The Haunted Hoard: Lone Survivor: The Director’s Cut (PC)

An infection has taken hold in the city, turning anyone infected into featureless shambling bodies that attack anyone they can. This deadly disease shows no sign of stopping, and as the player enters this situation, they find themselves not as a person who is trying to stop or cure the outbreak, but as a young man who only wishes to survive. This unnamed lone survivor put on a surgical mask to prevent infection and holed up in an apartment he found for as long as he could, but the plague shows no signs of weakening and no one seems to be coming to rescue him. As his resources run low, he is forced to venture out to find the food he needs, a way to somewhere safer, and most importantly to him, someone else just so he won’t have to die alone

 

Lone Survivor: The Director’s Cut has a fairly bleak set-up, the main character not even thinking his own name is important due to the isolation his situation has forced on him, but as he leaves his apartment in search of something better, there is a story to be found despite a set-up that could almost eschew it entirely if it felt like it. Our protagonist isn’t the everyman survivor he first reads as, as it becomes apparent rather quickly his own deteriorating sanity is having an impact on the world around him. It’s not quite overt outside of a few moments that could just fit in as supernatural occurrences if they felt like it, but the story of the unnamed main character begins to come out as events and images evoke old memories. The story doesn’t get explored too deeply oddly enough, the endings lacking a bit of closure as even with a hearty helping of player-based interpretation carrying the weight of the plot’s potential meaning, important facts about certain characters are left up in the air and without any easily attached answer. Perhaps its best that most of the game devotes itself less to the exploration of the personal story of this main character and more to the lone survivor’s current quest, one that manages to pull off an impressive feat of creating an effective atmosphere of tension and fear despite its visuals using incredibly pronounced pixels.

Despite limiting its character designs to blocky figures due to the choice to have such large and obvious pixelized graphics, Lone Survivor is still able to make monster designs that feel unnerving. The main infected human you’ll encounter is an emaciated, twitching creature with no identifying facial features but a recognizably human shape. Sound definitely helps to make this simple design even more off-putting, as they move with large stomps, make insect-like chittering noises, and if they manage to spot the player, they move with sudden swiftness and the music changes to nail in how bad it is that you are now in one of their sights. There aren’t a whole lot of infected types across the game, but the new ones that are introduced follow similar ideas to make them feel unreal and threatening, with the particularly large ones feeling like you’re way out of your depth when you encounter them, graphical and musical effects only selling it even more. The city in the game also manages to feel desolate and dangerous, most of the world cast in incredible darkness that means the player can usually barely see unless they’ve got a flashlight. Urban decay and organic architecture both work together with the low light levels to explain just how far this unnamed city has fallen into its new horrific fate.

 

Its fairly important that Lone Survivor makes its world visually effective, as you’ll be seeing many places repeatedly as you venture out of your apartment and try to make your way out of the building and into the city. Almost the entire game is about that singular goal of pushing towards an exit from this horrible situation, the lone survivor marking points of interest on his maps that can bring him closer to his greater goal. You might not always know what you are going to do when you get somewhere, but Lone Survivor makes sure to keep the player informed about where they need to go. Movement can be blocked by the need to get certain items or take detours to activate certain prerequisites like a generator needing to be on to use an elevator, but these tasks aren’t the real challenge. That instead comes mostly from the monstrous infected roaming about the building. The game is viewed from the side, meaning that you only can move back and forth or through doors on the walls, and there are plenty of cramped hallways and rooms where the player will be forced to find a way past the creatures who easily block the way onward just by standing there. The game encourages you to try and find the stealthy, non-combat options for getting around them, with the most obvious one being that some areas have wall divots or hiding spots you can slink into to move around the side of the infected undetected. This can be slow-going however, and backtracking is a common occurrence so having to do these slow sneaks often can turn what was initially an interesting option of caution into an annoyingly slow chore. There are ways to help with getting past your enemies though, such as using meat to bait them to an area where you can slip by more easily or you can place a lit flare to disorient them until it burns out.

 

Or you can use a gun.

 

Lone Survivor gives the player a pistol fairly quickly, and despite giving non-violent options, the pistol isn’t neutered just to urge the player towards them. Three shots to the head will put down a typical mutated individual, and once one is killed, it will stay dead for the entirety of the game. Ammo isn’t so rare that you have to completely avoid its use either, but you will need to be somewhat smart about which ones you choose to put down and which you sneak past to avoid being low in areas where it’s a lot more useful to have some bullets in reserve. Almost as important, the creatures still put up a good fight if they do reach you, so the tension of knowing some are around doesn’t disappear just because you have some ammo on hand. Every shot you fire does contribute to weakening your character’s sanity though, and while it doesn’t have many apparent influences on the moment-to-moment gameplay, your ending is mostly determined by how cool you keep your character’s head over the course of the game. This stat isn’t readily apparent, and the best endings do require some outside knowledge of what will help or hurt the main character’s mindset, but funnily enough, the fact the game doesn’t lay down too many conclusive details in its endings means that it’s not too painful to get a lesser ending. You do get a nifty report card of the many ways your character was affected at the end though, but outside a well-plotted run, you won’t really be able to keep the lone survivor’s mind stable all too well.

While a lot of the game is just about setting out to new locations to gradually chip away at the greater goal of escape, Lone Survivor doesn’t forget its premise about the character’s low food reserves. While on your greater quest of finding a way out, you will find items laying about, a great many of them relating to the need to eat. The protagonist will get hungry over the course of the game, and the food you find along the way isn’t just about stuffing it in your mouth and carrying on after. Some food is suspect since its been left so long, meaning that every new meal you try could come with the risk it’s spoiled and actually detrimental to consume. There are foods that are almost worthless on their own but work well when cooked or combined with other ingredients, but those come with other things you need to find to make such a meal like gas to cook with or a can opener. It’s a small but interesting touch to the affair, urging the player not to dilly-dally as their ability to feed themselves declines the longer they spend playing the game. There are some other unusual items like pills whose effects you can only learn by using them, adding a layer of authenticity to the scavenging as you wouldn’t really know if something you find laying about in an abandoned apartment is fit for consumption.

 

A somewhat weaker element for survival is the main character’s fatigue levels. While you can usually get a decent amount done in an in-game day, he will gradually grow exhausted and need to return to his apartment to sleep. Sleep is the most efficient manner of healing after taking some hits from monsters, meaning sometimes you might turn in early just for that purpose, and on top of all that, it is also the game’s saving method. This need to head back after the lone survivor grows weary or the player wishes to save their progress is helped a touch by a mirror system where you can set up a two way link between a mirror in your room and one somewhere else, but there will definitely be backtracking both to use this system and just to push the plot along as it sometimes retreads the same ground, ground that wouldn’t be too bad to cross if it wasn’t for the need to leave some monsters alive to conserve ammo. Thus, the slow sneaking has to get involved in the backtracking as well. It should also be noted that sleeping when you don’t need to or waiting too long to do so will impact your mental state as well, making alternate endings a little bit harder because of just how many things the game tracks for them.

THE VERDICT: Lone Survivor: The Director’s Cut does a remarkable job of constructing threatening monster designs and an oppressively dark environment despite its graphical choice of large obvious pixels, and while there are many survival horror games, Lone Survivor tries to truly tap into both parts of the genre title. The game’s main goal is about the need to escape to somewhere safer, with concerns like food influencing the path the player takes towards that otherwise straightforward goal. Sometimes the need to sleep will send you back down paths slowed down by the need to creep past the infected creatures, but your gun makes you capable enough that you can stand and fight if you need to or just feel like it would benefit you more to have a clear path back and forth somewhere. The actual character story is a bit too veiled to get heavily invested in, what details it puts out mostly relying on the player to assign some meaning to, but its an enjoyable game on the whole because its strict alternate ending requirements aren’t too influential on the quality of the experience.

 

And so, I give Lone Survivor: The Director’s Cut for the PC…

A GOOD rating. Leaning so heavily into the survival angle makes Lone Survivor’s core a strong and tense experience. You are able to survive so long as you keep moving and act intelligently, finding the food you need and clearing paths to make navigation easier. The main character’s life has to be managed in ways other than just combat, but even when he enters a battle, he can hold his own just enough that it’s a viable option but not one that breaks down the threat the infected pose. Sneaking and traversal in general are a bit of a drag to accommodate this direction, but it only really makes itself felt if you never allow yourself to use the quicker options. The story could have used a few more details to make it more meaningful to discover what its going for, but the core survival experience still works regardless of what you make of the deliberately interpretive plot.

 

Despite what at first looks like a game that will be hampered by its decision to have pixelated graphics instead achieves a surprising horror experience that mixes economical but evocative monster design, effective music and sound direction, and gameplay mechanics that mix vulnerability and power well all make an experience that works without feeling limited, although a few things like plot and backtracking do still hold it back from seeing that effort bloom into a fully well-rounded game.