Unturned: The Elusive Cot and Campfire

No, this is NOT another fanfic idea. This is simply my take on the early access free-to-play survival game on Steam called Unturned.

From what I know, Unturned is a simple survival single/multi player game where you're dumped in a large map, with the sole objective of surviving. The map I've been using is set on a large island near Canada, with a number of abandoned towns, military bases, and campsites. What makes Unturned different from other survival games is.....well, the fact that it adds from some adventure games like Skyrim.

On the zombie bit, it's pretty clear cut. You got two kinds of things to kill - zombies and animals. Animals often give more EXP, never attack the player and always drop animal pelt and/or raw food, but are rarely seen near human settlements. Zombies, on the other hand, are worth less EXP, have more HP, have DRAMATICALLY less item drops, and always increase your sick meter (more on that in a bit). When they do drop stuff, though, it's usually supplies you need, such as melee weapons or guns. They sometimes drop medicine and food too (albeit rotten food).

What I like the most is the sheer number of ways you can defend yourself. You can go straight in and punch the undead shit out of them, but you have little range and zombies are better at CQC until you level up (also gonna go into that shortly). To make up for it, you can find a wide variety of weapons - from sledgehammers to swords, from shotguns to magnums to bows and crossbows. you can also craft your own weapons and traps, like wooden stakes for melee or snares and caltrops (!) for simple booby traps.

What I don't like? When you die (and unless you're ungodly skilled, you WILL die) you lose EVERYTHING. And yes, I mean EVERYTHING. Any food, weapons, medicine, backpacks, traps, whatever. You also don't spawn near a human area except by sheer luck, though that luck is often negated by zombies ready to tear your arms off and munch on your......um, yeah. MOVING ON!

That changes if you craft, and that's something else I want to mention. One of the skills at your disposal is crafting, a necessary skill for any survival game. You can use things like axes and picks to harvest cloth, wood and stones for making anything from crushed berries (which make excellent healing items) to to cooked food, and even make objects like wooden doors and foundations for new buildings! In particular, you can make cots and sleeping bags, which function as spawn points once you claim them. One strategy I use is placing a cot or sleeping bag near a grocery store, pharmacy or general goods store. The stuff inside respawns every several hours (or every time you disconnect and reconnect) making it easier to amass supplies to survive. Plus, if you die near the cot or bag, you can return to where you were and pick up the stuff you dropped!

Now here's where I talk about stats. (YAY INCONSISTENCY!) You have a number of stats to boost your survivability: Endurance, Stamina, Sneakybeaky (a silly way to say stealth), Marksman, etc. You can only upgrade them a set number of times, and they get reduced if you die. If you upgrade a stat more than once, however, you don't lose the stat's progress entirely. It simply gets cut in half! Any EXP you built up also gets cut, rather than getting lost entirely.

One more thing before I sum up this terribly written explanation. The five bars! These represent your Health, Hunger, Thirst, Sickness and Energy. The stock ones are Health and Energy. The not-so-stock bars, however, make the game a bit more interesting. If your Hunger or Thirst gets up to 100%, you steadily lose health until you eat or drink something to reduce it. Sickness, on the other hand, is much harder to hassle. Eating raw berries or meats, moldy food and drink (the most often-dropped food and drink items) or getting mauled by zombies will boost your Sickness meter VERY quickly, though you can reduce the infection rate by leveling up. You can only reduce your Sickness bar by eating crushed berries or finding certain medical items in the environment.

Wish I could say more, but I think I hear zombies chomping away at my 12 sandbags. CYA!