I Am Future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival is a single player survival game developed by Mandragora and published by tinyBuild. After an early access period, the game was released in its final version on Steam on 13 November 2024.
I Am Future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival, an unexpected awakening
I Am Future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival begins in a semi-submerged city in a post-apocalyptic world. Humanity is now a distant memory and the only evidence of a once civilised world are the ruins of crumbling buildings and wrecks scattered here and there.
But a hibernation pod unexpectedly releases its precious cargo. A person emerges from it. This person has no memory of anything that has happened before. Thanks to a chatty fridge, our character will have an understanding of where he is, and perhaps in the future make contact with other life forms.
A very colorful post-apocalyptic environment
I am the future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival, unlike many post-apocalyptic titles, shows us a very colorful and sometimes even cheerful world, despite the destruction around us.
Even our enemies are far from frightening, in fact in I Am Future strange creatures called Electrosites are emerging at night from certain plants, feeding on electricity and our crops.
We will be able to build tools to defend ourselves against these annoying pests as we progress through the quest.
A relaxing survival
Despite being a survival game, I Am Future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival does not make the player feel rushed, unlike many survival games that often stress the player out more than they entertain.
I Am Future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival has a lot of quests that we can take our time with. Although our character’s hunger meter drops quite quickly, it is not difficult to find resources for food.
Nevertheless, the game has all the key elements of a survival game. You can grow plants, you can catch fish, you can create recipes, you can collect materials and combine them to create new items. What’s missing, and we don’t miss it at all, since we’re talking about a title that’s supposed to be cozy anyway, is food spoilage. In fact, we can leave the food where we want it and for as long as we want it, and it doesn’t go bad at all.
The developers have given us the option to increase the level of coziness if the challenge is too high or if we just want to pass the time without worrying too much. This setting has two levels: Cozy and Domestic. The Cozy level prevents the Electrosites from eating the crops. The Domestic level removes the hunger indicator so you can focus on developing your story.
A well-groomed game
I Am Future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival after the Early Access period shows itself to the public in the best light. Gameplay is good and challenging enough to be worth playing.
Weather and day/night cycles are carefully managed to add to the adventure’s immersion and to make the impact on resources noticeable. For example, on cloudy days, the solar generators will not work, while the mushrooms we grow will grow as if it were night. The environment lighting is also affected by the weather.
The interface is quite intuitive and easy to use, even with Steam Deck. We didn’t have any problems moving between menus or moving items from the inventory to the crates using the controller.
The graphics are good, although we would have liked to see better optimization on Steam Deck. This would have allowed us to take full advantage of the OLED version’s 90 Hz display and perhaps increase battery life. At high details and native resolution, the frame rate hovers around 45 fps, with an average consumption of 20 watts on the Steam Deck OLED, although there is an occasional drop in frame rate, but nothing serious. Reducing the resolution and graphics settings will only slightly improve the frame rate and power consumption, not justifying the lower visual quality.
We would like to finish with a small remark. It concerns the first cutscenes and the character selection. The first cutscene shows us the opening of the hibernation cell, and in it there is a man, after which we are able to choose the gender of our character. Just a stylistic comment, but it would have been better to use a gimmick to show the character after gender selection.
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