“Life After Us: Shipwrecked” – Video + Review!
“Life After Us: Shipwrecked” is an indie survival horror game that I randomly stumbled upon very recently and thought sounded and looked very neat. As such, I downloaded it, gave it a dry run, and decided that it was worth streaming one evening as part of my ongoing Night Terrors series of live-horror gaming nights and videos. The game was released this past may by Eyesodic Games and is an interesting experience.
Basically, the game puts players in the role of an unnamed person whose ship has run out of fuel and marooned him on a strangely deserted island late at night. The basic purpose is to find fuel for the boat so that you can leave and go wherever else, but naturally this means you have to do some exploring. Much like “Vanish,” this game could be completed in about 15 minutes or take much, much longer, mostly depending on your luck and your skills as a player. Also, to a degree, on how keen of an eye you possess.
The island doesn’t quite seem to be deserted when you get down to it. For one, there is a strange cannibalistic person on the island who comes after you from time to time, mostly resulting in some creepy scares and a bit of annoyance. Yet, the small town and factory area on the island is filled with zombies or echoes of past events (ghosts?), hinting a bit about the island’s fate and maybe the fate of the world here itself, given the title. My best guess is that some sort of infection took place and turned some people into zombie-like creatures while killing most of the rest, and those that survived (like the main madman that chases you periodically) did so by cannibalizing the others for sustenance, given the island’s seemingly limited food supply. This is further insinuated by the randomly dismembered, but not rotten, body parts you will find periodically.
As a whole, the game does have its adrenaline-filled moments and chases and packs in quite a few good jump scares, and I personally feel it is a game worth playing. It isn’t perfect (I got stuck on the environment a few times), and at times your goal isn’t completely clear (you don’t know what the fuel tank looks like, for example), but all in all it’s pretty solid. The graphics really push the envelope for an indie experience of this nature.
You can download the game completely free right here.
