Shelter vs The Survivalists
Shelter
Shelter is truly a one-of-a-kind game where you'll get to play as a mother badger who's taking care of her newly-born cubs. Developed by Might and Delight, the game puts you on an exciting yet heartwarming adventure as you travel about with your cubs in tow in hopes of finding the perfect shelter to raise them. In your journey, you and your family will encounter lots of danger and it is up to you - the mama badger - to protect your cubs from harm, whether it is a raging forest fire or a bird of prey.Besides adventure, the game also comes with a second game mode called Nurture. It's a lot like a Tamagochi game where you'll need to head into the game every day (at least once) to give your cubs the stuff they need to survive and also to forge closer bonds with them.
This is one of the breakout indie games of 2013 but it's not the sort of game that will get old with age, so if you love games where you'll get to play as an animal and you enjoy a good story-adventure, then Shelter is your best bet!
The Survivalists
The Survivalists is a survival-themed adventure game focusing on exploring a vast archipelago filled with hidden secrets and treasures as well as mysterious temples and dangerous terrains. The goal here is not only to make a life for yourself by recruiting and training the local monkeys to help with your many mundane chores, but to find a way to crack the mystery shrouding the archipelago and possibly find a way to finally escape!The Survivalists has a sandbox-style, survival-themed gameplay, which means that you’re expected to gather plenty of resources from the environment, use them to build a base of operations… or even multiple outposts and bases… and make sure you’ve got plenty of protection ready for when the local hostile tribesmen attack you, which they do from time to time.
The map here is simply amazing and if you just love exploring, you’ll find the island-hopping experience here pretty satisfying… that is once you’ve got your raft built. Of course, being set in the tropics, there isn’t a whole lot of different biomes to discover, though there are volcanic and swampy areas that are more dangerous than the normal terrain. Even the sea contains dangers and you’ll do well to avoid the ravenous sharks that are looking for an easy meal.
The best and most interesting part about The Survivalists that really help it stands out from all the other generic sandbox survival games is the fact that you can “recruit” monkeys on the island to help you with any mundane tasks. This encompasses all tasks that can be easily replicated by the monkeys. After all, monkey see, monkey do!
That being said, training your monkeys is, unfortunately, also the most frustrating part of the game. Unlike games with macros, you can’t really save the tasks you’ve taught your monkey as general macros that you can then use whenever you need the same tasks done sometime in the future. Instead, every time you need your monkeys to do something, you’ll have to teach it all over again… which frankly speaking is very annoying.
All in all, The Survivalists is as addictively fun as it looks. Being a survival-themed sandbox adventure, there is plenty of stuff you can craft, items to gather, loyal monkeys to train, and bases to set up as you slowly and steadily explore every inch of the massive archipelago. However, the game isn’t without its flaws and I personally think that the game could have made the monkey-training part a bit more convenient and less annoying for the player.