When you think about surviving an apocalypse, you probably don’t lump the experience in with the gaming word “cozy.” But that’s the hook of I Am Future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival. It’s right there in the title.
I Am Future kick things off with your guy or gal (the character can be customized as the game unfolds) waking up in an abandoned cryopod. It seems you’ve been in suspended animation for more than six years, and you wake with little to no memory.
You’re not, however, in the “new Eden,” that the mechanized sleeping pod suggests. You’re actually located on the junk-strewn rooftop of a high-rise building in a city that’s flooded, deserted and overgrown with heavy greenery.
It’s only by sifting through junk, salvaging usable bits and finding small messages and newspapers, that you’re able to begin piecing together what happened while you were sleeping—and what might keep you alive on this new version of Earth.
For all intents and purposes, it appears that you’re the last person still living on the planet. Fortunately, this version of doomsday … doesn’t look all that bad.
Gameplay-wise, the point here is to explore, gather items, craft necessities and rebuild your world. And unlike most survival games that throw gigantic monsters and deadly environmental corruption in your path, I Am Future lets you take it easy as you go along.
In fact, any small bits of violence (i.e., electronics-sapping leaches and poisonous plants), food requirements or health loss can be turned off in the game menu until you’re ready to add those challenges to your play.
As far as the heavy lifting and construction is concerned, your avatar can snap on different augmented cybernetic hands that help him or her saw, drill, hack and hammer their way toward different goals.
Of course, there are also campfires and gardens to build, electronics to deconstruct and salvage, workbench recipes to find, a bridge to fashion, elevators to repair, robotic minions to construct and scores of other things for gamers to do.
Oh, and on the robotic side of things, you also discover that, while there are apparently no people around, there are friendships to be had. With a bit of searching you learn about a report on “digital immortality.” In its final days, humanity figured out how to digitalize consciousness and transfer some people’s memories into intelligent appliances. So you can form relationships with these quirky, sentient constructs.
This is a single-player, survival/build experience with a humorous lilt. The game does not require an online connection.
I Am Future is a “survival” game that puts its emphasis on discovering, building and renewing a lovely world—and it’s devoid of the typical survival-game threats. In fact, the E10+ game offers players the option to strip out what few dangers there are in this world. Because of that, younger players can experience some of the challenges of a survival game without getting exposed to the genre’s typical content pitfalls.
As mentioned, there are also relationships that the main character can establish with sentient machines and appliances. There are no romantic dialogue choices in the interactions. But giving gifts, completing tasks and playing word games with an intelligent machine can raise its friend level: “Pal,” “Close Friend” and “Best Friend.”
There is some mild language in the sparse dialogue, including a few uses of “h—” and “d–n.”
As the game story is revealed, there are some indications that a mysterious alien virus caused the disastrous death of the Earth’s population. Warnings of the catastrophe were ignored.
There are some small dark secrets you can dig up in this low-key survival game. But for the most part, I Am Future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival is all about digging, building and surviving in a relaxed, threat-free world.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
