Maroc - 3RD-STRIKE.COM - A La Une - 13/Aug 03:11

Lost in Tropics – Review

With summer in full swing, and most of us enjoying our holidays, the idea of a retreat to a tropical island probably sounds appealing. And while not everyone has the budget to travel to Hawaii or the Caribbean, there are plenty of video games that at least let us live out that fantasy. Case in point: Lost in Tropics, a new survival title from Polish indie developer Lukas Gamelabs. Granted, this game in particular may not showcase the most *appealing* aspects of tropical island life, but hunting for your own food and building a shelter may still scratch a particular itch. Did Lost in Tropics awaken our inner Robinson Crusoe or did it leave us feeling like we caught dysentery? Story There isn’t much in the way of a story in Lost in Tropics. Somehow, you find yourself on a small tropical island, accompanied by another survivor. No backstory is given as to why and how you got there, but it’s clear from the get-go that if you want to survive this ordeal, you’ll need to start preparing for ways to deal with the environment. It’s not the most original premise for a game like this -it’s barely a premise at all- but anyone familiar with Survivor, Castaway, or Robinson Crusoe should immediately understand what’s going on here. We should note that there are plenty of mistakes when it comes to spelling and grammar. Granted, solo indie developer Lukas Gamelabs isn’t a native English speaker. Neither are we, so we’re pretty forgiving in this regard, but some of the mistakes we encountered were egregious enough that it was worth mentioning. Graphics For what it’s worth, Lost in Tropics looks decent enough. The tropical island is beautiful, especially for the hellscape it is supposed to be. This is in part thanks to the fantastic lighting, with the way water reflects and shimmers being a particular highlight. The visual performance is good as well: we didn’t encounter any issues regarding the game’s frame rate, and despite the amount of detail, the draw distance was unexpectedly good as well. Sound Unfortunately, Lost in Tropics’ soundscape doesn’t fare as well. The music that plays on menus and while the game is loading is ridiculously loud. The sound effects that are present are decent enough, but about half of the sounds you’d expect, like character footsteps, are outright missing. And while there is some voice work in the game, the clips that are present are repetitive and way too limited. Gameplay It’s not just Lost in Tropics’ premise that is rife with clichés and predictability. Your aim is to survive for 21 in-game days on a tropical island. The gameplay for this survival title starts out just like any other entry in the genre too. We started out in the wilderness, with an empty inventory. You probably already guessed what our first task is: collect wood and get a fire going. From there, Lost in Tropics follows the generic survival game playbook to a tee. Granted, there is only so much you can do within the confines of a tropical island, but titles like Smalland have shown us that there is plenty of opportunity to get creative with the survival genre. The biggest twist was that we had a companion, although, in practice, it just seemed like a lazy way to circumvent implementing more mechanics. The wood we gathered early on? Well, after handing it to our companion, she’d get that fire going. We’d be all for this approach if the addition of a companion that does basic tasks meant Lost in Tropics got the tedium out of the way. Unfortunately, instead of whipping up something interesting for the player, the game didn’t agree with that sentiment and still forced us to manually chop trees and hunt crabs with a pointy stick instead. In fact, our companion turned out to be a deterrent rather than an asset. We could send her out to gather specific resources, and she was the one who provided us with a way to unlock new materials. However, to be able to benefit from either of these, we had to keep her fed and happy. She was a permanent drain on our scarce resources as a result. This is something that becomes less of an issue on subsequent runs, as you’ll eventually unlock starting equipment that makes the early stages of Lost in Tropics less repetitive. Even then, however, the game never really picks up momentum. It remains a very tedious affair, where you perform mind-numbingly boring tasks ad nauseam, with the occasional random event thrown in to make things somewhat challenging, we guess? You also can switch things up by picking different survivors to play as. These have a randomized set of traits, ranging from allergies to specific foods to mental issues that affect sanity. The more “handicaps” you start with, the higher your final score will be. It’s an interesting idea that would have made the game worth replaying if the core gameplay had been better. We’d just dismiss Lost in Tropics as a generic and forgettable game if that was the end of it. Unfortunately, however, the game is also prone to game-breaking bugs. Several of our runs were cut short by the game randomly freezing up. Island features like trees randomly glitched out of existence. At one point, our survivor broke his leg and while this event ate up a chunk of HP, there were no other consequences: we could just keep walking at the same speed. The game’s opening menu suddenly had certain options displayed in other languages than English. And that’s without taking into account the ridiculously long loading times. Other features seemed to be missing entirely: According to the Steam page, you’ll eventually gain permanent upgrades for your survivors, but we couldn’t find this feature anywhere in-game. There also wasn’t anywhere we could find where we could rebind the game’s control scheme, and the default one is iffy at best. Everything about Lost in Tropics feels unfinished. To fully release a game in this state instead of in Early Access feels like a mistake, to actually charge €10.99 for it is downright insulting. Conclusion Even if all of Lost in Tropics’ myriad of technical issues were resolved tomorrow, we couldn’t see ourselves returning to the game anytime soon. In a world with plenty of interesting survival games to choose from, Lost in Tropics’ core gameplay doesn’t stand out enough, and in a vacuum, the game is a tedious and repetitive affair. The shoddy technical performance drags this one far below average, making it a title to avoid. Go play Green Hell instead.