(PC) Once Alive Review

We’re all for indie games here at the Tavern, especially for new, solo developers giving the business a shot. Cem Boray Yıldırım is the latest solo dev to cross our desk with their debut effort Once Alive. It shows promise in its story and worldbuilding, and makes use of the latest and greatest tech in Unreal 5 and MetaHuman to make great looking game. As a debut effort, there’s a lot to be commended. However, we can’t glance over its shortcomings which sadly hamper the experience.

Let’s keep the positivity train going first, and Cem Boray Yıldırim sets up quite an intriguing post apocalyptic world. After a global pandemic, humans are all but wiped out. Our main character James and his brother Daniel believe they are the only survivors, and decide to explore and see if they truly are alone. After finding a large banner calling for survivors to follow the tracks to HaustVille, the pair argue over whether to believe it or play it safe. James stays while his brother ventures off, and we pick up with James as he goes after him.

The world building is effective, setting the scene of a truly barren world where our two brothers are barely surviving. Early on, we’re informed the virus is like a mutated version of rabies, causing all the world’s animals to become violent and deadly and as such, no longer a source of food for humans. The opening scene as we approach HaustVille sets the stage for some real creepy shit; an abandoned campsite with remnants of blood, a broken bridge forcing us to go off the beaten path, and our first exposure to some infected crows that chase us.

The UE5 visuals are also stunning, if a tad static at points. There’s all manner of effects that belie this being made by one person, let alone someone who only began their game development journey 3 years ago. James and his brother are realistically rendered, and in stills this could easily pass as the work of a far more experienced team.

Over the next three hours we traverse the seemingly safe refuge in search of Daniel, and indeed the entire population as they seem to have vanished. This comes in the form of moving through the linear environment going from house to house, reading notes, and finding echoes of the people who live here. These little interstitials slowly reveal the plot, and once again we must commend Cem Boray Yıldırim on the world building here. We’ve played a lot of post-apocalypse stories in games, but the premise for this one (the plague affecting animals and therefore the food chain, the true purpose of HaustVille, and the lengths people will go to survive) is genuinely intriguing.

It’s here that we must start to delve deeper into the downsides, and the biggest one for us is how unrealised the threads that are started remain, both in story and gameplay. The Steam page and trailers allude to a tense sense of survival, with infected animals posing a threat. As this is predominantly a walking sim, we didn’t expect the high-tension horror of an Outlast, but it’s decidedly not a tense game at all. Remember that mention of the crows that chased us a few paragraphs ago? Well, that’s not just the first time we see them – it’s the only time, bar a long shot of them over the village later in the game.

The rest of the experience is decidedly lonely outside of the visions we see, and there’s no other moment that gets the pulse elevating. Directly after the crows, we’re presented a physics puzzle of sorts, needing to pick up and rotate a plank to cross a gap over a wall into HaustVille. We prepared for more puzzles involving this mechanic only to never get the opportunity again. From here, it is simply a case of following the (literally walking) steps, and that is disappointing.

In fact, the only real challenge in Once Alive is in making sure we’re still on track. The journal and inventory is all but pointless, and there’s no real helpful hint as to where we’re looking next (although again, this is a very linear game). It also falls foul of one of the most irritating indie game traits – the lethargic pace of our main character, and pairing it with a world too large. It’s not a huge map by any means, but James walks so slowly, and the run button barely improves this. I don’t want Doom-like speed, but let us have a bit more pace, please.

It’s hard to be too harsh on Once Alive, but solo first time dev or not, this is a game that has heaps of potential that just doesn’t come to fruition. We’d be very interested in seeing Cem Boray Yıldırim take another crack at this world or story, though there’s definite ending here that shuts the book on this particular tale. There are technical aspects that don’t work such as facial animation that doesn’t match the audio, and for all the bells and whistles of UE5 and MetaHuman I faced several instances of the game chugging and skipping, with the final cutscene playing out almost as a slideshow. The game also hard crashed on me during the credits, forcing me to restart my computer. And the controller support is wonky at best, with no way to invert Y or increase the look speed, and the pause menu simply refusing to work with a controller at all. Again, we applaud Cem Boray Yıldırim for taking a punt at this, but this is still a product on sale for real money, and these issues we found are worth mentioning all the same.

Conclusion

All in all, Once Alive is a promising first outing for solo dev Cem Boray Yıldırim, at least in the potential they show at being able to craft a world that is intriguing and somewhat unique in the crowded genre of the post-apocalypse. Unfortunately, the finished product here leaves too much of that promise on the table, with mechanics introduced and forgotten immediately in favour of slow walking and linear progression, and technical aspects that punch above their weight in not being optimised effectively.

This game was tested and reviewed on PC (via Steam). All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by the publisher.