Volcanoids Review – Test

Volcanoids Review – The Steampunk Survival Game in Early Access Test

In this Volcanoids review, I’ll tell you about the interesting steampunk survival game Volcanoids. In Volcanoids we land on an island that is regularly hit by volcanic eruptions. Actually, this threatens all life on the island, but we have a special steam-powered digger mobile that allows us to hide underground during an eruption and then rise back to the surface. I tried Volcanoids in Early Access, and show you a bit of the game & tell you my opinion about it.

This article can be read as a text or watched as a YouTube video (German Voice-over, with subtitles in many different languages). Just the way you like it, the right thing for everyone.

Volcanoids Review Video:

(German VoiceOver, with subtitles in many different languages)

Volcanoids Early Access Test – Intro

Hi there, here’s the Zap. In this article, I would like to introduce you to the Steampunk Survival game Volcanoids. This game is currently in Early Access and can be bought on Steam for about 17 euros. I will show you what the game is all about and if it’s fun already, if it’s something for you or if you should wait.

The game was kindly provided to me by the developer for free, who also calls himself Volcanoids. This is a small indie team that stands behind the game, but it has already a lot to offer.

Volcanoids Review English – the Steampunk Survival Game

Volcanoids describes itself as a survival game in a steampunk universe. This is quite true so far. The setting with its copper plates and the steam engines, many gears, and switches is quite Steampunk like and you craft a lot, the building of bases is in the foreground. You already know these mechanics from genres like Ark or Conan Exiles and here Volcanoids does nothing surprisingly different.

At Volcanoids you return to your homeland on an island that has become uninhabitable due to a volcanic eruption. With a submarine and the help of the captain of this ship, you get to the shore and learn how to mine ores, switch equipment on and off, and use the camp.

As befits a steampunk game, the main resources in this game are coal, sulfur, and copper. This is then smelted and built from screws, copper plates, and copper pipes. In return, you get a small vehicle called Drillship, which I’ll call it now. This drilling ship reminds me a little bit of a worm from Dune, here however as a mechanical Steampunk variant. With this steam worm, you will not only travel to the volcanic islands, but this is also your mobile home, the base, the workshop, and if you later built guns and other extensions also something like a traveling fortress.

The volcanic islands are not harmless. On the one hand, the volcano still erupts about every half hour and covers everything with ash, and burns anyone who cannot dive into the underground with a drilling ship in time. And on the other hand, the island is haunted by strange robots, the so-called COGs, which attack you immediately when they spot you.

Volcanoid – The Developer Studio

The fact that the developer studio is called Volcanoid to date, just like the game, already suggests that this is their first game so far. I couldn’t find any exact information about the size of the operation, but there are 3 PCs in photos of their office. There isn’t even a company website, only a steam site for the game, a discord server and a Twitter account are available (see sources and links at the bottom of this page). So it’s a really small team. And what they’ve done so far is quite something to be proud of.

Development progress of the Early Access game

Early Access means that the game is not yet fully developed. The state of the game also reflects this. So far it has a single-player part with a small tutorial that explains the basic functions. There are other quests that roughly guide you to reach the final goal of the game, explore the island and find a way to bring the volcano to a standstill.

The game is multilingual, although the German version is only about 30-40% translated so far, the rest is still in English. The development has probably been running for some time and is scheduled for another 2 years. The Early Access version was released in January 2019, so roughly at the beginning of 2021, the game should be finished according to plan. From my experience, I say that such plans are mostly very optimistic.

In addition to the already playable single-player mode, there will also be a co-op mode and a PvP mode. The current price will be increased bit by bit as the feature list gets longer. Currently, there are updates every 1-2 weeks.

The game is missing a pretty important part of the survival genre at the moment. Because of eating, drinking, character values, levels, increasing values, improving equipment, there’s nothing like that in Volcanoids yet. The roadmap of the game doesn’t show any hints that something like this is planned in the near future. I think that’s a pity and here the game gives away a lot of potentials. I will definitely send feedback to the developers and hope that this will be expanded. On the other hand, there are also players who don’t like eating, drinking, sleeping, and so on.

Basics Game Design

We’re playing a nameless and faceless character, you can’t change that right now. So character individualization is completely missing as well. There are also no character values except life energy and endurance during the race. We have 5 Quickbarslots where we can store different things.

First, there is the wrench that we need to repair things or rebuild something somewhere. The pickaxe allows us to chop off resources where I found only coal, copper ore, and sulfur. It may be that there will be more later. Wood chipping doesn’t seem to be possible yet. But probably there are still some plans in this area. It should be easy to expand this at a later stage of development.

In the beginning, we use a simple revolver as a weapon, later we can build a shotgun and grenades to extend it. There are first aid kits for crafting, which are needed to replenish life energy.

All other parts that can be made in crafting so far serve to expand, improve and repair the drilling ship.

There are also all kinds of things that you cannot make yourself at the beginning. You then have to capture them from enemies or enemy drilling ships and research them in the research department before you can use them for yourself.

The drilling ship / Drillship

The drilling ship is the fulcrum and linchpin of the game. It is our home, our workshop, our vehicle, and our fortress. If you want to travel longer distances, you can also do this with the drilling ship. And when the volcano erupts, it is our only way to escape by digging ourselves into the earth.

The drilling ship can be upgraded very extensively. In the end, it offers many of the possibilities you have in other games to expand and optimize your character. So it’s more or less the actual character that you upgrade and improve to achieve the game goal.

You start with a ship that consists of a single segment, not much bigger than a small hut. Over time, you can add more segments, so that the small block can become a kind of mechanical, steam-driven earthworm. In each worm segment, you can build in all kinds of stations and equipment, doors, windows, guns, storage rooms, craft stations, the possibilities are manifold.

Volcanoids Test: The Crafting

In a survival game, crafting is always an important part. It’s exactly the same in Volcanoids. You collect the basic resources coal, copper, and sulfur and smelt them into ingots or sulfur powder, from which you then build extensions for the drilling ship, new weapons, ammunition, repair material, partition walls, or new craft stations.

It is interesting to note that most Craft Stations can be built several times and that this often makes sense. If, for example, you have several refinery stations, this speeds up the refining process and if you have several production stations, the production times for the products are shortened.

Since the limited space in the drilling ship means that it is not possible to set up infinite stations, it is important to carefully consider which station to build and how often. However, stations can also be dismantled and stored at any time, so that they can be adapted to the situation at any time if one wants and has sufficient storage space modules.

By the way, the capacity of the bearings adds up to larger storage space. So you don’t have to run back and forth when you have built 5 storage rooms. Together they simply form a common inventory that can hold 5 times as much and can be reached from each of the 5 stations.

Volcanoids Review: The graphics

For an Indie game in Early Access, Volcanoids already offers quite a good look here. The devices are all provided with a medium to high-resolution textures. Also, the environment reaches in comparison with AAA games, at least in middle-class format. For a small team, this is quite respectable. Of course, there is still a lack of variety, as the game is still in the middle of development.

There are no 30 monster types, but only a few different robot opponents. There are also no 50 weapons, and also the design of the drillship is nice, but not varied. But in this phase of the game, besides the initial basic structure, the gameplay is probably important first, not so much the design and the scope.

But I have to say that I have seen much uglier games from bigger studios. So the developers have a lot of potential in the graphics area. Due to the small number of employees, it probably only takes a while before more variety can be brought into the game.

Volcanoids Review: The Sound

Of course, you can’t expect any orchestral music from an Indie-Early-Access game. But the previous samples with which the important things in the game are set to music are really good to listen to.

The machine noises, the shot noises, the pick-sound of the pickaxe, none of these noises cause me to flinch because it would be inappropriate or qualitatively bad. That’s what happened to me with some other titles, and it’s not the case here.

I especially liked the chirping of the birds in the forest, here there seem to be numerous samples that are alternated, so that it sounds very natural. That surprised me positively.

Perspectives for the game/conclusion

After about 10 hours of auditioning, I’m still far from being able to say anything about long-term motivation. But during this time I had a lot of fun and explored only a small part of the world. And I didn’t even get into the underground caves, which are supposed to exist under the volcano as well. And the big goal of defeating the robots and stopping the volcano will certainly take much more time.

The basic concept of the game seems solid to me. It offers a good start and the game in its current form already offers a lot of fun. For fans of the survival genre, it’s certainly already a multitude of hours of research, development, exploration, and steam robot combat. And the team is quite competent when it comes to game development.

For fans of the Steampunk genre, this game offers a special ambiance that no other game in this form can offer. It’s not super-complex, but you’ll definitely get a steampunk feeling when you walk through the copper tunnels of the steaming drillship with your old revolver.

There is still a lot of room for improvement, the game has a lot of potentials, but it doesn’t make use of it yet. Whether the developers will be able to exploit this in the foreseeable future is not yet clear. But if you look at what has been created so far and see how people are working hard on Volcanoids, I see a good chance that this game can become something even bigger in the next 2 years. But will that be enough to make it a big title?

Above all, the game could become something if the developers decide to add character customization, character development, and better weapons, more enemies, etc. to the game. I don’t see any obstacles to that once the basic concept is ready, in a few months. But my glass ball doesn’t tell me whether that’s really going to happen or not. I see a lot of planned improvements on the roadmap at the moment, but I don’t see these character things and weapons, armor, etc. directly standing there yet. And here I start to doubt easily.

Considering the very moderate purchase price of 17 Euro so far, I give Volcanoids a 6.5/10 in its current condition. And I certify the title, in any case, a promising future, if, and I stress this again very strongly. IF the previous system is still further developed and extended and at least some of the currently still missing features of other Survival titles are added. Without character values, armor parts, different weapons the title simply lacks depth in the long run. Since there is no multiplayer game yet, Volcanoid misses further game potential.

I’d say that for most players it’s a good idea to wait and see in a few months’ time what the game has to offer. At the moment in its current form, I can only recommend it to very dedicated Survival and Steampunk friends. With multiplayer, it will be something deeper, and if character development and equipment should come, it could even become an insider tip.

Volcanoids

Zap from ZapZockt.de

Volcanoids Review – The Steampunk Survival Game in Early Access Test
Volcanoids describes itself as a survival game in the steampunk universe. So far, this fits quite well. The setting with its copper plates and steam engines, many gears, and switches is quite steampunk-like and you craft a lot, base building is in the foreground. You already know these mechanics from genre greats like Ark or Conan Exiles, and Volcanoids doesn’t do anything surprisingly different here.

Survival

Graphics / Design

Sound

Scope of the game

Price / Performance

Steampunk feeling

Rating

For fans of the Steampunk genre, this game offers a special ambiance that no other game in this form can offer. It’s not super-complex, but you’ll definitely get a steampunk feeling when you walk through the copper tunnels of the steaming drillship with your old revolver.

There is still a lot of room for improvement, the game has a lot of potentials, but it doesn’t make use of it yet. Whether the developers will be able to exploit this in the foreseeable future is not yet clear. But if you look at what has been created so far and see how people are working hard on Volcanoids, I see a good chance that this game can become something even bigger in the next 2 years. But will that be enough to make it a big title?

Above all, the game could become something if the developers decide to add character customization, character development, and better weapons, more enemies, etc. to the game. I don’t see any obstacles to that once the basic concept is ready, in a few months. But my glass ball doesn’t tell me whether that’s really going to happen or not. I see a lot of planned improvements on the roadmap at the moment, but I don’t see these character things and weapons, armor, etc. directly standing there yet. And here I start to doubt easily.

Considering the very moderate purchase price of 17 Euro so far, I give Volcanoids a 6.5/10 in its current condition. And I certify the title, in any case, a promising future, if, and I stress this again very strongly IF the previous system is still further developed and extended and at least some of the currently still missing features of other Survival titles are added. Without character values, armor parts, different weapons the title simply lacks depth in the long run. Since there is no multiplayer game yet, Volcanoid misses further game potential.

3.3

Outro:

So I hope you enjoyed this insight into Volcanoids. You can find more posts and reviews in the menu above, comments please my little heart and then I wish you a great day, let it go well, ciao ciao, your Zap

Sources & Websites:

Steam-Page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/951440/Volcanoids/

Roadmap:
https://trello.com/b/xsj3vAs1/volcanoids-roadmap

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/volcanoids

Follow ZapZockt on Social Media: