Fans of Team 17's prison escape series The Escapists have something to get excited about: the studio has announced The Survivalists, a spin-off that has players trying to survive on a desert island by crafting items and building structures.

The game displays some elements of its predecessor, with the crafting and combat looking similar, but the emphasis on survival in a sandbox world puts a completely different twist on the familiar gameplay.

From the trailer, it seems that the game puts an emphasis on constructing your own home base, complete with walls, crafting stations, chests, and other survival needs. There also appears to be a tribe of hostile creatures that players will come into contact with, forcing players to occasionally battle with their masked foes.

via:YouTube

The game has cooperative play, and the trailer shows four player characters working together to chop down trees and craft items as they work to survive the world they've been cast into. However, if you prefer a single-player experience, or have a hard time getting friends to play anything with you, the game does offer another option that'll make up for the lost manpower.

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Provided that players have enough bananas, they'll be able to train monkeys to do all their manual labor for them.

via:YouTube

The game's style clearly marks it as part of The Escapists' franchise, though it's hard not to see some similarities with another popular co-op survival game, Don't Starve Together. While it doesn't share the same horror-inspired design, the top-down survival gameplay with an emphasis on building a place to settle down and survive the dangers you face in an unfamiliar world at very least makes the games close cousins.

It remains to be seen whether this new direction will be able to draw in fans of The Escapists, and it's unclear whether the already-crowded survival genre really needs another entry. However, the success of Team 17's previous games in the franchise means that The Survivalists is worth keeping an eye on.

Source: Twinfinite

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