Developer a2z(Interactive); has just kicked off another year working to deliver their FPS survival game, Survive the Nights. The open-world sandbox takes place on a collection of post-apocalyptic, zombie infested islands, like so many other games before it. What sets Survive the Nights apart, however is the sheer number of items and possibilities players can access.
A February Kickstarter update details just how much stuff the team is working to fit into their crumbling world. It also serves as a brief glimpse at just how much stuff it takes to populate a believable game world. According to the update, “as of today, there are nearly 100,000 hand placed game objects in total on the island and half of these are interactive objects.”
This number includes everything from working light switches to 24,154 fellable trees. Fixed objects (those not movable by the player) make up approximately 15,858 of the total. Players also have access to over 400 structures which they can explore, secure, and fortify. These numbers don’t include any spawned or player crafted loot which also populates the world.
Alpha Testing, Backer Approved
Currently the team is working towards an alpha release to deliver to backers. This will give them a chance to iron out all the minor bumps and bugs that will crop up during initial testing. The current plan is to have the entire base island explorable on backer release.
It’s a huge undertaking, but not one that a2z(Interactive); has taken lightly. The early access release was delayed in favor of making sure backers would find the game more stable and polished when they began testing. Not an easy decision to make with 6,262 backers ready to see some results of their £108,398 worth of support, but one the devs maintain is right.
“If you’ve spent any time following the team you’ll know (as we’ve said it 100 times) we won’t release anything we’re not happy with or isn’t what we’d consider a good base.”
It may be taking more time than they first planned, but Survive the Nights was never a small project. Keeping backers in the loop with the number of objects and assets involved is a good way for the team to keep the scale of the game in perspective when progress seems slow. I still want to play it, but I’m willing to give them a bit more time to get it right.
A very nice article. (Long time STN kickstarter backer)
I haven’t really paid much attention to it before now, but it looks pretty solid. Reminds me of a more polished and detailed 7 Days to Die concept.
As someone who played both stress tests and have played most Survival games – this has the potential of blowing them all out of the water. The game was very optimised during those tests and they have made them even more optimised now. I can see this being the game that DayZ/7Days was supposed to be.
I see the map is 3.5x smaller than Chernarus. How many players will the game host?
I do not have confirmation but I believe that it will easily take up to 40 people but these would be servers that hold data and states so people would ‘dig in’ to their prefered server and make a home and not server hop to get geared up. There would also be quite a few hosted servers and at a later date the ability to host your own server at online hosting services then later down the line local host them on your home machine. They have created a robust backend that is highly customisable from day length to season lenghts and a ton of other things.