Solo dev says that he is bucking the survival 'formula,' which makes them stale. If you want to make an axe yourself from scratch, he has the game for you.

I've probably started many news articles in my career at PCG by saying something like 'I'm really not a survival-game guy.' Does that mean I won't start this one in the same way? It just means that I'm really good at it.

There are many reasons why I don't play survival games. First of all, I find it hard enough to live in real life. I don't need the added stress of maintaining a digital homunculus. I also find them all a little samey. You start on an island and are probably naked. You have to punch rocks and trees until the dialectic between quantity and quality tip over and you can do the industrial revolution. This takes about 400 hours.

Sergei Bezborodko is the sole developer behind The Last Plague Blight. He agrees with my opinion. "I feel that a lot of survival games are following a formula that has proven to be successful time and time again," says he. "Things like inventory management, base-building, hunger and/or drink management, etc., seem to be fairly similar in many games."

Bezborodko tries to avoid this in The Last Plague. "I tried being very conscious of these common elements in the genre, and avoid them in mine," he says. "For the elements that I can't escape, I've at least tried to change them up so they are a bit different." This means no "simplistic", "generic", or zombie crafting. It also means that, for better or for worse, crafting is as laborious in the game as it is real life. "For example, to be able to create bronze blades or items, you must first make a mould and then pour molten metal into the molds in order to make the desired item. You cannot just click something to turn bronze ore into an object."

This is the type of thing that can either make you run for the hills or slaver like a sicko, depending on your inclination. I admit that adding more steps to crafting is not something that appeals to me. However, there were some elements in The Last Plague’s demo that I found appealing. Bezborodko claims he was "inspired by non survival games like Fallout, with elements like radiation in those games," and that's where the spreading Blight came from.

It made my decision to build my base more interesting. In other survival games, I would try to get as close to the resources as possible in order to reduce the tedium. The overhead perspective also made me feel more like I was in a CRPG rather than a traditional first-person survival game. I don't believe The Last Plague will convince me to enjoy the gathering of resources where other games did not, but I had a lot more fun with it.

You can download the demo from Steam.