Survivalcraft

Players in Survivalcraft collect items and craft tools; here, a character is holding an axe with an inventory consisting of a compass, iron axe, and bomb.

Survivalcraft is a three-dimensional (3D) sandbox game that is set on a deserted island. The game begins with the player generating an open world, based on parameters such as the average temperature and humidity.[1] After setting up the world, the player character is shown marooned on an island, as the crew on a nearby ship announces they will not return for them.[2]

After the dialogue ends, the player is pushed by the necessity to collect resources and items to survive.[2] The player may start by cutting down a tree to obtain timber and, in turn, creating a workbench, which can then be used to create more items and blocks. The items that could be crafted in the workbench, as well as the prerequired items and the methods to craft them, could be seen in the Recipaedia.[3] The player may then use the tools to increase the hunger bar by eating food from hunting down animals, constructing a shelter for a place to sleep and spend the night, or mining to obtain underground resources. If the character does not eat food for a prolonged time, the hunger bar will drop to zero, and the character's health bar would decrease to zero. If the health bar also drops to zero, the character would die.[1] The player also needs to craft clothes to prevent the character from freezing and depleting health bar points.[4]

There are six different game modes in the game: Survival, Challenging, Cruel, Harmless, and Creative. In the first four,[1] the game character starts empty-handed, and the player is challenged to stay alive on the island alone and gather necessary resources to craft items and blocks for their survival. The Harmless mode makes surviving easier, with neutral animals that do not attack unless provoked and faster healing time. Challenging is the normal survival mode, with animals attacking once the character gets to a certain distance and a longer and conditional healing time. Cruel's only difference compared to Challenging is that the world is deleted if the player dies.[5][6] On the other hand, Creative mode equips the player with an infinite amount of every block and items on the game. The character could fly and could not die or experience an injury while playing in this mode.[1] In Survival mode, the player begins with fish in their inventory. The player is also able to go back to where they slept, as well. In Adventure mode, the player is unable to break blocks without using appropriate tools, being usually used for quest maps.

The game was singlehandedly developed by programmer Marcin Igor "Kaalus" Kalicinski,[7] who sold his game under the brand Candy Rufus Games.[8] The sole pre-release tester of the game was Kalicinski's son.[9]

Kalicinski stated that he made the game after playing and remixing Minecraft's source code. He bought a copy of the game in July 2011 after hearing rumours about it for a long period. After playing the game and modifying the game's source code, he wrote his test code a few days later. Kalicinski stated that his code was initially intended as a "toy project"; he never thought of publishing or selling it due to the sheer amount of Minecraft duplicates that already circulated at that time. Kalicinski created the code in the C# programming language.[9]

Kalicinski chose Windows Phone as its starting platform due to the absence of Minecraft and its clones in the platform. He had difficulties overcoming limitations for apps in the Windows Phone, such as the lack of support for shaders and the prohibition of native code. These problems made him almost abandon Survivalcraft, but he tried to run the game on the phone and it reached a rate of 4.5 frames per second on its first try. He tried to improve the game's code and managed to make the game playable.[9] The game was submitted to the Windows Phone Store in mid-November 2011[10] and was released on 16 November 2011.[11][12]

After its first release, Kalicinski received feedback from players regarding Survivalcraft's features. There was a huge demand by the players to make the game more similar to Minecraft. However, Kalicinski already planned the game to be more focused on the survival aspect. He wanted to make a long-term game with more features that would make the character more susceptible to death, such as cold, hunger, thirst, natural disasters, and increasingly dangerous enemies. Nevertheless, the feedback refocused him on improving the game's basic features instead of implementing his planned new features.[9]

Following several updates, the game was released for Android devices in October 2012,[13] and later for Microsoft Windows.[14] An update for the game was released shortly afterwards in July 2013, with the addition of boats, farming, and new animals. The update also changed the terrain generation method, allowing islands to be found in the middle of the ocean.[15] Another update in November 2013 added electronic functionalities in the game, allowing player to create complex visual displays.[16]

A month after the November 2013 update, the game was released for iOS devices.[13] Kalicinski introduced a Christmas-themed update immediately after the iOS release, which added Christmas trees and reindeer into the game. Other major changes for this update were the ability of players to alter the temperature and humidity of worlds, a new set of bows and arrows, electric shooting target, iron fences, and tigers.[17] Kalicinski supplemented the game with another update in May 2014, which added various new weapons into the game and custom skins for players. Kalicinski implemented several alterations regarding the audio, user interface, and explosives in this update.[7]

The 30th and last update of Survivalcraft were released in March 2016. The update added many new items and blocks into the game, such as copper items, stairs, and coloured LEDs. Several tweaks on the area of forest and caves were also conducted in its final update.[18]

Survivalcraft 2

Table and chairs made by using the furniture feature in Survivalcraft 2.

Survivalcraft 2 is a sequel to the original game which was released in December 2016.[19][20] The main feature that separates Survivalcraft 2 from its predecessor is the existence of "furnitures", a system that allows players to make their own block by using an in-game tool called an iron hammer.[21] An update for Survivalcraft 2 added multiplayer—a long-awaited feature—into the game.[9] The multiplayer system works by splitting the screen for 2-4 players, allowing up to 4 players to use the same device to play in the same world.[22]

• Official website