects a variety of things. You can also choose which general area of the map you want to start in, and a few other things.

Once you begin your game, what you do is entirely up to you. There are no set goals; this is a free-form sandbox game (though quests are coming in a future update!).

You can hunt, fish, explore, craft, trade, build yourself a house. Try to settle down, or live as a nomad. Summertime, and the livin' is easy... but you best be prepared for when winter comes around...


[coming soon]


[coming soon]


[coming soon]


Don't dive into this game expecting to know how to play right away. There are semi-tutorials which will help you along with the basics (start with "Living in the Wild"), but this is a game with a lot of intricacies that you'll learn over time, with experience and trial & error. Easy to learn, hard to master, as they say. Patience is well-rewarded.

UnReal World may be new to Steam, but it's been around for a very long time. Its first iteration dates all the way back to 1992! Of course, the game has changed a lot over the years, and will continue to do so for a long time still.

Some useful resources, if you need help, are the official forum and the wiki. Of course, there's also the Steam forum and no doubt some enterprising players will write Steam guides (though none are yet available at the time of this writing).

The UnReal World is a great game with a great community: if you have any questions, ask, someone will be happy to help!

I've played various versions of UnReal World over the past 12+ years, including dozens of hours on this latest version which is being released on Steam. It's got a lot of attributes of a rogue-like: turn-based movement, permanent death, lots of stuff to discover, lots of stuff to craft. Somewhere in its development, more than 10 years ago, it strayed from the path of being a fantasy game to being a simulation of iron-age Finland.

The combat system is straight-forward, but unforgiving. The character has skills for various weapons; combat results are based on attacker and defender results; damage is allocated to hit locations after accounting for armor. Positioning matters: getting behind an opponent allows unblocked attacks. Injuries matter: serious blows to the legs can lame or cripple a creature, a hard blow to the head or even torso can stun. Combat can be drawn out or over quickly, depending on the hidden rng and positioning, so new players are advised to tread carefully at first. Or, you can accept that it's a rogue-like, and just get killed and restart.

If your character can survive or avoid combats, time will pass. You'll have to keep your character fed or starvation penalties will mount. You'll have to think about water, and warmth, and shelter. And eventually, maybe before your character is fully prepared, winter will arrive. In the UnReal World, winter changes the game. For about five game-months you need to stay warm and stay fed. Every day will be short. Every night will be long. The leading cause of death in winter might be boredom; the cabin fever and the routine of safe survival becomes too much and the player takes a character out to adventure in the great white north, into the teeth of a blizzard. Some of them make it back to their cabins. Having said that, with good fur clothes and ski equipment, a character can do a lot of hunting and trapping through the winter, or timberwork, or any number of other tasks.

I think my characters have died every way possible in this game. I'll let you discover the various ways, and head off myself for further adventures. Enjoy!

Before I start, I just need to add: you can download this game for free from the official UnReal World website! The free version is practically (if not entirely) identical to the Steam version. Even if you're totally enamoured with this game by the looks of the descriptions and reviews, I still urge people to play the free version before grabbing the Steam one. Once you've given it a shot, you can make a much better decision on if you want to drop money on it. I told myself that if I played the free version for longer than eight hours, I'd buy the Steam version even if I never boot it up again. I clocked about ten hours, bought it on Steam, then continued to play it for however long it says I have at the top of this review.

I really love this game. It's deep, but I've never felt truly lost; when you make a character, you can pick to have a goal-orientated quest system that teaches you how to play. This ranges from 'This is how you drink water, you gigantic idiot' to building your own house and trading for animals. Once you've grasped the basics, the game opens up as the survival roguelike it aims to be. If you want to know all the cool mechanics that come with the game, the other positive reviews go into passionate detail about what makes the game great. To avoid clashing with people who have literally hundreds of hours of gametime over me, I'll instead relay something that's unique to me; an in-game story.

Fur is really important in UnReal World. It's valuable, it's useful, and it'll stop you from freezing to death when Snow Hell decides to pay a visit. Unfortunately, being a total newbie at the game, the only hides I can get are from squirrels, hares, and ermines. Not very prestigious. The only big hides I had managed to score was one of a bear and an elk, and that's because they fell into a pit trap I set up and became a sitting duck for my volley of arrows. Basically, I'm a bad hunter.

One day I'm out in the snow in my bear fur clothes, checking my pit traps to see if any more suckers have taken pity on my awful hunting skills. The traps are on the border between a mire and a forest, set up to channel and capture any animals walking from one area to another. This time, I noticed a wolf on the world map standing in the mire, so I zoom in on the action to see what's going on.

Turns out, it's not a wolf. It's a pack of them.

At this point of the game, the most dangerous thing I've successfully managed to hunt (that wasn't sitting in a pit and woefully awaiting death) is a fox. All the animals I've come across are basically 'let's see how close I can get before it runs away at the speed of light'. The wolves didn't do that. They decided that I'm up for dinner. They charge at me ("What? Animals attack you in this game?!") and suddenly I'm reaching for my bow. I thought I was a goner, but it turns out that shooting an arrow into the shoulder of a charging wolf is a good deterrent (who knew?). It became a game of scoring a single wound on each attacking wolf to scare them and make them flee. I scored a particularly good hit on one wolf, and I chased down its limping self and attacked its head for a kill. Skinned its fur and butchered its meat and fat. Good stuff.

That's when I discovered why wolves were even here in the first place; lying in the middle of the field was a wolf-torn elk. I approached it and checked the hide, and was surprised to see the wolves hadn't mangled it beyond recognition. It was about a quarter of the way through skinning it that I realised the wolves were still around -- just keeping their distance. I decided to grab the skin and forget the butchering, get out while I still could. I didn't need the meat, the fur was the real gold here.

So I walk home with some wolf and elk fur under my arms. The total sum of the furs I had back home came to something like 8lbs; the fur I was carring totalled 30lbs. A good catch! I set the wolf fur down and use its fat from the butchering to tan it. I then set the elk fur down and -- wait! I didn't butcher the elk! I don't have any fat to tan it with! 20lbs of fur was threaning to go rotten on me if I didn't find a solution, and fast.

I dumped the fur in my cold, 'please don't rot on me' cellar and made a return to the elk. Turns out, so had the wolves, and they had regained their courage. Some nasty nips later, I decided my life wasn't worth some fat and fled.

I looked up about the tanning process to try to find alternatives for my elk fur. Turns out, you don't have to use fat. The skinned barks of alder and rowan trees work just as well. Big problem; I lived in a gigantic forest of pine and birch. So begins the race against time to find an alder or rowan tree before my goldmine attracts flies rather than merchants.

So I'm darting around the world map, cursing every pine and birch that I see. That's when I find a herd of reindeer milling around. I decided to try my luck, so I zoomed in and took a less-than-hopeful shot at the nearest one, expecting a total miss and all the reindeer to flee. It hits. Fire off a second arrow before the victim has a chance to run. Second one hits.

Oh crap. So this is what hunting feels like.

The reindeer has been so badly hit, it's practically crawling its way across the floor. I catch up with it and start trying to unload arrows into its head. My aim is so bad that it ends up hitting the shoulder, body, and even one hit on the knee, at which point I reprimanded UnReal World for its poor choice of meme references. It was around the time I decided to equip a javelin and start poking its head that my character falls asleep. Turns out, fighting wolves and lugging fur across a continent really tires a man out. Who knew?

I awoke with the reindeer nowhere in sight. I followed its tracks and found it only a short run away, still desperately trying to crawl its way to freedom. I started poking at its head with the javelin until it dies, skinned it, made sure to grab the fat this time, and recovered the arrows I had fired. The fat of the reindeer was enough to tan its own hide, but not enough to tan the elk's. The hunt for the tree was still on.

I read up on alder and rowan trees, and found out that they mostly grow in and around villages. So I poked my head into the local village and -- sure enough -- sitting in the middle of the field all proud of itself was an alder tree. The villagers were probably weirded out to see a man walk into their village, cry 'YES!' and then begin frantically carving the bark off of one of their trees. I didn't care. Elk fur was back in fashion, baby.

So that's how I went from Small Game Extraordinaire to sleeping in the furs of a wolf, elk, and reindeer, all because I decided to go check my traps for a bit. My bear fur clothes had some nasty wolf bites in them and I had sufffered a few nasty scratches myself, but I could probably line the entirety of my house in fur now. It was about this time I realised that maybe, just maybe, UnReal World is an awesome game and that I'm glad I got it.

Stay safe in the cold North, folks!

I don't make many reviews here on steam, so there might be some mistakes. I've also played the game a lot longer before it came to steam.

There is so much to say about Unreal World, but first I want to start off by saying that this is not a game that everyone will enjoy. Go check out the game on their website for free: http://www.unrealworld.fi/
You have to put in some effort to learn the controls (which don't take long, depending on how custom you are with roguelikes and basic keyboard layout) You also need to be able to use your imagination (which is our greatest gift for video games) to immerse yourself in your own world. Once you feel comfortable with that, you are set.

• Unreal World sets the player close to the iron age of human history ( 800 - 1200 A.D.) located in Finland. You can see from the start as soon as you launch the game that the traditional and folklore of the finnish culture is in place by listening to the music. The Kantele is being used which is part of the Finnish culture and it immediately tries to immerse the player in its rich world.
  
  
• You choose a culture and then roll some stats. The world is then randomly generated and you get to choose a beginning "story" or setup to how you will play the first moments of the game. Each scenario has some sort of interesting background to help you be ready and immersed in the world. They are all interesting and some provide tools to help you get started.
  
  
• If you survive your initial scenario (depending if you chose a violent one) you are then free to do what you wish. Ultimately Unreal World is a simulator of sorts to show the player how our world is a dangerous one without the need of zombies and Rust like 24/7 violence. Like the Finnish Proverb says "The world will surely teach one; if nothing else, than to walk slowly." It's very true!

I won't go into details of what you can do because basically there are SO many things you can do and everything necessary is there to survive. If you were someone that read this because you thought you wouldn't be able to learn this or hate it for the graphics; well good for you b/c there are mods, in-game tutorials, encylopedia, and online guides.

+ Very Immersive
+ A game that allows players to use their imagination
+ Awesome Developers (Thanks Sami and Erkka)
+ In Depth Combat System
+ In Depth Injury System from cuts/bruises, to diseases and so much more
+ Accurate Historical Items and Folklore
+ Easily Moddable
+ High Replayability

-Roguelike Graphics: This is a con for some players used to modern graphics (Latest Update Improved them and mods help)
-Slight learning curve with keys (but is easily fluid once you get used to it)
-Could use more sounds IMO but overall very well done
-Pictures are somewhat corny but overall they do well (personal taste and easily moddable and mods help)

Overall, this is the TRUE survival game. I have over 400 hours of Rust and have played just about every survival game out there, but Unreal World just keeps pulling me back in for its in depth system of how we humans are adapted to survive in the impossible. This game allows me to use my imagination and do what I cannot do in my daily life.

Thank you so much for reading!

(Please ignore the small amount of play-time I have. I've had this game for around a decade, and the developer has kindly supplied me with a key for the Steam version.)

See the bottom of the review for TL;DR.

I rarely write positive reviews, but to me, the devotion that Sami shows to his supporters and fans is nothing short of remarkable. He went through the trouble of walking me through the steps of getting my key re-sent and updated despite me having very little of the original information I had when originally purchasing the game, and also has made a point of giving Steam keys to those who own lifetime registration keys.

Though, this is a review about URW, not about the developer.

URW takes a somewhat different approach to things than a lot of roguelikes, especially the ones usually seen on Steam. Rather than abstracting concepts like HP, satiation, exhaustion, deities, combat, and so on, URW tries as well as it is able to approach things more realistically. Fans of Dwarf Fortress Adventurer Mode shouldn't be too out of their element here.

Rather than being about killing dragons and getting amulets, URW is more generally about surviving in the wilderness. Trying to, anyway. Combat poses a very real threat. One missed blow could get you a concussion, or swept off of your feet and getting a spear through your chest, or teeth at your throat. This is made all the more painful, because your characters and the worlds they live in are indeed very permanent. You might build a house and make a type of farm, trading regularly with a nearby village. Make a smokehouse to cure your meats, make a sauna, get drunk, do what people from Finland do.

But the combat itself isn't the only problem. You also have to worry about things like your wounds getting infected, illnesses, starvation, dehydration, hypothermia, sleep deprivation. Of course, when you're injured, it becomes even harder to care for yourself... but that might be skipping ahead a little too far. Depending on whatever choice of background and scenario you pick, your first priority might be making a temporary shelter out of sticks and leaves, fending off a wolf, or escaping from captivity.

After you make yourself marginally more comfortable, you need to start working on feeding yourself, and making (or trading for, or looting, or stealing) tools as a means to accomplish this. Whether that means hunting for food, fishing, foraging, robbing other people, stealing from them, or just plain killing them and eating them. (The gods won't mind. Really.) But while eating raw food might be okay sometimes, you should probably consider cooking it, making a dish of it, or maybe a bit later on, working on a means of preparing it for long-term storage, like digging a cold-storage cellar, or curing it with salt, or in a smokehouse.

Once you have a somewhat reliable means of feeding yourself and living comfortably in the trees, and have a nice axe, hopefully without too many people's blood on it, you could think about building a house for yourself! Or you could live like a nomad. Your choice, really. Either way, once you're on your feet, you can get niceties by trading things like cured furs and pelts to village traders and other wanderers possibly like yourself.

Although there are arbitrary goals that can reward you with things, ultimately they are optional and there is no endgame or final goal of URW besides what you dictate.

URW is definitely not for everyone, and I do recommend trying the free version first. Don't let my review make the game sound more hypeworthy than it is. See for yourself if you like it or not. Even if you think you like roguelikes, this one might not sit well with you.

tl;dr Mostly-realistic wilderness survival roguelike that eventually turns into a violent Harvest Moon with permadeath.
TRY THE FREE VERSION FIRST.