October is the perfect time to dive into a survival game, and there are three from publishing platform indie.io that are part of Steam Next Fest from now until October 26. And these three prove that “survival game” can mean very different things and have completely different gameplay.
One is a co-op horror-comedy set in a coal mine, one is an open-world sandbox after a zombie apocalypse, and one sees you stranded alone on a 24-island archipelago after your ship mysteriously crashes. You can play all three games right now, with two of them having free demos as part of Steam Next Fest and one already fully released with a huge new content update for spooky season.
Coal Duty
Three generations ago, the sky froze. Now, your coal mining town is perpetually covered in snow. You might think that would be the end of the mine, but nope, the state kept it open and is forcing miners to continue delving into its depths. That might sound a bit dystopian, but it’s a premise that Coal Duty mines for humor as well as coal.
It’s a co-op extraction game for between 1–5 players, and you play as a group of miners who must navigate the many dangers of the mine to survive and get out with the materials you gathered. Each run is procedurally generally, so you’ll need to work together with your teammates to figure out how to progress.
That teamwork relies on one of Coal Duty’s most interesting mechanics: proximity voice chat. You can talk to each other, but your teammates will only hear you if they’re close by. You can call out to let them know you found the correct route, warn them of dangers, or anything else you think is worth mentioning. But be wary: Everything else in the mine can also hear you if they’re close enough, and you don’t want to activate any dangers because you got chatty.
Those dangers are plentiful and varied. There are dozens of different creatures, each of which have characteristics you’ll need to figure out to learn how to effectively deal with them. Some are blind, some are fast, some will disguise themselves as coal. Nothing beats hearing your friend suddenly panic because an enemy startled them, only to attract more unwanted attention with their shrieking.
A free demo of Coal Duty is playable now during Steam Next Fest, and it’s a great time for you and your friends to give it a try. It releases in Early Access on October 27, the day after Next Fest ends. The demo is a deliberate slice of the game, while the Early Access release will add more mine floors, creatures, and an escape machine.
HumanitZ
IGN covered HumanitZ’s 1.0 launch in February, and this isometric open-world zombie survival sandbox game just dropped its biggest update since on October 19. It introduced some major new additions: NPC recruitment, player zombification, a Halloween event, a headshot-only mode, new gear, and more.
Once you finish the Radio Tower quest, you’re now able to recruit NPC survivors you meet in the world. They can follow you on runs, work your base, stand guard, or be sent on tasks. You can build two extra outposts and send your recruits between them depending on your needs, and each NPC has their own traits.
You need to actually keep an eye on those traits, too. Some only become clear after an NPC has been in your community for a while, and they might reveal they’re not as friendly as you thought they were. The NPC recruitment feature is available in single-player and hosted multiplayer modes, since games on servers have other players to fill this role.
With the update, if you die to a zeek (HumanitZ’s name for zombies) or the infection, your character will rise as a zeek themselves. The zeek version of you will wander the world with all your loot, but you can track them down to kill them and get that loot back.
The Halloween update added themed cosmetics, quests, weapons, and world props. The headshot-only mode is what it sounds like: zeeks will only die if you shoot them in the head, which ramps up the difficulty level. The update’s new gear includes a lever-action rifle, nail gun, ponchos, balaclavas, and lootable large toolboxes.
If you’ve played HumanitZ before, the update is significant enough it warrants coming back for another playthrough. If you haven’t, this is your invitation to give it a go. It’s currently sitting at a Mostly Positive rating on Steam with more than 4,400 reviews.
Mayday: The Survival Island
IGN first covered Mayday: The Survival Island when its demo came to gamescom and PAX West in August and early September. In the time since, that demo has undergone significant changes but is still free to try out on Steam.
The updated demo includes extensive bug fixes and polish, bringing it in line with what gameplay will look like in the full release. It also expanded the house building system and introduced a substantial chunk of new content. Your save data in the demo can be carried over to the full release when it comes out on November 2, so it’s essentially like getting a head start.
The basic premise of the game is that your ship crashes and you wash ashore on a mysterious island, which you discover is one of 24 making up a massive archipelago. Each island is hand-crafted by the small dev team at Pequi Studios, they’re not procedurally generated. They all have different environments, materials to gather, and treasures to find.
You’ll need to use those materials to create tools, which can then be used to hunt, fish, grow crops, and ultimately build a homestead for yourself. Basically, everything you need to do to survive. You can take however much time you want building up your base on each island, and when you move on to the next one is up to you. As you progress, you’ll uncover secrets about the archipelago, what brought you here, and find out if it’s even possible to get back home.