Vintage Story, an uncompromising wilderness survival sandbox game inspired by lovecraftian horror themes has a new test release up that makes it an even deeper game.
Minecraft in style, sure, someone will mention that I've no doubt due to the blocky style. Anything actually like Minecraft? No, quite far from it. The gameplay mechanics have a lot more depth to them and it's quite a lot more interesting but everything also takes a lot more time to learn and get through. Vintage Story's description of being 'uncompromising' certainly holds up at times.
Recently, the developer put up a fresh experimental release for what will eventually be v1.13. This is a huge update bringing in some big new game mechanics like seasons including snow building up and melting away, along with seasonal foliage and temperature dependent plant growth. A bunch of new graphical improvements are in like SSAO, specular sunlight reflections, new models for various tools and more.
Lots more new including new sound effects, a new first-person mode that allows you to see your own body, beds are now bouncy because why not, a setting to turn on sprint toggle instead of holding the button down, anvils can be rotated, new world customization options and the list goes on.
For newer players, they continue to update the in-game survival handbook. It has new category tabs, better search, new guides and a button for it can now easily be found in the escape menu.
Read more about the update here. You can buy it from Humble Store, itch.io and the official site. This might easily end up being one of my favourite survival games, every major update just keeps on expanding in it in fun ways. Trailer below if you've not seen it before:
Direct Link
Quoting: TcheyI’m saying it everytime it pops on GoL, but Vintage Story is still the best of its kind.
Oh yes! I'm still totally addicted to this game too. Been spending way too much time on the official public test server haha.
That said, always-calling-home, constant-online-DRM in single player is what killed it for me.
Not that single- or multi- would make much of a difference here though.
PS. @Liam: Bet you know already, but comment preview, as well as comment and article "likes" don't seem to work without JS enabled.
Last edited by Valck on 9 July 2020 at 4:30 pm UTC
Quoting: ValckLove the game, love the art style, and the overall direction it is going.
That said, always-calling-home, constant-online-DRM in single player is what killed it for me.
Not that single- or multi- would make much of a difference here though.
PS. @Liam: Bet you know already, but comment preview, as well as comment and article "likes" don't seem to work without JS enabled.
This is exactly why I returned it 10 minutes after trying it.
Quoting: ValckThat said, always-calling-home, constant-online-DRM in single player is what killed it for me.
There is no constant-online-DRM. The game makes one single auth check on startup. You can also log in once after install, then block the connection to the auth server and the game will keep on functioning forever.
Last edited by Tyron on 9 July 2020 at 8:28 pm UTC
Quoting: TyronThank you for taking the time to comment, and even suggesting a workaround.Quoting: ValckThat said, always-calling-home, constant-online-DRM in single player is what killed it for me.
There is no constant-online-DRM. The game makes one single auth check on startup. You can also log in once after install, then block the connection to the auth server and the game will keep on functioning forever.
It's been a year or two, so I may be misremembering the details, but when I tried disconnecting my network after launching the game (running on a local machine, single player), I was kicked out.
Also there was the issue of the game not launching at all without deleting the settings before launch, which effectively forced me to re-authenticate every time.
EDIT: Actually, now that I think about it, that may have been the issue preventing me from playing offline. I have a vague memory of not needing to authenticate all the time even earlier./EDIT
I may give it another try some time. As I said, I really did like it, and don't regret backing it. Maybe you could consider making the authentication completely unnecessary or at least optional for single player.
Last edited by Valck on 10 July 2020 at 5:20 pm UTC
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