I Am Future

Game Title: I Am Future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival
Released: November 13, 2024
Game Length: 20 Hours
Grade: A

 

Setting

Story: You wake up from cryogenic sleep to find yourself on the top of a giant skyscraper without any of your memories. Water has covered the ground and most of the buildings around you. There's quite a number of rafts still floating around but not a living soul in sight. Nearby you find a fridge that begins talking to you the moment power is restored. He tells you that there are individuals who have survived this long on the planet by having their consciousness uploaded into a machine. What appears to be mutated vegetation has engulfed the inside of the building and through the cracks. Toxic plants shoot out worms during the night that seek out food before morphing into some form of weed. Nearby is a tower that controls a little drone that can be sent out to explore the landscape. 

Gameplay: As this is a cozy game, you need not panic. There are safeguards in place to always supply you regenerating food from bushes and wood from trees. The only way you can physically be harmed is if you pick up the worms, pull the weeds, or come in contact with the toxins the weird plants emit. The worms don't actually come after you but instead seek out a source of food. If you do find yourself in need to recover health, you can rest in the lawn chair by where you woke up. A full belly will provide you strength to pick up an additional heavy object. An empty belly will have you talking out loud about eating a whole elephant. While the game does automatically save after each new day, you can manually save your game as long as it is not during the night.

Progress: The goal is to establish a base of operations, upgrade your tools, obtain blueprints of new equipment, and figure out what happened to the world. There will be a number of checkpoints that range from electronic doors, complex objects requiring better tools, repairing broken equipment, or advancing the story. There is no requirement for sleep or the need to be anywhere specific during a particular time of day. Your drone will automatically restore their power cells to explore the city every new day. Everything you see can be used or broken down. Areas you see in the distance with intricate furniture can eventually be reached in the game. A lot of crafting will be necessary to advance your technology through the use of robots, expanding your signal from the tower, and building new things. Your fridge will help get you through discovering some of the initial food items. While simplistic in nature, fishing is a necessary evil for making oil cans. Some exclusive objects can only be bought or found in other areas.

Options: There are only a few accessibility options available such as cursor sensitivity or always showing the minion path (instead of only seeing it when you touch him or access his window). There isn't an option to slow down the time or to stop the enemies from spawning. There is a coziness level where you can change it from normal to cozy where the worms won't eat from your garden or domestic where you don't lose health if your satiety drops to zero. There were even more difficulty options added in the holiday patch. Time will automatically stop every time you interact with an object. 

 Activities

Character: Buckle up as this game throws a ton of things to do. The first thing you are introduced to is a suitcase to change your attire. There are a handful of items for each section of your body. This includes hats, hair, glasses, beard, necklace, shirt, jacket, pants, socks, and shoes. More cosmetics can be obtained from the digital storage units (aka lootboxes). Most of these will be available for U-Coins (digital currency) from the vendors your drone can visit. Others can be exchanged for various goods at the vendors scattered on the roofs. 

Fishing: As long as you have your fishing pole, you can sit down at the couple fishing spots available in the game and pull up random objects. At minimum, you will obtain plastics or clams. Worms (the harmless kind) from your garden or clams can be used as bait to pull fish up from the depths. There are three tiers of fishing poles that allows you to catch more exotic fish like squid or crab. The mini-game starts near instantaneous the moment your bobber touches the water. Once you are done, access the cutting board window from the crafting workbench and strip the fish down to its essential parts.

Friendship: There will be an opportunity to meet with four separate machines in the game. They each have their own personality and perks. The fridge will teach you new recipes, another will inform you of what happened to the world, the third is an oddball who entertains you, and the fourth has a tendency to get angry. An event will trigger where you will need to build a bridge and throw a party for them on stage at the nearby hotel roof. If you are wondering how you move them, there is a tab in the main interface that offers you to situate them anywhere with the help of your drone. Afterwards, the relationship mini-game will begin. These have a number of tiers where you first can play a game with your friend and provide them gifts from the outside vendor. The next tiers will make the game slightly more challenging and extend daily tasks. Each of these activities build your relationship status. 

Artifacts: Occasionally you will discover something peculiar from the past within the world. This can range from a collectable card to a basketball. You can examine these as three-dimensional rotating objects inside the sub-menu. Although they don't initially add much to the game, there will be secret codes that can be added to a pad by the sports facilities for additional dialogue.

Tower

Signal: Upgrading your tech isn't the only thing you can do at the tower. You'll occasionally be alerted to a new message. These can come from random outsiders, sponsors, or vendors advertising their goods. Occasionally, you will be able to receive precious digital currency. There are few where you can choose your answer and respond. One will play a scenario with you and another will test your knowledge. If you answer wrong, they will offer you another chance. The only penalty is the time it takes to receive another message. 

Drone: A little flying robot is the only thing that provides you a bird's eye view of the city. This is only an overview of the map with designated spots you can expend your drone's battery to visit. Once you visit the vendors, they become permanently free to visit. Feel free to use all your energy as returning home doesn't cost anything either. Once you retrieve resources from a location, they too will be free for the day (in case you accidentally visit them again). Some sectors will only become available once you build a better tower while others require digital currency to unlock. Each location is specifically marked: a star for a special location (normally available only once), shopping cart for a vendor, a recycle icon for resources, or an orange pin for special events. Locations are only available during certain days of the week. Two of the beginning vendors you discover will require digital currency, one will require coupons from achievements, and another sells gifts for your friends. How much energy you spend is not dependent on the distance to reach your destination but how complex the location is to gather rare material. 

Achievements: In one of the tabs, you'll have a chance to see a number of counters that reward you purple coupons. These can be spent using your drone at the special vendor for a number of unique blueprints such as a table that both stores and displays items. More blueprints can be earned by exchanging paper and black goo (from the worms) at your workbench. These have more useful features such as the fences that can momentarily block worms or the electric poles that redirect power. 

Crafting

Gardening: Gathering ingredients will appear very complicated at first with the number of sub-systems available. Food can be obtained from crops that regrow on their own in specific spots across the top of the buildings. Other than the bushes, you cannot move them. They will randomly provide you between the resource and the seeds. You will need to plant them using a garden bed. Soil is a limited commodity that limits the number of garden plots you can build at a time. You'll need to find a way to provide them with clean water (none of that sea water) for them to grow. They do not wither or regress. Mushrooms and nocturnal plants can only grow during a cloudy day or the night phase. Sprinklers can help water multiple beds all at the same time, but they will need to be hooked up to electricity and manually loaded up with water until you can get the advanced technology for your robots. Once your crops are fully grown, they provide both the product and more seeds to continue the process.  

Cooking: Now it is time for the meat of the game, literally. There is a window where you enter chef mode to learn how to make certain recipes. You can add or remove any ingredient in a slot and see if the pot reveals something new. This process does not consume the ingredients. Once you learn the recipe, the option to cook the meal becomes available. While your fridge friend will get you started, many of the recipes will need some trial-and-error. For example, you need to use blueberry jam with almond milk instead of just blueberries. You can figure out what meals are possible from the oddly-preserved meals you find in items you tear down, the electronic stores that require a number of meals, or the vendor from another district that will tell you what ingredients go into the products he sells. The lowly campfire can be upgraded all the way up to an extended grill. The only meal that can be crafted without heat is a salad. Otherwise, you will need to place a plank down onto the object to get a fire going. You can remove a piece of coal in exchange for 20 points of the fire. That can then be used to clean water bottles or create drinkable water that can be used for cooking. Using the recipe window to create meals does not lower the time you have to cook. Food can also be used to craft paint for your structures.

Environment

Construction: You'll want to avoid doing any sort of massive reconstruction until you can clear everything on the roof you woke up on. Supplies are rather low until you can build a bridge to the other tower, lower yourself down suspended scaffolding, or learn how to add floor tiles to cross the cracks. Crafting an item is as easy as selecting the blueprint in your menu and generating a hologram on the ground. You, or a robot minion, will then load up the right material until construction completes. A blue overlay will also appear when you want to repair electricity poles or build water pumps. At any time, you may choose to "demolish structure" for a full refund of resources. At the bottom of the workbench is an option to "split resources" to break down items to their bare ingredients.

Engineering: How quickly you progress in this game and how much work you have to manually perform all depends on your engineering skills. Almost every type of building that doesn't require your presence will need some form of power source. Biogenerators that require plant material will be at the heart of your operation. Wire and electrical poles will help extend that power to your machines. You'll definitely want plugged into your crypto-currency farms and upgrading your goods. There are a lot of alternative structures with various utilities such as a solar energy panel that generates electricity when it is sunny, an accumulator that acts as a "nanny" collecting spare electricity, a synthesizer that breaks down basic or the more unusual materials, and a UV tower that damages weeds and worms.

Robots: Of course, the more important aspect of manual labor boils down on whether you have the goods to build yourself an army of robot minions. While simplistic at first, they can be gradually upgraded and changed to do more than gathering up resources and putting them in storage. They can help build, repair structures, water plants, refill sprinklers, and add resources to your biogenerators. A charging station will be required to get these little guys going again after a long day. Much can be accessed within the minions sub-menu. You can change their name, color, give them a hat, and... a mustache. This helps you identify them visually for their appropriate job. You can change their operations, see what they are currently working on, or check on their battery status. Of course, these guys do get confused a lot when it comes to the more advanced features. They will wander across rooftops in search for items to pick-up if they don't find any nearby the beacon. 

Appliances: There are five unique objects that will take some additional time to disassemble. The screen will show an object like a microwave or a kettle that needs to be taken apart piece-by-piece. Unlike anything else in the game, you will be able to pull away specific elements off a 3D object like screws and boards. Although not all the items have be done in order, certain things can't be detached until their connecting piece have been removed first. Each object will provide you with the appropriate resources and the occasional loose piece like paint or food can be found stuck on the item.

Systems

Weather: Surprisingly, weather plays an important part of the game. Sunny days will charge any stations that are solar-powered. Cloudy days will trick the nocturnal plants to grow instead of the regular plants. Rainy days will water your crops and fill containers with water. There will come an opportunity to see what the weather forecast will be for the next three days from the tower and pay a small product fee to change it. Rain will bring along some treasures when it floods in the lower section. Wait for the tide to lower to collect. 

Water: In the very early days, the only way to obtain water is to dig it out of the sea with a bucket or empty water bottle. Eventually, a time will come when you can repair the water pumps. Until you can upgrade and power them with electricity, they will need to be manually pumped. You can even teach your robots how to use them to water your garden. However, the water from down below will be marked as salt water until properly cleaned at the cooking station. You can use either the water bottles or the bucket to pour clean water onto your crops or into a sprinkler. Late in the game, you will learn how to build a fountain that pours out clean water.

Worms: As mentioned above, the only enemies are these creepy crawlers that come out at night. All they care about is eating food and turning into a weed. You can ignore them for the most part and deal with their transformation as you deem fit. If you ignore the weeds too long, they do have the potential to evolve into small plants that emit toxic gas whenever you get close to them. However, you can construct temporary torches or other nefarious objects that lure the worms away from your crops. If you build barricades, up to three worms will each pick one to ram and self-destruct. The moment one loses structure, the repair gun recipes will be made available to restore them to full capacity. With the right chip upgrade, robots can use these repair guns in your place. Sprays can be used against the worms and take less time to take them down as plants.

Storage: You can store stuff in a lot of things. You can tuck some things into your fridge friend, your crafting table, or where you cook meals. Storage units can be crafted and places nearly anywhere. You can upgrade link storage at the beacon to access all storage chests from any you might build. While you can access any chest, you can only upgrade the current one you are accessing. The way inventory is handled between storage is a tad different depending on whether you are playing with a keyboard or controller. You can sort your inventory, add any items that are currently present in a chest, or split items. Since there isn't an option to deposit all items, you will need to cycle through each one of your chests. There is an option to change their name. Larger items such as metal, plank, or plexiglass cannot be stored inside a chest. Instead, you can pick a number of one type off the ground (depending on your tool upgrade and how hungry you are) and place them on storage racks. Each one can hold up to 10. Press the button to load or hold the button to unload. Your inventory can be upgraded each time you find a specific kind of chip during your playthrough.

Traveling: Early in the game, you will receive a Nano Transporter. Do not underestimate this device. You can pick up almost anything from trees, bushes, structures, and even racks full of resources. While the device allows you to physically "move" the object, you can also "store" it until you are in the appropriate area. Be careful as there isn't a "cancel" option once you pick up an object. Putting something back is as easy as selecting the spot it used to be at. Very late in the game, you will be able to build teleporters. This makes going anywhere a breeze. You can place one down on the lower decks and not have to wait for a brief intermission going down the scaffolding. You can teleport even while carrying heavy material. Pick up the teleporter with the Nano Transporter and take it anywhere. Setup a far-away base to hold all your supplies or carry the material directly to the big structure you are trying to build. In the main menu, there is an added bonus of teleporting back to lawn chair. The home reset timer is based on real time and continues even if the game time is paused, but the game window must be focused for it to continue.

Summary

Review: There are a number of reasons why players may not want to play this game. Enemies do not come after you during the night. There is never a possibility of running out of resources. There isn't any multiplayer or running into another actual human. The game doesn't randomly generate the map to provide you an endless supply of areas to explore. However for $20, there is nothing better than tearing down everything you see and learning about the predicament you are left with. The game doesn't stress you if you fail to build a barricade or forget to eat something for a day. The music and setting are both quite relaxing. The characters you encounter are a lovely addition to make you feel more at home. While there is a limit on what structures you can build and what might appear to be an abrupt ending if you push yourself ahead too fast, the game was a joy to play with a number of mechanics and systems to entertain you. For those who might want to feel like a dad, I would definitely recommend getting this game.