Die Young Review

Life is hard for a privileged little princess, first your boyfriend turns out to be a drug dealing scumbag, then you find out the job he promised you with a fashion empire was a lie, and then, to top it all off, instead of at a Mediterranean “Fyre festival” you’re in a well on an island.

Yup, that’s the premise of Die Young, oversocialised and undereducated idiot gets in schtuck. I’d have left her down there to die a slow and lingering death myself, but IndieGala prefer that we get her rescued so up and at ‘em miss thing, there're weirdo cultists to stab.

This open world survival extravaganza is a pleasant change from a lot of games. This one takes off the training wheels and says “go play in the traffic, kids!” and I rather like that. Your choices are to prioritise survival or to try and find your friends.

It can be to your advantage to wander off the beaten path in Die Young as it is here you find stashes of gear, shelters to store things in and use as fast travel points, and interesting little set pieces that give you a bit of a hint as to some back story.

It’s no surprise that this survival game has you managing hunger and thirst like all the others, in Survival Mode it’s quite the task, but in adventure mode it’s easy enough. Those two aspects are not what will be killing you off most often though, that accolade goes to the pairing of beasties and bloody great drops. Beasties in this case range from a huge great bloke with a naffing scythe, local cultists with big sticks and madmen with knives, to snakes, pigs and wolves. All of which want to leave young Daphne a bloody heap on the floor and vary in their skill at doing so. The bloody great drops come in when you’re climbing about on cliffs and ruined towers looking for your errant compatriots and previous castaways on the island (and in some cases, stealing their clothing off their slowly decaying corpses. Mmm… dead man’s shoes, yummy).

The island you’re on is ENORMOUS, with plenty of fun things to see, plants to gather and goats to skin to make things with so you’re going to be making a lot of use of the compass and map as you guide Daphne about on her quest to find her boyfriend and kick him in the nuts for causing all this hassle.

The sticking point for Die Young is the combat, it’s not the most fluid and tends to be something avoided as much as possible because all you end up doing is frantically stabbing or smacking your target until they hopefully die before you do. Something which is a problem in the later stages of the game as combat becomes inevitable.

Die Young doesn’t hold your hand and expects you to use your brain to work things out and if that’s your bag, this game is going to be enjoyable for you all the way to its three endings in a deliciously varied and vast game world.

If you’re of the “I don’t wanna think!” crowd… better stick to Call of Duty.