Volcanoids

Volcanoids I’m sure when you read the name you think robots and volcanoes which you would be correct this game has both. Let me introduce you to volcanoids, a survival game by an indy publisher and developer which share the same name indy studio. Volcanoid is responsible for this new take on the survival genre and I gotta say from what I’ve played so far in the alpha I can not wait to see this game grow. The game starts off with your character inside a submarine that’s docked on an island. The captain is your quest giver he helps you out in telling you what to do and he also walks you through the first few steps helping you get an understanding for the game as you see you won’t be building a normal base of operations.

After you get the basics down the captain is notified by the computer of an enemy drill ship about to surface only thing the ship is damaged and this ladies and gents is your new home sweet home, as you take over said ship you’re tasked with making repairs to it and adding the components you will need in order to get that puppy working.

The components are the interesting part as you have to place them on the walls of the ship theres a few that can be placed on the ceiling of the ship, you get your standard storage and refinery as well as the production module which give you plenty of tabs with things you can build to help you out on your journey.

From the map that you find in both the submarine and your ship the island is pretty big in size and you can explore it all and sitting nicely in the center of the island the main attraction to the survival part of the game the Volcano. This is what separates volcanoids from other survival games instead of zombies no you get an angry volcano sitting on a pretty timer waiting to erupt and catch players off guard and change the landscape temporarily. And if players aren’t paying attention well let’s just say a lot of work will be waiting for you and I speak from experience.

On the map the enemies you encounter are called cogs and boy are they a pest, the times I encountered them really were a pain in the butt. You see if you’re coming above ground your stuck in an arial view watching the ship leave the ground but this is where the first big issue comes into effect. While in this sequence you are vulnerable and the minute the cogs see you they’re on you blasting away and boy do they do damage to both your ship and you, now to counter these bad boys you get a trusty sawed off double barrel shotgun which if your good enough you can take the cogs down with the first 2 shots or if your terrible like me 4 shots depending on how many you miss. Depending on the area you visit you might get lucky and only find 1 or 2 cogs or be swarmed by the cog swat team and trust me they hurt. I do hope later on during beta’s or early release we see more guns cause the reload speed on the shotty is painfully slow and accurate. So far during my exploration I’ve seen 2 types of cogs the basic solders in red paint and the next level above them in a green paint, I’m sure there’s many more variations and sizes but we all need to discover them ourselves.

The drill ship itself is pretty cool but I think they could add a few more things like letting players see the underground world as you tunnel around this volcanic paradise. The drill ship being base command truly gives new life to the survival aspect always being able to move around and you can add more segments to the ship to make it longer so you can add more modules like storage as well as lockers. I hope to see upgrades to the drill itself like size or the groves on it so far weaponry for the ship hasn’t been added but the devs have told us on there discord there are plans to add weaponry to the ship which I hope they offer automated weaponry so that if your away from the ship it could defend itself or even add a system that if you leave to explore you can make the ship tunnel below till you return.

There’s a lot more I could talk about but this games really good and doesn’t deserve to be spoiled. If your a fan of survival base building games then do yourself a favor and keep an eye out for volcanoids when it hits early access in January 2019. Have a great day and take care.