Survival: Fountain of Youth Preview

In Survival: Fountain of Youth, you'll unravel the story of Juan Ponce de León's expedition to the island of Bimini, where rumours say there was a magical fountain whose waters could keep anyone healthy and eternally youthful.

Since I am a huge fan of survival games, I thought the best way to judge the title would be by not asking for help from the developers or community and fairing by just knowledge and tutorials. So, throughout my almost 20-hour journey, I stuck to my guns and found everything through trial and error, as one would ina survival situation.

Unfortunately, due to this, the first 10 whole hours of my time with Fountain of Youth were basically lost to a few misconceptions I got during the beginning stages of the game. For starters, I didn't understand I could use the mapping tool anywhere, not just the cartography trees (a ginormous tree they make you climb in the tutorial to update the map), so throughout my entire playthrough, I didn't have help from a map at all. Additionally, I misunderstood how to find Liana — a crucial resource needed to advance in the game — because I thought I could only find it on bushes or a specific type of tree that wasn't within my region. This meant that I was unable to craft rope, which stopped me from getting many of the essential tools for surviving, namely a flask, a workbench, and a rainwater collector. 

Although I absolutely love survival games and the lack of handholding, I eventually got frustrated and had to ask my wife and fellow GameGrin co-worker to start a journey herself without help from me; I figured that a new perspective would help me help out how to proceed. I wanted to see how well she'd fare without any tips or guidance.

Watching her play and figure everything out alone made me realise how truly in-depth and phenomenal Survival: Fountain of Youth is. Our journeys were completely different due to the lack of guidance from tutorials — we survived the Island of Hope in our own distinct ways. 

Thanks to my desperate attempts to find the mysterious (and non-existent) "bushes" for the Liana, I learned how to stay hydrated off of the land, and since I didn't know how to use the map, I ended up learning to travel the island through landmarks, which helped me understand the clues left in images much better. On the other hand, because my wife stumbled upon the knowledge of being able to map out the area without climbing a cartography tree, she had trouble finding certain places. However, she was much more successful in finding resources due to her reliance on the map's markers, which helped her find the unreachable Liana rope and snowballed her progress.

Without a doubt, one of the most polished, fun, and adventurous times I've had both playing and watching a survival game has been with Fountain of Youth. I felt that the progression of items was rewarding, and Odinsoft Inc. — the developer of the game — did a phenomenal job at finding a nice balance between difficulty and allowing the player to venture off and explore. 

Aside from having to keep yourself hydrated, well-fed, and rested, you'll also need to fend off the many threats from nature itself: from changing weather that can get you sick to all sorts of dangerous animals and plants. There are plenty of status effects in Fountain of Youth that help you keep track of how the world is affecting you, and this helps you better navigate what to do next. Whether you're sunburnt and sick or you're well-rested and full, the game offers plenty of information on what it means, what caused it, and how to make it better. 

That being said, considering I spent 10 hours running around dehydrated and sleeping out in the open with the lowest-quality bed, I can safely say these conditions aren't as punishing. I never once died to any of them, and I was able to quickly understand what steps I needed to take in order to stop them from getting worse.

Aside from finding resources and weathering the island, you'll be on the lookout for survivors from your crew, as the main story and side quests consist of discovering new things about the mythical fountain of youth from both the perspective of the natives and Juan Ponce de León's people. Throughout the Island of Hope, you'll find abandoned temples, camps, and secrets that will help you gather enough knowledge to leave for the next region.

This, paired with the perks system that you can get through levelling up skills and discovering new areas, makes it quite a pleasure to explore the entire island. Just as with the survival itself, my experiences with these hidden areas, perks, and points of interest differed from my wife's, too: I stumbled upon most of it blindly and got a jumbled-up story that I had to piece together like a puzzle in the midst of dehydration and disease (which I loved), and all of my perks were focused on helping me survive the lack of hydration and equipment. Meanwhile, my wife used her perks on concentration and sleep, allowing her to have a much healthier, less chaotic, and more expedition-like approach to the island once she was equipped properly.

While the game feels fleshed-out and smooth in most of its gameplay aspects, I did get stuck while attempting to climb a mountain, which forced me to resort to the faint option so I would wake up at my checkpoint. Additionally, I had to set all the graphics to low and keep the resolution at 1920x1080 or it would crash my entire computer, and that is considering my PC is on the higher end.

For an Early Access release, Survival: Fountain of Youth already feels like a fully-released title, and I cannot wait to experience more of it. Although, I do hope that when it's out, the short-ear dogs have a different sound effect!