Wayward

About

Wayward is a challenging turn-based, top-down, wilderness survival roguelike. Explore, build, and most importantly survive in these unforgiving lands.

Wayward is a survial crafting game, with an emphasis on survival making it akin to a rougelike. The game uses pixel art graphics to portray the islands where you struggle to survie.

I played Wayward before it was cool and died a lot on the alpha web broswer version. I was overjoyed to find the game futher developed into a more in-depth survival experience. This review is about the paid version of the game, not the free alpha version. As much as I enjoyed the alpha it doesn't have the same playability.

The game contains some mild blood, pixel violence and pixelated graphics of animal organs. Not for young kids, but if you're old enough to buy a game on Steam you'll be fine.

Updated as of 22/6/2023 Beacon's call 2 update.

In Wayward you have to stay on top of your hunger, thirst, energy and health. In order to do this, you must craft tools and shelter from the resources around you.

When you first start the game (unless playing with the custom game setting) you will be in the costal biome, A biome with temperate forests, mountains and ample beaches. Maple and pine trees are the most common form of vegetation, but you may also find wild food plants such as tomatoes, potatoes and rasberries.

You can mine for stone and chop down trees to build structures and tools. You can hunt animals for food and supplies. However, the game tracks you resource harvesting and the more resources you harvest, the more dangerous the game world becomes. This danger can be counteracted by planting trees or other plants, and taming animals.

This is incorporated into the game's narrative through books and journals. These describe a malevolent presence on the island that prevents survivors from developing civilization and becomes more dangerous due to resource harvesting and killing animals.

Tips

Some tips for gameplay. I have not got beyond the costal biome but I rarely die on hardcore.

• Water is your most important resource, make a granite dripstone to purify sea water.
• Farming plants is hard work, but will lead to a good supply of food in the long term.
• Tame some goats with maple leaves/grass. Their milk is a usefuk food/water source - make sure to pen them somewhere though.
• Planting trees is the fastest way to reduce island malignity.
• Make a shelter with doors to stop creatures attacking you at night.
• Crafting things just above your ability is a good way to improve your skill in that area. Be careful as each failed craft will damage your materials.

Thoughts

Positive

• A sense of mastery once you get good at surviving.
• Shelter building has its charms, but I love building so I'm bias.
• The diffrent biomes offer new survival experiances.

Negative

• The game would benifit from expanded narrative and world building.
• The early game is grindy, and the later game (at least on the starting costal island) gets a little repetitive.
• More character customisation would be nice in terms of hair styles.
• More variety in trees and ground tile visuals would improve the graphics.

Link

Here is the free alpha web browser version. Suprisingly works on my ipad too (but not very well).

Here is a the wayward website, which directs you to many options to get the game. Including Steam and direct download.