The other day, the anchors in the game area always played a game of "werewolf killing" in groups of three or five, black, "Dread hunger", because the scene is always at sea, it is also called "sea werewolf killing" by players. In the Steam sales list, "Fear of Famine" has also been higher than new blockbusters such as "Warhammer 3", firmly occupying the second place.
Werewolf Killing as a form of game evolved from a board game, from being well known to the peak of popularity, its gameplay has gradually enriched, after the transformation from the traditional werewolf witch, the Western magic background of the werewolf killing, to various scenes such as "space werewolf killing", "AmongUs", "Gunoxia" and so on. The stage design of the werewolf killing game, what kind of blizzard mountain villa can be built, and the degree of completion of the construction have gradually become one of the key points of consideration for players in recent years.
Traditional werewolf killing
"Space Werewolf Kill" AmongUs
The current design of "Fear of Famine", the extreme game stage of the Arctic, and the combination of survival game elements, make this game seem new and interesting.
Fear of Famine and werewolf killing
"Fear of Famine" tells the classic adventurer story of a group of 8 people who come to the Arctic to explore and seek wealth. But in this story, adventurers clearly underestimate the difficulty of polar exploration. It's freezing cold, there's a shortage of supplies... These dilemmas are slowly dragging down the psychology of the crew, and gradually some people are difficult to resist the double pressure of physical and psychological. And the worse thing we all know – the betrayer is hiding in the middle of this group.
Enter the game and we'll come to a relatively large cabin. There are wardrobes, map tables and interactive books next to the wardrobes, and the objects, arrangements and details in the entire room are very suitable for the style of the 19th century, coupled with the first-person perspective, it gives people a very strong European modern style experience from the beginning.
In the room, pre-selected characters for the game can be played, with each player playing a different class: Captain, Priest, Kitchen, Doctor, Engineer, Hunter, Marine, Navigator. Each class has its own unique initial equipment and abilities, such as the captain will bring his own saber at the beginning, the skill will be longer when staying on the ship, the cook is faster to make meat, the hunter is more suitable for hunting, and so on.
Famine of Fear is regarded by many players as "Sea Werewolf Kill" because he has a clear commonality with werewolf killing games: from the moment they enter the game, players are divided into good and bad light and dark camps - for example, in "Fear famine", 8 people are divided into 6 good "explorers" and 2 werewolf "traitors". The goal of the explorers is to drive the ship to the end before the end of the snowstorm day, and the werewolf is to prevent the good guy faction from sailing forward, mixing in the good guy camp to secretly destroy or reveal the identity of the direct confrontation.
"Good guys! Isn't this werewolf killing? "My friends commented on it when they first came into contact with the game, and really played it according to the gameplay of Werewolf Kill, entered the game and a group of people gathered around the table and plated around, and finally killed the wolf and the good guys like wolves, and finally only a cook and engineer were left... When you go out, you freeze to death.
After a few games of experience, players can draw a simple conclusion that if they follow the script of the "werewolf kill" gameplay, there is often no good experience.
Survival is also key
"Press C to pull coal" is the word I heard when I entered the first game. Pressing the C button, the character pulls out a coal ball he initially carries, which the players are accustomed to collecting and handing over to the engineer for resource scheduling. Interestingly, the C key of the werewolf faction will bring up the ritual knife used when releasing the skill, completely exposing the identity. Therefore, "pressing C to dig coal" has also become the "first lesson" of many new wolves.
From this interesting opening statement, it may be intuitive that "Fear of Famine" is not just a game of werewolf killing.
It is not enough to stay on this ship with no supplies, you need coal to keep the steamship moving forward, you need food to fill your stomach, and even need to see a doctor when you are sick... So it seems that as long as you stay on the ship to find out the bad guy camp people, everything will be fine, but in fact, you still need to go out with the team to find supplies and keep the ship running normally.
There are many places in Dread famine that present elements of survival games. For example, when we go out, there are three very important values: warm, hunger and health. They are all displayed in the lower left corner of the game interface, and when one of our warmth or hunger values is zero, it will slowly decrease health.
Fear of Famine left, Famine right
The design here is a lot like the Famine game without "fear." We need to gather and make food to make sure we don't go hungry; we need to pick up wood and light a campfire so that the temperature doesn't drop too low; we need to make weapons to protect against wild creatures such as polar bears and wolves... In the game, such a process is a large part of the player's gaming experience.
After doing all this, back to the duel with the werewolves, the abundance of materials also largely determines the victory or defeat of both sides, and a few more crossbow arrows and a few bullets may mean victory.
"Survival" and "werewolf killing" are like the backbone and sails of this ocean-going ship, "survival" is the backbone of the game, which determines whether players can go down, and "werewolf killing" is the sail, which determines where the ship goes. The combination of the two makes Dread Famine more playful and makes it more realistic than a single-play game. Survival gameplay gives characters a new confrontation mode, the set of modes more encourage players to role-play, "werewolf killing" this traditional form of game, here a new vitality was born.
After we are more and more familiar with the gameplay of the game, familiar with the roles of different occupations in 8 games, control the division of labor and cooperation of the role, we will find that the probability of good people winning is getting higher and higher; the netizens of the 8 days outside the game, in the game to cultivate, understand, and truly understand the meaning of cooperation and mutual assistance, may be what the work "Fear of Famine" brings us.
An expedition that did not survive
We often say that a work of art is a refinement and exaggeration of real life, which comes from life but is higher than life. But sometimes, what happens in life is more tortuous and bizarre than a work of art.
"Fear of Famine" is based on real historical events.
Unlike the game, where we can get the ship on track again with the efforts of 6 people (and two werewolves) to reach a seemingly good ending, for the Franklin Expedition in 1845, their 129-man team could not escape the total annihilation.
It all starts with that era of great navigation. From the 15th century onwards, Spain and Portugal, through maritime trade routes, benefited enormously from trade with the Americas, Africa, Asia, and especially China. The British also wanted a piece of the pie, but the sea routes were controlled by both countries and could not be easily allowed to pass, so the problem in front of them was to find a new route to the East.
At that time, it was already known that northern Norway was not frozen, so some people envisioned opening a route from the Arctic to the East, and at the same time, the British government also set up a huge prize in 1845: 20,000 pounds to reward the first person to open the northwest route.
Veteran explorer Franklin took on this task, and on May 19, 1845, he led the "Nether" and "Fear" (I don't know how to spit these two names, the microphone is handed to you...). Two of the most advanced ocean-going ships of the time sailed first to Greenland and then westward along Canada's north coast into the Arctic.
At the time, almost everyone thought success would be inevitable. Not only because of these two ships equipped with advanced equipment, the most experienced sailors and captains, but also because they carried an extreme abundance of supplies: the reserves on board were enough for 3 years, including 61,987 kilograms of flour, 16,749 liters of drinks, 909 liters of alcohol for healing, 500 kilograms of canned food, 30,100 kilograms of meat, and so on.
Franklin planned to sail the seas in about a year. But what is disturbing is that in the two years since they entered the Arctic Circle, none of them have delivered a single message to the outside world.
Gradually, someone sensed that something was wrong, and they might be killed. Franklin's wife pushed the government to launch a rescue operation, but although the British attached great importance to the rescue operation, the results were not ideal. Extreme Arctic climatic conditions held the rescue team back, and no one could find Franklin and his expedition in the vast Arctic glaciers. It was not until more than a decade later, in 1859, that Captain McClintock discovered a lifeboat used on a expedition ship on King William Island containing dead human skeletons, and at the same time, a letter signed by the ship Nether and the captain of the Panic ship was found nearby.
The letter indicates that the ship had been frozen since September 12, 1846, and that there was no solution to any attempt, and that everyone could only wait on the ship for the next summer to come, hoping that the summer temperature would rise to melt the ice.
However, the ice did not melt the following summer, and they waited on the ship for more than a year, and on April 22, 1848, the expedition had to abandon the ship and land, and as of the record day, 24 people had died, and Commander Franklin was one of those who died during this period. The remaining 105 officers and men marched south, expecting to get out of the predicament, but with 1,200 kilometers left at the nearest outpost Fort Fort Fort, it was almost impossible to walk so far in the ice and snow of the Arctic, and in the end, the expedition was completely destroyed.
Later, explorers found the remains of these people, the bones of the sailors of the Franklin Expedition. It can be concluded from the uneven surfaces of the relatively well-preserved bones that in the months before their deaths, these poor men suffered from scurvy. However, the harsher fact is that on some of the leg bones they found parallel knife marks, coupled with mutilated bones, apparently artificially dismembered, and can only conclude that people at that time once fed on their companions. This also adds some cruel color to the original tragic ending.
epilogue
Werewolf Kill, once a popular game category, is no longer so noticeable. The reason for this is that there are no excellent works of the same type in recent years, and the second is that the atmosphere between werewolves killing players is not too good, veterans discriminate against novices, veterans spray each other, etc... "Fear of Famine" also has this problem, and many players in the steam community abandon the pit, not because of the lack of games, but the contradictions of players. As a veteran player who used to always kill werewolves all night, I sincerely hope that players can be a little more relaxed when the game is not going well, after all, happiness is the most important thing.