What do you think a survival sandbox game should look like? Is it a wasteland filled with ruin and smoke, a cold winter with hunger and cold and no place to stand, or a wilderness jungle full of unknowns and wild beasts? This type of work often throws players into a broken and backward future civilization, bringing players a sense of tension and excitement with a dangerous world.
However, this "Codename: Arrival" is somewhat different in the worldview, it is based on high-tech civilization and alien biological invasion as the theme, bringing players a sci-fi future world invaded and destroyed by xenomorph monsters.
A lost future where science fiction and reality intertwine
The world of Codename: Advent was originally a highly developed civilization until one day, alien creatures from light years away descended on the land and destroyed everything that people had built. So in this game, the weapons and equipment used by players are very technological, and all kinds of high-tech buildings can be seen in the human shelter, but the world is still devastated, and once out of the shelter, players will see the ruins and wreckage and xeno monsters from outer space.
The game has an extremely broad framework of world maps, and divides the map into many different areas according to the different landscapes of the region, including desert areas full of debris and yellow sand, as well as fields where animals and plants grow together. Thanks to the blessing of science fiction elements, players can travel freely in the game's vast open world map, choose to ride a motorcycle throughout the wilderness, or directly through teleportation to hurry, whether it is the free exploration of the map in the early stage, or the convenience of rapid transfer in the later stage.
At the same time, the diverse ecological environment in the game also makes different areas present different climatic conditions, such as sunny and rainy days, day and night cycles are basic operations, in the Gobi Desert, players will even encounter sandstorms and other bad weather, long-term in a harsh environment will also have an extremely serious negative impact on the body. These realistic map structures, combined with sci-fi-inspired architecture, make the world of Codename Advent seem more realistic.
The realistic experience is naturally indispensable to the real simulation of the character's body, in the character survival attributes, the game designed a three-dimensional health state of fullness, water intake, and health, which is simply to eat, drink, injury, and sleep. Of course, these are only superficial basic data, and there are more detailed branches behind these numbers, in addition to the harsh climate dust storms just mentioned, radiation, smog and even body temperature levels will have a negative impact on the health of the characters.
Although the game provides a lot of high-tech protective equipment, most of them can only be protected for a while, and they will be worn out in a dangerous state for a long time. Once there is a problem with one of these values, the survivability and combat effectiveness of the character will be greatly reduced.
The real environment and body structure make players must always be careful when surviving in the wild, and the injuries and diseases caused by these harsh conditions will also bring people a strong sense of immersion, and let players feel the excitement and charm of wild survival.
Universal security cabin
In order to survive in the wilderness, players need to create a high-quality living environment by themselves, which is also a common home and prop making in survival games.
However, the "safe house" in Codename: Arrival is not just a log cabin, the all-metal structure of the room, the automated production line, and the highly technological decorations all give people a glimpse of the high civilization before the disaster. Here we can use the high-tech crafting table to make all kinds of props for ourselves, from clothes, food, medicine, to furniture and garages.
Due to the equipment-driven combat and cultivation attributes in the gameplay, in addition to being able to make functional and decorative items such as furniture and safes, the home is also the main way to produce high-quality equipment. Players can improve the level of the home by exploring, fighting, crafting and other gameplay, and the improvement of the home level can gradually unlock higher level equipment production, thus feeding back the character's combat ability.
At the same time, players can also make various supplies and mining tools for themselves through the method of making them on a daily trip, which can be used when exploring the wild. That is to say, from eating, drinking and wearing to weapons and equipment, almost all the props in the game need to be made by players themselves, and this seemingly tedious operation further increases the realism of survival battles.
When RPGs are fused with survival sandboxes
Unlike most survival games, Codename: Advent incorporates an open-world RPG-like equipment mechanic and quest design. The combat ability of the character in the game is basically linked to the equipment attributes, and the player can enhance the weapons and equipment through the equipment modification system, which can change the attack attributes of the weapons, and the chip can provide additional entry bonuses to the equipment. Players can even make adjustments to weapon accessories and create their own weapons and equipment through various means.
At the same time, due to the strong sci-fi elements in the worldview, the weapons and equipment in the game also appear to be very "futuristic" style. With the blessing of high technology, most of the weapons in the game come with two powerful active skills, adding more possibilities for combat. Among these gun skills, there are combat skills that are biased towards wide-range output and control, auxiliary skills that can open the energy matrix, and even some weapons that can summon small drones to assist the team in combat. That is to say, the player can completely achieve the division of labor of different personnel in the team through the combination of weapons, and the precise division of labor in the three main positions of output, control and auxiliary can also greatly enhance the overall strength of the team.
Thanks to the MMO-like copy design, the PVE gameplay of Codename: Advent is not limited to a single wild exploration, but uses a matching mechanism to bring the entire team of players into the quest. Don't look at equipment development is a key part of the game, but in some difficult quests, the player's cooperation with each other and the understanding of the boss mechanics are more important.
Multiple dimensions such as boss hatred during combat, the timing of the output of opening skills, boss weaknesses, and monster skill dodging all require players to seriously consider. Compared to the simple numerical crushing, this sense of achievement of teammates working together to defeat powerful monsters is the most intoxicating experience in science fiction survival games.
epilogue
Overall, the R&D team of Codename: Advent added more RPG elements to the game on the basis of the survival sandbox, making it present a special gameplay where sci-fi survival and equipment building coexist. The sci-fi elements in the background of the game also make this futuristic world unique in a number of survival games, looking at the symbols of civilization that collapse in the wind and sand, or are entangled in vines, and I can't help but feel the mysterious romantic color in the atmosphere of the game.