Hands-on with Cozy Playtest is here, where I discuss several games I have had the pleasure of playtesting. This time, I take a look at two games, Yareta and Survival Tech. You can find my other playtests here.
Hands on with Cozy Playtests: Yareta
I had the opportunity to participate in a playtest for the upcoming game Yareta by Mariana Games. I played on a PC with a controller.
Yareta is an open-world single-player exploration with puzzles. The graphics are beautiful, and it’s a large and varied world. The Steam page says that as you play the game, you will uncover secrets hidden within the ancient world. That’s intriguing!
The game has a very unique mechanic called the Skybound Rope. You and the other NPC adventurers are attached to the sky by a rope. This allows you to fly for limited periods of time and get to places otherwise inaccessible on foot. It also gives you a different perspective of the landscape. At first, you can only fly with the Skybound Rope for a short period of time. There’s a timer that alerts you when you are running out of power and will start descending.
The goal of the playtest is to solve puzzles in order to recover more energy from towers. After the main character completes the tower puzzles, their energy storage system increases, so you have more power and can fly longer. I’m curious how this mechanic will change as the game progresses. I’m sure the full game will have many different challenges and quests. I can see lots of areas in the trailer that were not in the playtest.
You can also explore underwater, and while you are there, you see some magnificent sea creatures. The background music is so nice and calm. It’s a soothing game.
Yareta reminded me a lot of Myst. Mainly because it has beautiful graphics, not much in the way of instruction and puzzles that are a bit difficult to figure out. Unfortunately, like Myst, this game is beyond my capabilities. I need lots of instruction in my games. If a game I’m playing happens to have a few puzzles, I need them to be intuitive and fairly simple. That’s just me, though!
Yareta would be fantastic for gamers who like Myst and the The Room series. Yareta is an award-winning game, and even though I can’t play it, I can definitely appreciate how lovely it looks and sounds.
The demo for Yareta will be available later this year. If you like games like Myst and The Room, you should play that demo because this game is right up your alley!
Hands on with Cozy Playtests: Survival Tech
I was able to participate in a playtest for the game Survival Tech by Truckbot101. I played on a PC. The playtest itself only had about 15 minutes of playtime, but it was enough to give a good feel for Survival Tech. It’s a really unique game – both in the graphics and the gameplay.
The backstory is you are a small child walking from the bus stop to your Grandmother’s house. At its heart, it’s a cozy survival adventure about hiking, camping and choices. The graphics are hand-drawn, sweet and childlike. The game offers you various choices on your adventure, and you have to figure out the best plan to arrive at Grandma’s in one piece.
It’s a very quiet and peaceful strategy game with a soothing soundtrack composed by Daniel Keating.
In the screenshot above, you’ll see simple icons to tell your temperature, hydration level and hunger. The more you hike, the more resources you use. If you use too many resources, you may die. That’s not a terrible thing; you experience a black screen, and you start the level again. But……you sometimes come across food and water as you hike, so maybe you can go further. It’s a choice which includes strategy and a bit of luck!! When your levels get too low, you can always set up camp for the night.
You can walk into the squares around your campsite (it’s the square that says campsite!) and find various items as illustrated in this screenshot. When you find them, you can put the berries and water in your inventory for later or consume them right now. The cattail is a crafting item that you will be able to use in the final game. These squares are procedurally generated, which gives you a ton of repeat playtime because each time you play, it’s a different set of choices.
Survival Tech intends to provide a safe space where players can see how certain decisions out in the wild can impact them. I found it very interesting to play out different strategies in my visit to Grandma.
The future of Survival Tech
What I’m showing you is just a preview of the final game. There will be other features. They include a larger camping map with a 4 x 4 grid instead of the 3 x 3, and a larger hiking map where you can go in all 4 directions. There are mini games planned too, all related to the camping experience. Also, in the future, the exact spot you stop hiking (on the map) will impact what items you find around the campsite, plus there will be a much larger variety of items to find.
The game screen will remain basically the same, simple and easy to navigate. But as you progress, you will find more tools and gear. You’ll also gain more skills, opening up new options for items to interact with. You’ll be able to move further away from the campsite as you explore, so you can experience more gameplay. The final game will also include crafting, using some of the items you find around the campsite.
One constant is that you will always be traveling to Grandma’s, many trips to visit her, in fact. Each time you visit her, she will give you some new tools and skills which you can keep to use on your next trip. Your skills and tools just keep building and changing your experiences, which also impacts your strategy and choices. Genius!!
Survival Tech is the product of a solo developer, Truckbot101, and she hopes to have the full game released on Steam late next year, with a demo available before that. I had a few questions about the gameplay, and she answered them quickly. I always appreciate and call out when a dev does that. I think it shows commitment to the quality of the final product. This is her first game, and I wish her the best of luck with it! I liked it a lot!
Do you like our content?
Support LadiesGamers as a member on Patreon!
Or buy us a cup of coffee or tea on Ko-Fi!
