State of Extinction: Demo Review

A brief overview of the demo gameplay for State of Extinction. We were first to play and stream this new upcoming game in the world so read the article and watch our gameplay!

State of Extinction - Demo Review

Hello again, Searc here with another game review, although, for this particular game, I do not believe it is fair to call it a review, but rather an overview. The reason for this is because for this game, State of Extinction, we only had access to a 1 hour long demo, which of course will be provided for your visual pleasures along with this article. Because the demo was only an hour long, there just simply was not enough game play to truly evaluate for a full review, however, that being said, the developers have expressed enthusiasm at what feedback I was able to provide with such a short amount of time and has requested for KeenGamer to continue participating in the future of the games development, which is exciting on its own merit. 


What is it?

State of Extinction is an action, adventure rpg game with aspects of a survival game. Again, with the game so early development, it's hard to tell which direction the developers will take. Will the game become a full survival sandbox? Or will the game turn into a fairly standard Action Adventure RPG? The setting of the game is interesting. You as the player will take on the roll of a Neanderthal Tribe leader, which implies that the setting of the game is 39,000 to 41,000 years ago, when it is commonly believed that Neanderthals went extinct. But there is a twist, which can be seen in gameplay video, you will also find yourself pitted against Dinosaurs. And not just any dinosaur, but the terrifyingly powerful T-rex. Now that implies something all together. Either a, the game devs are saying that Neanderthals were alive much, much earlier than commonly accepted, or, a more recent theory, that dinosaurs survived the mass extinction event that was a great meteor and lived long enough for homosepians. This second theory is known as the Ancient Astronaut Theory. Or, maybe this is all just coincidence and the Devs just thought hey, you know what, Dinosaurs and cavemen sound like a fun game.

Developed by Stone Pixel Games and slated to release in 2016, State of Extinction is currently available in very early access on Steam.

State of Extinction - Review 1

State of Extinction - Review 2


Gameplay.

The demo of State of Extinction provided insight on several mechanics that are currently in development that at this point seem like key components. There are two main things you get to see. 

First is an intellectual based system where you "learn" how to make tools, clothes, and food primarily that fit into the survival based genre that State of Extinction seems to be emulating. Every time you gather, build and generally perform an action, you will increase your intelligence (allegedly, I couldn't get my intelligence to increase but that could just be the demo). The higher your intelligence is, the more advanced your tools, weapons, clothing and food processes become. 

Similarly, there is also a skill tree, or tech tree, depending on what you want to call it, that has the same requirements. The higher your intelligence is, the more combat skills you unlock which allows you to customize your character, along with other implied mechanics not available in the demo, in a way that suits you, the player, the most. For example, each tribe will be different, one is brute strength, one is stealth, and the third seems to be more shamanistic. 

Everything you do in the game seems like it all revolves around further developing these two mechanics, and improving your tools, or your combat skills are merely the side effect.

State of Extinction - Review 3

State of Extinction - Review 4

Feedback.

Since this is not a full review, I am simply going to state here my thoughts, or feedback, on the game as I interpret it in its current state based on the demo I was able to play.

Most of the feedback I have is mechanical based. For example, simply not being able to adjust the sound, while minor, is, for the lack of a better word, annoying. Not game breaking in the least. 

My second piece of feedback would revolve around the overall visuals. While you as a player do have the ability to adjust what looks like the model and texture quality, other things like range of view, bloom, gama, and other smaller aspects that have a huge effect on a player's immersion (or in my case, stream quality) are both important. 

My third, and final, piece of feedback, is combat as a whole is very…loose? Is this the proper way to describe them? Its very difficult to target anything, whether you are trying to pick something up off the ground, or attack a wild boar. Combine this with animations that cause freeze frames when you use an ability, leaving you seemingly stuck to the ground, or perhaps the effects were too subtle so I just simply didn't seem them unless they did damage. Then attacking directly, which was straight forward, left click on your target, was so difficult to actually do, even if you were standing right next to the target, facing it, and swinging wildly yet for some reason you still were not hitting the target. For this, I am not sure what is causing that, could be a mixture of hit boxes and animations causing the contact point of the weapon to pass over your target and not activate, or cause, damage to your target. It could also be because your attacks are based on an invisible reticle like similar to combat in other third person rpg combat so you are technically not swinging at your intended target at all. 

State of Extinction - Review 5

State of Extinction - Review 6

Beyond these things, there just was not enough to talk about anything else and I really hope that in future builds of the game, the devs allow us here at KeenGamer, more access to the game beyond just a basic demo so we can really help provide feedback analysis and turn what is currently a game with lots of potential, to a great game everyone loves. 

As usual, the gameplay preview that this article is based off of is provided below. Don't forget to like and subscribe to see more Gameplay previews, Let's Play's and Giveaways in the future. 

And of course, Stay calm, Llama on, and I'll see you next time!

– Searc

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

×