Rend Breathes New Life Into the Survival Genre
Although I’ve never been a massive fan of survival style games like Ark or Rust, Frostkeep Studios intrigued me with their upcoming title, Rend. This team, comprised of three main developers who met while working on vanilla World of Warcraft, has put together a game that might have turned me on to the genre. They’ve rectified my worries and built an experience that looks to be as satisfying as it is beautifully complex.
Where most survival games have players starting on their own, Rend starts you off with a community from the get-go. There are three factions of twenty players in each world, which means you automatically have up to nineteen partners right off the bat. A wise man once said, “Teamwork makes the dream work,” and this aspect of the game is a welcome one.
The setting is inspired by Norse mythology. Ragnarok has taken place and Midgard and Valhalla have shattered. At the center of this world is Yggdrasil, the World Tree, which acts as the Hunger Games-like scoreboard for all three factions. Unlike most survival games, this one has a “win” condition. For a faction to emerge victorious, they must collect a certain number of spirits from fallen enemies. The teams store their spirits in a bank that the developers likened to the place where the Ghostbusters kept their captured spirits.
This is also where the building mechanic comes into play, since your faction must defend your spirit “bank” from enemy invaders. Like in most survival games, you’ll build up your base with the rest of your team while also looking for opportunities to take over other teams.
One issue I’ve always had with this style of game is the constant need to be ready to hop on to defend at any moment. Rend brilliantly alleviates this issue by only providing a small window for your enemies to attack you. The other twenty-two hours of the day, a forcefield around your base keeps the enemies at bay.
The complexity of this game is staggering. There are so many moving parts in terms of building mechanics, equipment, mounts, and even weapons (all ranged, by the way). I found myself intrigued by the different strategies at play. For instance, I watched as one of the developers tore into a previously-built base. As he destroyed a wall, he had to decide the correct amount of destruction to inflict. In his mind, he was taking over the base, so he didn’t want to destroy his future base too much. Instead, he wanted to do just enough damage to take out the faction stationed there and make it his own.
I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw with Rend. You can see and hear the passion coming through this team both in the game and in their presentation. I appreciate the degree to which Frostkeep has kept this genre pushing forward instead of allowing is to become stagnant.
You can see the gameplay trailer below. Also, if you’d like to hear me discuss the game in further detail, be sure to listen to our podcast episode called “E3 2018 | Day One Recap” around the 1:19:20 mark.
