Keplerth Review

Survival games aren't a genre that I check out very often, but when I saw the trailer for Keplerth it made me want to try it out and see if I would be able to live longer than a couple days. The first thing you will do when you start Keplerth is design your own character. There is the option between male and female, and a variety of hairstyles and hair colours. Choose the name you would like to use for them and decide on a name for your world. I decided to go with Monster World because I knew that it was full of wild animals and monsters. After this step, you wake up in a hibernation pod with no idea who or where you are. You have no clothes, food, or anything else. The good news is you have the ability to gather resources like rocks, wood, and grass, to use to craft useful weapons and tools like clubs, axes, and torches. Any items you gather can be sold to some of the other residents of this strange planet. Some of the residents are friendly, but there are strange creatures that will attack you and your home base every night. As you leave the building you are in to explore the surroundings you find a broken-down robot, you turn him on and find out that his name is WM-69 and is there to help you out by giving you the supplies he is carrying. He did with the same for his previous teammate named Danny, who was a strong red-haired gatherer who would go out to collect supplies for the survivors. One day a portal opened up in the ground and two robed characters jumped out, taking her down with their laser-like blades and jumping back into the portal they came from, taking Danny with them and slashing WM-69 before leaving.

You have the opportunity to ask WM-69 about this planet and the things that have occurred here. He tells you stories about the Meco people that live here and how they were responsible for kidnapping Danny. She is an immigrant from Earth and had the skills to repair MK-69’s malfunction that made the Meco throw him into the garbage. Since he was in offline mode, his combat mode has been disabled, so he asks you to help him save Danny. If you don’t agree he will just sit and wait for her to return and save him. When you agree to help he gives you a key card that lets you use the portals around the world to travel to different areas like your home base, or to Schip’s lab. Matthew Schip is Danny’s employer, he has plans for building a spacecraft to get off of this planet, but to do this he requires a lot of supplies. Since that was Danny’s job and she’s missing, he gives you the task of gathering resources for him. The nice thing is he will pay you for your efforts, and lets you buy armour and other supplies you will need.

If you are a fan of survival games like Don’t Starve, or Rimworld, Keplerth may be a title you will be interested in. I’m not usually the biggest fan of games in this genre, but after my first few minutes of being super frustrated wondering why I kept dying, even though I was punching the enemy, I discovered how to craft weapons. Everything changed once I was armed with a stone axe and able to hold my own against those creatures. Having these crafted weapons can allow you to explore the world around your home base and even discover other bases that you could set as your new starting checkpoint. This way if you die you won’t be sent to the very beginning, just the last checkpoint you had saved at. When you die you don’t lose all of your items, you are just taken back to that point to restart. 

The game has its own time system, so depending on the time of day the sun will set and it will get dark. This is when Keplerth gets scary; if you don’t have a torch, campfire, or building with lights to hide in, it is impossible to see, and to make things worse this is when the monsters and wild animals like to come out to attack you. There were multiple times I was lost in the dark getting hit, and only knew the direction the enemy was in based on the red text showing how many HP I was losing. So it is beneficial to find shelter when it is getting later in the day, or equip yourself with some sources of light so you at least can see where you are going. I was always happy when the sun would slowly start coming up so I could continue my search for more materials, food, and new bases.

Your character needs to eat to survive, so when your satiety meter gets too low a small icon of a stomach will pop up over your character's head. When this happens you have to go through your backpack to see everything you have gathered to see what kind of food you can eat as if you don’t eat your character’s movement and attack speed will slow down. Fruit like apples and berries are always easy to find, or the meat you get from wild animals that you kill works too. Keep in mind some of this food will replenish your health and satiety at the same time, so only use the items like the fruit when you have the health that needs to replenish too, or else it will be a waste. Some of the food items have negative effects too like slowing your character down for 20 seconds, or attracting wild animals, so be sure to read all the text!

As you collect materials and defeat enemies you will collect special items that will give you the ability to modify your genes and improve the stats of your character. Some upgrades will let your character move faster, or perform stronger attacks, and you can even get special power-ups for your pets to give them more strength or health. These gene modules can give you traits of a protector, thug, iron man, ghost, gambler, shooter, host, or assistant, so you can really customise your character to have the traits that you want.

This isn’t even touching on everything that you can do in Keplerth — there is so much to see and do, this game will keep you busy for a very long time. Especially when you get to the point where you can start your own farm, plant crops, and tame animals. Even though Keplerth has more simplistic graphics and soundtrack, the gameplay is incredibly addicting. I never would have guessed I would become so obsessed with a survival game before trying this one out, it makes me want to go back to other titles like Don’t Starve and give it a second chance. If you don’t want to venture out on your own there is the option to play cooperatively, or if you are feeling creative head to the Uninhabited Island and design to your heart's content. This isn’t connected to anything in the story but it’s just fun to play and design your island as you want. 

I highly recommend anyone who enjoys survival games or loves to craft weapons and farm check out Keplerth. There is so much to do here it’s going to take a long time before you get bored! If you are unsure about playing survival titles, this may be the gateway drug for you; it sure got me hooked! I just wish the game would let you know ahead of time that the bottom row of boxes is where you want to place the weapons or items you will be using as it took me way too long to figure this out.