I would very much like to visit Floatlands
Escape to the (robot-infested) country
I'm not an outdoorsy person but recently I've been craving a camping holiday. Night skies above, trees all around - a complete escape from the cities where I've spent most of my life. Perhaps that's why Floatlands [official site] caught my attention when I was searching for interesting in-development games earlier today. It's a survival game, with all the crafting and collecting that implies, but the environments are gorgeous. And just look at those deer!
If you watched that, you probably noticed the robot. Cute little fella, but it's holding a gun, isn't it? Floatlands is not a peaceful game. Not necessarily.
Though it all looks very tranquil, the developers say that "you will play a robot...going up against other robots". I'm just here for the camping but if the other robots are going to give me grief, I suppose I can probably rustle up some resistance. Different playstyles are possible though, so if you want to be a pacifist explorer, that should be fine. If you're the sort of person who likes a big blank canvas and will happily collect and build without any guidance, that should be fine too, but if you're like and prefer goals and guidance, fear not:
"There will be random events/quests (defending, collecting, exploring) across the world for you to complete. Points of interest (shacks, towers, power stations) will encourage you to explore and gather rewards while you're at it."
The devblogs go back more than a year and it looks like the first draft of the world-building phase is complete. Next up: NPCs. You might be playing a robot but there are human characters scattered around the world and some of them will trade with you. They're randomly generated but, pleasingly, the one in the video below has very good facial hair.
I love the art style and the game looks far more complex than I expected. The next stage of development will see the introduction of enemies, so "the next few videos should be more action-packed", says the most recent dev post. You can subscribe to get access to a closed alpha, which is due next month. An Early Access release is planned for Q2 2018.