Die Young Review

Die Young Review PC Game – Survival Parkour Action Adventure in Test

Welcome to the Die Young Review. The PC Game was released in September. In Die Young we play a young woman who has been kidnapped and abandoned on a desert island. A rough world that threatens our lives and we have to find out why we were kidnapped and how we can escape. The test video shows Die Young Gameplay in German and English.

English Version:

This article exists here as text and as YouTube video (Germany VoiceOver, with subtitles in many languages). So you can choose how you want to enjoy it.

Die Young Test Video:

(Germany VoiceOver, with subtitles in many languages)

Die Young Review – Intro

Moin Moin, here’s the Zap. In this episode, I want to introduce you to the game Die Young, show you what it’s all about, how it plays, and if it’s fun. And I want to give you the information you need to decide if the game is something for you or not.

Game type – What kind of game is Die Young?

Die Young is an open-world first-person action-adventure game with a strong focus on exploring, parkour, sneaking, a little survival, and the goal of unveiling a complex conspiracy story.

We play a JetSet Girl, with a special affinity for adrenaline sports like Free Climbing. The young lady is kidnapped and left half dead on a deserted island. A rough world awaits her, with wild animals, crazy islanders, and a strange cult whose aims and secrets may have something to do with our bad situation.

The game is currently available on Steam for 16,79 €. There is also a Prologue which you can download for free. With it, you can get a rough idea of the mechanics of the game as a kind of free demo.

The game is developed and published by Indiegala. IndieGala is now more known as a Keyseller website for small Indie games and games bundles. However, the company wants to go more and more in the direction of developing and publishing their own games.

The publisher has kindly provided me with a free test sample, but of course, this has no influence on my rating. My viewers and readers deserve top priority and a fair review.

Below you will find an affiliate link where you can buy the game directly from the publisher at a much cheaper price, and on top of that, you get the game “Downward” for free. If you buy the game through this link, I would get a small contribution and you save money. But let’s have a look at the game first.

Die Young – Early Access and Release

Die Young has already been available in Early Access for 2 years and has been gradually improved in various Alpha versions so far.

On September 12th, 2019 it finally went into release-status and the finished game, as well as the complete story, was released. Even after the launch, the developers have already published another first patch, so they are still working on it.

Gametype – Survival?

Die Young is not a conventional survival game. So you don’t need to expect Ark, Green Hell, or Conan Exiles like playstyle here. You can craft equipment, food, bandages, and the like, but you won’t be able to build a base or improve your character with skills.

It’s more about experiencing the story, solving the puzzles, and simply surviving and escaping. You don’t get many advantages from defeating enemies except that they won’t stand in your path for a while and keep you from progressing. That’s why sneaking or skillful maneuvering around and then climbing a mountain is usually the wiser choice. But more about that later.

Engine, Technology, Graphics, Sound

Die Young uses Unreal Engine 4, and you can see that as soon as the game starts. The graphics are consistently at a very high level. By using this very advanced engine, you do not have to expect many teething troubles.

The game offers a good distance vision and a very high level of detail. The island landscapes are very affectionately arranged and offer really something for the eye. The areas are also very complex and three-dimensional and inviting to explore and discover. Through the use of mountains, caves, and very winding buildings, the actual playing area is often used in more than one way.

The sound and the voice setting of Die Young are very decent for an indie game. There are several high-quality music pieces and also the noises in the world and those that our ladies make are all on a good level. There is nothing to complain about in this area.

Most of the elements from which the world was built are not only pure decoration, but many things are also usable. This starts with herbs for picking, goes over high meadows and fields where you can hide, and ends with buildings and mountains that you can climb by free climbing and parkour.

Die Young InGame Gameplay Screenshots

Click or tap on the image for a larger view.
In the enlarged view, you can scroll right and left on the edges

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I find the extensive options offered by the game very praiseworthy. In addition to numerous settings for graphics, the field of view, controls, and sound, Die Young also has 2 different game modes in which Survival and Story are weighted differently. And on top of that, there is a very extensive menu where you can adjust the level of difficulty in many details.

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Die Young – General Gameplay

Die Young is, as already said, not a classic survival game. It’s more about exploring and surviving in an extremely hostile world with very limited resources.

One of the things that is helping us here is a good sneak mechanism where we can hide in higher grass or fields like in Assassins Creed games. This allows us to avoid enemies, or at least attack them from behind. Whereby the Assassins Creed typical knockout attack is missing here, the game doesn’t make our survival that easy.

Otherwise, a very large alignment of the game is set to its Parkour and FreeClimbing mechanics. This is a big unique characteristic of this game.

Our young lady has a perceptual ability that can be used by pressing the Alt key when standing still. All creatures in the surrounding area are illuminated. On every building and almost every rock face, you can find markers that show the places that make climbing possible. And so a large part of the game consists of jumping and climbing and careful exploring. In this regard, Die Young reminded me very much of the early Tombraider parts.

The save option is on campfires, which you can either find or can crack yourself out of wood, if available. So you can’t store and load completely free, but as long as you find enough wood, you always have the possibility.

Game Scope and Story

There are quests and many notes, books and other clues to be found, which gradually unfold a story that explains why we were kidnapped, what happened to our travel group, what is going on on the island, and how we can escape or maybe not.

The main story has 3 different endings so that it might be worth playing through several times. In addition, there are also some side quests and smaller stories to discover on the side. And the game also offers some smaller stories, which are only told by the things you see. Environmental Storytelling, as you know it e.g. in Fallout, not as extensive, but still present.

In total, one can roughly calculate 15 to 20 hours per run of the main story. Of course, you can stretch this out by extensive explorations and side stories.

The Fighting and Combat in Die Young

In Die Young we play a young girl who is exposed almost naked in a hostile world. Therefore, especially at the beginning of the game fighting is usually not a good idea.

Of course, you can fight, there are some weapons to find and also some crafts. This starts with a simple stick, continues with wrenches and batons up to crossbows. And there are probably other weapons that I haven’t found yet.

In many situations, the fighting is from difficult to very dangerous and therefore a risk you might prefer to avoid or run away from. For example, as a petite woman with a stick in her hand, attacking a 2 meter and 150-kilo colossus with a scythe in her hand is not necessarily the best idea and can end with amputations.

Running away, fleeing, hiding, or quickly climbing a mountain or a building are important ways to survive. If you manage to stay out of the pursuer’s line of sight for some time, their interest will diminish and the pursuit will be stopped.

The technical implementation and the handling of the fighting are still a little spongy for my taste, which makes the fighting option even less attractive.

Crafting and Survival

As already mentioned at the beginning, this is not a classic survival game. We have limited endurance, thirst, and hunger, so we have to get food and drink. There are injuries, poisonings, and similar disadvantages that we have to treat accordingly.

But there are many plants and resources to be found while exploring, so this part is relatively easy to get to grips with, at least on a medium difficulty level. Sleeping is not an issue in Die Young, to regenerate endurance you only need to stop and stand for a moment.

There is no character development, so we don’t level, you don’t get experience, there are no skills to improve.

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We can make tools, clothing, and weapons from simple materials. But beyond that, there is no other great use for the survival mechanics. Building houses, setting up workshops, or such things as are found in almost every Survival game, Die Young doesn’t have them.

Ressourcen sammeln und verwalten spielt nur eine kleine Rolle im Spiel, und mit Axt und Picke losgehen um Holz oder Erze zu ernten gibt es nicht im Spiel. Aber das sehe ich als positive Eigenschaft, denn es wäre hier eher nur unnötiges Beiwerk.

The inventory is very limited, so you have to think about what to take with you and what to leave behind. Later you can find backpacks to expand your inventory, but these are very rare.

The items we make all have a limited shelf life, but cannot be repaired. So we have to re-craft them from time to time. Clothing can contain certain bonus values, such as running faster with certain shoes.

Survival doesn’t mean building bases and civilization, but pure survival.

Condition of the game

After a long early access phase, Die Young has now become quite a polished game experience. Crashes or other serious bugs didn’t happen to me anymore. There are still smaller construction sites, now and then reload lags, and sometimes textures or objects pop up noticeably too late. There’s rarely an item that only works after activating it 2-3 times, but that’s not really serious.

The combat system is sometimes a bit imprecise, sometimes you avoid or block and still get damage. There are also fights where you can’t get very far with normal weapons because some enemies are supposed to be killed with the means available in the environment. This is sometimes unusual and sometimes annoying.

(Does not apply for English-speaking players) A major point of criticism is the translation into German, which is currently still rather poor. The rather rare voice output is completely in English. The menus and items are currently in German and English, and also the ingame texts are only partially translated. This becomes particularly confusing when the language changes several times in a single text.

Die Young Review – Opinion and Conclusion

Die Young was announced to me as a survival game and surprised me with its very own way of playing. The strong focus on Parkour, Freeclimbing, and above all exploring and discovering little secrets and secret places is much more than a normal survival game. And these areas are also the big strengths of this game.

Anyone who likes to discover an unknown, dangerous world and look to the last corner and explore its secrets will most likely find a lot of entertainment in Die Young. Pure survival fans will be surprised by this game with its differences and may be deterred. But I really liked the mix.

Even if I personally would have wished for better fighting mechanics. But this would have shifted the focus of the game away from sneaking and skillful dodging to beating and shooting, probably that’s not what the game should be about.

The world is pretty and interesting, the story thrilling. It awakens in me the desire to continue my research and to uncover the secrets of the cult on the island.

Buy Die Young:

https://www.indiegala.com/store/game/die-young/433170?ref=zapzockt

Note:
Directly at the publisher’s page, you can get the Steam key for the game not only much cheaper than at Steam itself, but you also get another game named “Downward” for free. The link is an affiliate link, with each purchase I get a small commission.

Die Young Review – Rating

Considering the low to medium price level in which Die Young is offered, and considering that this game was built by a small indie team, I think it’s a good game. It has its corners and edges and you have to be prepared for this kind of game. But if it fits, I think it’s worth the money.

All in all, I want to give Die Young an 80% rating. It does most things well but not outstanding, but especially the Parkour part of the game is a rare feature and if you like and look for something like that, this rating could even go up 5%.

Due to technical details I deduct 3% and for the poor German translation I deduct another 5%, the latter should be ignored if you prefer to play games in English anyway.

This results in a final score of 80-3-5%, which results in a 72% score. Depending on your interest in Parkour or your language preferences, this can be a bit better.

Outro

How do you like the island world of Die Young ? Would you like to start climbing and explore the island world right away, or does that leave you cold? I would be very happy about your opinion in the comments. Even if you want to get feedback on the test, write me, I read and answer you gladly.

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Then I wish you a great day, let it be well with you, ciao ciao, your Zap

Links and Sources:

Publisher Page: https://www.indiegala.com/store/game/die-young/433170?ref=zapzockt
Note:
Directly at the publisher’s page, you can get the Steam key for the game not only much cheaper than at Steam itself, but you also get another game named “Downward” for free. The link is an affiliate link, with each purchase I get a small commission.
Steam-Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/433170/Die_Young/
Dev-Twitter: https://twitter.com/DieYoungame