Chris InglisHomeseek is a post-apocalyptic survival strategy game developed by Traptics and published by The Iterative Collective. It’s set for release on July 20, 2023, on Steam and I have been fortunate to jump in for an early look at the campaign. Homeseek has city building in a desolate wasteland like Endzone – A World Apart, crossed with the brutal difficulty and decision making of Frostpunk and the more recent Ixion. I had to fail a number of times to learn how to play better but it’s an engaging and enjoyable experience.
Overpopulation, environmental exploitation, and a complete disregard for nature has resulted in the depletion of drinkable water, leading to the collapse of civilisation as we know it. We must lead a small group of survivors to rebuild the settlement that is basically dirt, scrap piles, some berry bushes for food and some limited contaminated water wells. In a dried-up wasteland where water has become the new gold, every choice becomes life or death.
Homeseek features two campaigns that span over nine scenarios which can be played in story, endless or survival modes. There is also an online multiplayer mode where players can try raid each other and restrict resources from each other in a last man standing kind of deal, however this review only focuses on the campaign story mode. Playing through part one of the story mode features chapters 1-5, and completion of those unlocks part 2 for chapters 6-9. These chapters task you with completing certain tasks to progress and complete the scenario which also unlocks the other modes. Endless mode allows you to play the game beyond the scenario win conditions, while survival mode sees you trying your best to keep everyone alive and thriving for as long as possible.
Gameplay is viewed from an isometric perspective, and we can zoom in a little into the action, but I much preferred the overhead view. I would have liked to be able to zoom out just a little bit more, particularly as the settlement grew and connections between buildings were critical. There is also an index icon in the top left of the UI that is like an addition information guide that keeps track of tutorial prompts and other information about the interface which I referred to often. Once we start chapter 1, we have an initial 15 workers who must be put to work, fed, watered and sheltered. Everyone can work any job and while we can select individual workers to see their names and some basic stats, we can’t control what they do.
Placing houses down will give them a place to sleep at night, and then we get stuck into the well detailed tutorial to learn the basics. Scrap piles can be harvested without any special building to do so, and the same with harvesting berry bushes but we need to build food and water storage buildings, and provide workers in them. The last piece of the initial survival puzzle is placing a water extractor on top of water wells, but the water is contaminated. It’s potable to drink, but our people will get sick from it so a medical centre is required.
Sickness and death are a given in this wasteland, and I learned over time that you’re going to have people die on you, and that’s ok – it’s less mouths to feed. It sounds harsh, but death is going to happen often in this environment. You can mouseover the resource icons at the top of the screen to see how much of each resource you are generating and how much is being consumed by your people. You can also see the happiness level of your people and later you can vote and pass on laws within the settlement. This all becomes a delicate balancing act the more people you let into the settlement.
There is a day night cycle, however at nighttime, everything completely stops from production to research. For those 12 hours at night, no resources are collected but also no work or research gets done. This meant that every nighttime I would just hit 3x speed and power through to morning which was odd. I initially felt this was pointless as nothing can be done so why not just have the game skip time automatically? However eventually I noticed the only thing I could use the time for was moving expeditions around.
Eventually water wells and berry bushes dry up and the only way to make new food and water is to use advanced technology that you find in the world using expeditions. Expeditions are groups of workers who must travel to distant locations and scavenge whatever they can find. Random encounters occur regularly, and this is where some of the great story writing comes into play. In addition, this is also where some difficult decisions need to be made that may affect the lives of your expedition team but more importantly the living conditions back at base.
Do you risk the safety of your team to try salvage an unknown area? At one point the expedition came across a settlement and the settlers refused them entry. You are given a choice as to leave or to persist with them, and that netted me 500 food and 500 water, but also 8 other survivors that would return with the expedition team. That meant that during their 9+ hour journey back to base, I had to try build another house and to harvest more food and water. It was then, at around day 6 or 7, that food and water resources dried up.
While expeditions will discover the new technology you need to advance your settlement, you still need to spend time and resources researching and then building it. For example, a farm will generate food, but we must have enough scrap and available workers to build it. Researching upgrades and new technology became quite engaging as you work out what to prioritise and what can help stretch your limited resources further.
I was constantly assessing risk versus reward in everything I thought to do. You will have prompts within the settlement from your workers, whether they are quarreling over living conditions or whether you choose to bring in survivors knocking at your gates. I went a day or two with no food or water, multiple workers getting sent to the medical centre, workers dying, and production slowing to a halt. At that point I abandoned that game and started a new one, but I was much more aware of what I needed to do, and the order to do it in this next time around.
Overall, Homeseek is a challenging settlement survival game that requires patience and willingness to learn from mistakes. It’s very engaging and can be brutal, requiring you to think strategically about balancing expeditions for new technology with what resources you are able to maintain and grow. If you found enjoyment out of games like Frostpunk and Ixion, you are going to enjoy Homeseek.
This review utilised a key provided by the publisher and Homeseek will launch on Steam on July 20, 2023.
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