How To Survive: Catch-All

How To Survive unlocks tomorrow, October 23 on Steam, XBLA, and PSN.

There is currently a 30% off sale on Steam. Sale price: $10.49, down from $14.99

You're shipwrecked on an isolated island, a desperate castaway in a total freakshow world. How will you survive?

Collect the pages of a Survival Guide and figure it out, of course! Find food, water, and shelter before you perish. Uh oh, is it getting dark? Figure out how to get through the night! While you’re at it, gather up some of this awesome stuff and piece together over 100 handmade weapons and tools—from shotguns to Molotov cocktails. Now you can defend yourself and your friends like a boss!

• Choose one of the three playable characters, each with different characteristics and skill trees.

• Explore four islands filled with unique flora and fauna and a variety of abhorrent monstrosities.

Collect “Survival guide” video chapters to learn tips that will save your life!

Play with a friend offline through the story mode or go online and play with a friend through 8 demanding challenges..

• Try the “Iron Man” difficulty for a demanding hardcore game experience.

E3 2013 Impressions from Co-Optimus

Looks intriguing.

I'm liking the survivalist elements.

Steam link
Xbox Link
PSN link

Certainly looks fun, although it's too bad the co-op is offline only.

And done. That looks fun!

Stengah wrote:

Steam link
Xbox Link
PSN link

Certainly looks fun, although it's too bad the co-op is offline only.

Yeah, that's my only problem with it so far. There are online co-op challenges; why not just make the whole game co-op?

FSeven wrote:
Stengah wrote:

Steam link
Xbox Link
PSN link

Certainly looks fun, although it's too bad the co-op is offline only.

Yeah, that's my only problem with it so far. There are online co-op challenges; why not just make the whole game co-op?

Oh man, I thought I read somewhere there was online co-op. That sucks.

But hey Dan, I'll come over and co-op with ya.

There is, but it's only for the challenge mode. You can't play the story in online co-op.

Very intrigued. But does it have a storyline, or is it just survive for as long as you can?

So this unlocked today. Did anyone get it and try it?

I'll try it tonight when i get home from work. No co-op as I won't play this with my 9 yr old.

It's downloading...won't have really tried it till weekend prolly though as there's so much going on today atm gaming wise.

I played an hour or so of the campaign, and I'm going through Kovac's training missions right now. On Iron Man it's very easy to die so I had to repeat a few sections to get past them. Pretty fun, it's essentially a Diablo-style hackfest with zombies, skill trees, and crafting. Definitely worth ten bucks.

I can;t get my controls to work, When I try to tell it keyboard it defaults back to pad and it wont work with my Ms gamepad.

I can't find any support online since its so new.

lostlobster wrote:
FSeven wrote:

Yeah, that's my only problem with it so far. There are online co-op challenges; why not just make the whole game co-op?

Oh man, I thought I read somewhere there was online co-op. That sucks.

Stengah wrote:

There is, but it's only for the challenge mode. You can't play the story in online co-op.

On the Steam forum, the developer is saying that online story co-op will be patched in soon.

Your voices have been heard! Online Story Co-op is coming!
Thanks to all your feedback, we have decided to add Online Story Co-op as an update!
It will take roughly one month to develop, implement, and test so be on the lookout before the holidays!

fixed. i had 2 controllers plugged in.

all in all it's pretty fun. I could see how this could be lots of fun coop.

lostlobster wrote:

Oh man, I thought I read somewhere there was online co-op. That sucks.

But hey Dan, I'll come over and co-op with ya.

Woo! Dev says they will patch online co-op but you can still come over.

Budo wrote:

Very intrigued. But does it have a storyline, or is it just survive for as long as you can?

Not much of a storyline. The game definitely focuses on the gameplay. There's just enough of a storyline to keep the game moving.

groan wrote:

I can;t get my controls to work, When I try to tell it keyboard it defaults back to pad and it wont work with my Ms gamepad.

I can't find any support online since its so new.

I had the same problem. I was turning on my MS 360 wireless controller after I had already started the game. Quit the game, connect the controller, and then restart the game and you should be fine.

Aetius wrote:

I played an hour or so of the campaign, and I'm going through Kovac's training missions right now. On Iron Man it's very easy to die so I had to repeat a few sections to get past them. Pretty fun, it's essentially a Diablo-style hackfest with zombies, skill trees, and crafting. Definitely worth ten bucks.

Haven't tried Iron Man yet but Normal mode is challenging. The first island is basically a tutorial. It gradually ramps up in difficulty and by the third island you're going to be challenged to survive. I have no idea how much more of the game I have to play but after a few hours I think I've only scratched the surface on crafting recipes.

It's entertaining so far and definitely worth the 10 bucks. This definitely has potential to be a great franchise. I hope EKO does well off this game and makes a sequel. A large open sandbox world, deep storyline, greater skill tree variety (perhaps different roles), much more elaborate crafting system, and some sort of base building mechanic would make them piles of money.

This game has a tonne of personality. The presentation is great. I like that it took me a little while to figure out how to actually shoot. Only complaint, and I'm very early, is that I wish you could store things in the safe rooms.

I had a bunch of fun with this last night. My only complaint so far is that there doesnt seem to be a good way to switch between melee and ranged weapons.

NathanialG wrote:

I had a bunch of fun with this last night. My only complaint so far is that there doesnt seem to be a good way to switch between melee and ranged weapons.

On the 360 controller it's LB. I had the same thought and then I reached Kovac's island and a tooltip popped up explaining it. No idea for keyboard controls.

-RB attacks
-LB swaps melee/ranged
-left stick moves
-right stick aims (which was extremely poorly explained early on)
-A interacts
-Y switches between weapons
-B opens the inventory/stats screen/quest log
-LT uses an item if held down or tapped (depending on the item)
-RT sprints

Anything else I'm missing?

This game autosaves, right? Does it save when I exit? What controls when it autosaves?

ya, i had a problem with that then i accidently hit the LB on my 360 controller.
OH! Look Ranged! then press Y to swap the bow with the gun, just like you do with melee.

edit: fixed weapon swap button.

Vector wrote:
NathanialG wrote:

I had a bunch of fun with this last night. My only complaint so far is that there doesnt seem to be a good way to switch between melee and ranged weapons.

On the 360 controller it's LB. I had the same thought and then I reached Kovac's island and a tooltip popped up explaining it. No idea for keyboard controls.

Clicking the mouse-wheel does is the default for m/k.

Vector wrote:

This game has a tonne of personality. The presentation is great. I like that it took me a little while to figure out how to actually shoot. Only complaint, and I'm very early, is that I wish you could store things in the safe rooms.

Yeah, inventory management becomes an issue really early.

What skills are people taking? I immediately got eat less and sleep less.

NathanialG wrote:

What skills are people taking? I immediately got eat less and sleep less.

Same here. I have to imagine that different survivors have different skills, but I've only played as Kenji. The ability to see nearby animals and plants on the map is of limited use after you've spent some time on the islands, so I went primarily down the arrow/fire side of his skills, and the limited inventory kept me from wanting to make any skill-boosting potions. Flaming arrows are very useful for clearing the hordes that come when you open a safehouse. Explosive arrows help you deal with the barricades, since you can carry 100 of them as opposed to only 3 homemade bombs.

Just picked this up, looking forward to trying it.

Purchased this with GMG 25% off code tonight. Played for about 2 hours. It's a fun little game. If anything I got the entertainment value of the price of a movie ticket out of it already. I'm looking forward to getting back in and learning to hunt and make a better satchel!

so, I made a satchel, and as far as I can tell it doesnt increase your inventory size. This was pretty disappointing, as the inventory size limit has been making for tough decisions all along. I guess that's just bound to keep going?

I'm keeping my eye on this one. I'm pretty sure I'll pick it up, just trying to decide whether to get it on the 360 and convince the wife to co-op with me, or pick it up on Steam.

I forsee this being a favorite Christmas sale give away item.

polypusher wrote:

so, I made a satchel, and as far as I can tell it doesnt increase your inventory size. This was pretty disappointing, as the inventory size limit has been making for tough decisions all along. I guess that's just bound to keep going?

Why that Monkey and his damn pet parrot got my hopes up for nothing!

Andon wrote:
polypusher wrote:

so, I made a satchel, and as far as I can tell it doesnt increase your inventory size. This was pretty disappointing, as the inventory size limit has been making for tough decisions all along. I guess that's just bound to keep going?

Why that Monkey and his damn pet parrot got my hopes up for nothing!

Yeah, I've found the crafting to be a little disappointing. As much potential as it has, it's not as deep as I had hoped it'd be, or at least, there's not actually much variety in you're going to make.
Still, I've gotten a lot of fun out of it and found the story to be pretty interesting.

Loving this game far more than I expected - not super deep, but great fun.