Blight: Survival wants to make medieval dreams come true – with co-op, knights and Unreal Engine 5. But the game still has a long way to go.
Medieval games are always a good idea. In particular, many GlobalESportNews readers can hardly get enough of strategy and building game series like Mount & Blade, Age of Empires or Crusader Kings.
The small Icelandic developer studio Haenir Studio now wants to venture something completely new with Blight: Survival. The first screenshots make the hearts of medieval fans beat faster – knights, lansquenets and run-down farmhouses have rarely looked this good. Thanks to Unreal Engine 5.
But whether this historical dream turned into a game will ever come true … that’s another story.
What is Blight: Survival about?
With the name Blight: Survival you might think that you should expect a survival game à la Valheim or The Forest. That is: with crafting, base building and an open world. But according to the developers, Survival stands for survival horror in the style of Resident Evil.
So, what’s it all about? Together with up to three friends, you have to fight your way through a war-torn world in which a new plague has arisen from the remains of the many dead. It spreads rapidly and transforms all infected into rather ghastly abominations. The T-virus of the Middle Ages, so to speak.
There will be brutal battles against humans and monsters at every turn. To make these as varied as possible, you can capture heaps of different medieval weapons and armour with which you can individualise your play style. There is also character development with unlockable abilities.
The developers promise a combat system like in Mordhau or Chivalry 2, which focuses on directional attacking and blocking. Stealth passages are also included. However, it is not yet possible to say how the whole thing will actually play in the end – there is still no sign of real gameplay. And whether the game will ever be released is still more than questionable at the moment.
Blight: Survival still has a long way to go
Blight: Survival sounds quite ambitious and, thanks to Unreal Engine 5, looks breathtakingly good in the first pictures. Actually much too good for such a small game studio – Haenir currently has only two developers. And they themselves know that they can’t handle such a project alone.
After Blight: Survival landed on over 13,000 players’ Steam wishlists within a month, the developers have now taken questions from fans on Reddit and Steam. Their transparent answers, however, do not inspire much hope.
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While both developers have already gained experience in the games industry, they actually work in the field of animation, according to their own statements. That’s probably why only short concept videos have been shared so far, showing animation for stealth kills and opening doors:
Using stealth is just one of many ways you can play our game – whatever suits your playstyle!indiedev gamedev indiegamedev ue5 @unrealengine pic. twitter.com/9sqPcvGuQ8
– Blight: Survival (@BlightSurvival) April 23, 2022
So a lot more experts need to be hired who are not just in the artistic field. Level designers, game designers and so on. However, this is not possible without company capital. That’s why Haenir is currently working on a gameplay reveal to convince a publisher or other potential backers.
But for this to work, the Icelanders must be able to present a clear concept. One that can also be implemented. If you read through all the developer’s contributions, it doesn’t look like it. They want to compete with Left 4 Dead and Vermintide, but also emulate the discontinued PS4 title Deep Down. There are also supposed to be unspecified Souls-like elements. And PvP multiplayer must not be missing, of course, with invasions à la Dark Souls or Sniper Elite 5.
Really everything the overzealous fans want, they should get, according to the developers. Even Steam trading cards are already planned. And for people who don’t like the Mordhau battle system, there will be a simplified mode – also because the developers themselves don’t get on so well with this system.
Somehow they want to please everyone. And great ambitions can also turn into great games at some point. But experience shows that inexperienced developers in particular should first set themselves smaller goals, because the step from dream to reality is simply no longer feasible.
Since I saw the incredibly cool short film Gdansk by Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium) a few years ago, I have wanted nothing more than a really creepy and sinister medieval game. If the developers of Blight: Survival had added a 20-metre tall knight with a sword the size of a telephone mast to their pictures, I would probably be completely hyped right now.
Instead, I’m skeptical right now. It’s not because of the lack of a giant knight, it’s because the two developers are too ambitious. Sure, what you can see of the game so far looks great. Even Naughty Dog couldn’t have done these animations much better.
But what kind of game Blight: Survival is going to be in the end, Haenir Studio probably doesn’t know itself. Co-op and PvP, survival horror mixed with action, plus a dash of Souls-like. Yes, all that is supposed to be in it. But the developers themselves prefer to describe their game as Mordhau meets Witcher meets Escape from Tarkov
How it all fits together remains to be seen – if it even gets that far. But I’m happy to be positively surprised.
