The Indie Game Magazine December 2015 | Issue 56 | Page 14

between the devs and players. Savage Lands is constantly developing graphically and experientially, as the project prepares to move
from the Unity 4 engine to Unity 5.
Minimal hand-holding and the amount of time it takes to collect
sufficient supplies mean it’s a tough grind to get to a point where
death doesn’t feel like an immediate certainty. Savage Lands
isn’t a permadeath game, but the developers don’t let players
escape death without punishment; after respawning, the player
has to make their way to their own corpse to retrieve their gear.
It’s a fairly tough game, with no option to change difficulty settings.
The basics of survival are pretty self evident though, particularly
to fans of the genre. So far it’s a little different from
most survival games in that there is no thirst or
energy meter.
Even in as open ended a game as this, the
player looks for objectives, perhaps as a
way to make sense of a game world that
doesn’t really let them win. Monsters can be
killed, but they’re going to come back. Food
can be found, but the character’s going to
be hungry again soon. In this way, Savage
Lands can offer very different experiences:
The single player mode of wandering and
scrambling for survival, the friendly server’s
sense of community in creating and protecting
a base with others, and the more brutal fight-ordie of hostile servers. In each instance, the player is

in a world where they must create and
follow their own goals, whether that’s to
kill a dragon, forge a weapon, explore, or
simply make it through the night.

Savage Lands

Interview – Signal Studios
by: Vinny Parisi
IGM: How in-depth are the survival mechanics in Savage Lands?
What will players have to manage and be aware of in order to
keep their characters alive?
Chris Rubyor, Game Director: Savage Lands supports a
variety of features and layered mechanics that all tie together
to provide a unique survival experience. Similar to other
survival games, players must maintain health and hunger to
survive. Because the world is bitter cold, we added a third
mechanic we call “Heat” that must be managed to avoid freezing
to death. That is why Day 1 on the island is all about
hunting, harvesting, and of course creating fire to survive.
As the days creep by, players will have to contend with the

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world. Unlike other games where you may stumble across one
creature standing idle waiting for the next victim to pass by,
Savage Lands supports a wide variety of fauna and enemy creatures.
This content is bolstered by a unique procedural spawning
system that generates life around the player. It is designed
to keep the world feeling alive and full of con [