If you have no food, a fridge that talks, a roof not over your head, you’re probably not doing too good
I Am Future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival is single player survival game where you wake up from a long hibernation to find yourself on an overgrown rooftop in the middle of what seems to be a flooded city. The general premise is to survive and create new technology in order to expand your living base.
Being an apocalyptic game the main character you decide to customise and play as does not appear distressed at the situation and there is light humour from the offset and throughout about. You will also make a couple of robotic friends along the way, the first of which is Earl the fridge who gives you various tasks to do all of which is to get accustomed to the games mechanics.
The art design of I Am Future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival is what really makes the game feel less dangerous, it is colourful and green largely to the amount of grass but still feels relatively cosy fitting with the games name, as you establish more of a habitable base the more cosier it will look but alas this will take some time.
To begin with as you do various tasks you will start to see your hunger deteriorate, you can eat a few various foods that you find, fortunately as soon as you obtain the ability to fish soon after the introduction food can be made easily through this endless activity making food no longer scarce but establishing a farm quickly will also alleviate this issue. Fishing can also be a great way to acquire extra resources meaning they are no longer finite. As you start to tinker with various objects you will find some interesting mechanics come into play, the first object you find to dismantle is a kettle and there are various steps to do this, such as removing any inside wiring, screws and plastic holding it together. This needs to be done in a specific order like removing the screws so that the base comes off, obviously. The attention to detail is surprising as it does show you how the inside of a kettle looks like despite me never having actually took a kettle apart in real life, I am just agreeing in the hopes the developers know.
To create a chest to store Items or a crafting station has you put down a blueprint on the floor and then you add whichever items requested to finish it to the blueprint, these items can be picked up and placed down and feels satisfying, akin to the My Time at Portia/Sandrock games. The robotic saw arm you posses is used to break down these items and the arm itself is upgraded so you can take apart more larger bulky junk which you couldn’t otherwise before.
Your biggest threat are electric eating bugs that climb through the place at night and cause havoc within your safe haven, they are harmful to touch with your bare hands and require a pesticide spray to get rid of. If they are left alone they can turn into weeds and spread and multiply quickly making it more tricky to navigate around. Once you get used to the game loop you will find yourself foraging for more resources and sending out your robots out on foraging expeditions if you don’t feel like going out and doing it yourself, it is needed. I always found inventory space an issue. While you can get more of this by upgrading I still always found myself having to leave something else behind and the character you play as isn’t the fastest in the world so it takes time. You do get to unlock various other storage facilities which will take the bulky Items such as Planks and Sheets of Metals and dont take up a lot of space, so that’s nice.
As you explore more of the underwater city you will gather bits of information on how the world came to be, however the story remains the weakest part of the game, while there is a bit of exploration the game does have some limited areas that exist as a shop or text on the screen. There are some systems in place that work off each other and quite well like the Crypto Farm that can generate coins that can be used to purchase various Items. There is a plethora of various machines that you can play around with and furniture that will make your base look habitable.
Overall I Am Future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival is a playable and enjoyable experience that could be further enhanced by DLC, it is not the largest game from start to finish and there is a bit of playability after you’re done but not by much as there is nothing really that you can work towards, the main gameplay loop of uncovering more of the rooftop and building a self sustaining farm is great but once you have completed a lot of the smaller projects at hand you are practically done. If the game is expanded with content it could be something really great as the potential and groundwork is already there but only if the developers allow it.
A PlayStation 5 Review code was provided by tinyBuild games. This review is featured on OpenCritic.
