UnReal World is a combination of survival simulator and low-fantasy rogue-like. The game is set in Iron Age Finland – roughly 1000 A.D. – when Finnish people were pagan tribes living on hunting, fishing, farming and trading furs. It has strong emphasis on survival; to keep your character fed and warm is a challenge in itself, especially when the winter hits with freezing temperatures. If you like, you can choose a tutorial-like game-course, which offers you small tasks one after one. These are good for learning the basics of the game, but otherwise the game is essentially open-ended; there is no final objective, no ready-made storyline to follow. Just wander the forests and make your living, settle down and build a farm of your own, be a peaceful fisher hermit, or equip a band of companions and go raiding and looting.
The game begins with character creation. The player can choose a tribe for his character. This affects the overall attributes and skills. There are skill points to be used to improve chosen skills. And, for a each new character the game generates a huge random map with rivers, lakes, mountains, mires, forests and farmhouses with fields and pastures. The final stage of character creation offers a variety of starting scenarios to choose from. For example, you can start the game in an easy situation where you have just left your home at the age of 16, and go wandering to the unknown places. Or, you can start as poor enslaved youngster, who just tries to flee his captors.
The game itself is turn based with tile graphics. You can travel around in a map mode where the scale is 100m/tile. You zoom in to scale of 2m/tile, when you encounter a creature, enter a settled area, or just want to explore the surroundings in more detail. In zoomed-in mode you can pick berries and mushroom, go fishing, chop down trees and split firewood, build a shelter or a cabin, hunt animals and cut the meat and tan the hide, cook food etc. Almost all of the activities are affected by character skills. They range from timbercraft and survival to swimming and climbing and on to weapon skills.
The combat system is simulated in detail. Each wound is separately tracked; you can have a major puncture in your left arm, a bruise in your right elbow, and a shallow tear in your abdomen etc. Penalty from wounds, fatigue and carried load affects your performance. And the same goes for animals and NPC’s. So aiming for legs can be a deadly tactics, making the opponent to fall down in which case it is easier to land a lethal blow. Creatures leave tracks when they move around, so it is possible to track down a fleeing animal. A creature with bleeding wounds leaves a blood-scape, which is easier to follow. And if the bleeding is serious, it is enough to just follow the prey until it collapses from blood loss. Humans can try to treat wounds with water and bandages and various herbs. Also you can seek help from sages and wise men. But recovery always takes time; a seriously wounded character can’t even walk and is forced to crawl for safety. That is when a stock-pile of dried and smoked meat comes handy. Fighting is always a serious matter, as upon death the character data is deleted, so it effectively is a perma-death.
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