“I expect a lot of people will hate it,” said Brendan Greene, creator of PUBG, when talking about his next game. That’s not the strongest sales pitch I’ve ever heard, but makes more sense with the context that he’s talking about the uncompromising difficulty of survival game Prologue: Go Wayback!, which launches into early access this summer. “I like brutal games,” he told PC Gamer earlier this year, and with Prologue, he set out to make one with as little hand-holding as possible.
We’ve seen some teases for Prologue over the last year but its first proper gameplay trailer arrived today. There’s no monsters to fight or zombies to flee or enemies to conquer: it’s strictly you versus nature, and that nature looks pretty darn deadly:
The goal of Prologue is to survive long enough to reach a weather station placed in a randomized spot each time you play. You’ve got a map, but it’s not the typical videogame map that automatically centers you or provides an arrow showing exactly where you are. This is just a regular old paper map you hold in your hands, as if you were really walking in the woods without a GPS.
The trailer shows what you’ll be up against: driving rains, blinding snow, powerful winds, the darkness of night, and tough terrain you can blunder over, get bogged down in, or slip and slide down if you’re not careful. Even the cozy cabins you come across don’t mean you’re safe from the elements. You’ll need to start a fire or you still might freeze, and board up windows during a storm to stay dry. Food, water, supplies, a heat source, and good gear are all necessary to survive your trek, and you’ll have to brave the elements to find them.
Ellie got to try out Prologue earlier this year, and reported that it “isn’t and likely never will be a genre-defining survival game. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth checking out, especially if you’ve been looking for a purely difficult and realistic survival experience that isn’t bogged down with expansive crafting and an in-depth story.”
