Steffi has played through the Camping Builder demo. What looks like relaxed camping at first quickly turned into a horror trip with a South Seas flair.
When I go camping, I do it together with at least ten thousand black-clad, bawling and mostly long-haired fellow human beings.
I shower exclusively with canned beer (it makes my scalp tingle in the morning). In the evening, you slumber peacefully to blast beats from towering loudspeakers that massage the inside of your lungs even from two hundred metres away. And somewhere there’s always a lively, bearded tooth fairy in a pink minidress with nothing underneath bouncing around.
Yes, I like to go to metal festivals often.
But there’s supposed to be a whole other side to camping. So with peace and relaxation in undisturbed nature, with birdsong instead of growls. Sounds completely absurd to my ears, but I like to expand my horizons, not only musically.
And Camping Builder fits like an elbow in a mosh pit. The playable demo promises me sunshine on a tropical beach, where I happily build my own holiday resort. Oh, how naive I was!
Between rubbish collector sim and horror trip
The first few minutes of Camping Builder offer me familiar sights at first: grey wafts of mist, a smoke-shrouded sky, in front of me an elderly lady sits by the campfire and talks animatedly to herself about the spiritual universe. In the background: collapsed buildings and rubbish. So far, so festival.
“You have a lot of work waiting for you here, my friend,” the lady says and I realise that she must have been talking to me the whole time. What do you mean, work? I thought I was supposed to relax here? Well, it’s probably not very pleasant to sunbathe among the heaps of rubbish anyway. So let’s listen to what else Island Lady has to say. A good decision, as it turns out, because she makes sinister threats.
The last visitor here must have been quite a scumbag in the truest sense of the word, leaving behind all the rubbish. And because he was disrespectful to the island, he was punished by Mother Nature (called Malu) – we don’t find out exactly how.
His fate is left entirely to my imagination and I immediately understand: here environmental protection is radically enforced! This is also indicated by the suspiciously abandoned trailer park I discover deep in the forest when I briefly leave the story path. Holy palm frond.
In fact, this is to become one of the basic principles of Camping Builder: Those who live in harmony with plants and animals (for example, planting new trees after cutting some down elsewhere) will be rewarded with beautiful weather. If you litter the beach, on the other hand, you risk dramatic consequences. In the demo, however, this is not yet possible; only in the finished game can you become an environmental sow. But I’d be too scared of Island Lady anyway.
With an axe to the nightmare in pink
So I pull out a skewer with which I pick up bottles, cans and plastic. The full rubbish bags go into the conveniently located containers – unfortunately no one explains to me which rubbish belongs in which colour.
To be on the safe side, I decide to use the German system I’ve been taught, i.e. plastic = yellow bin. It seems to be right, because suddenly the island lady stands in front of me and says that I am behaving very well and will certainly be rewarded by Malu. I fear for my life.
Next she wants me to chop up the old bungalows. Finally back on familiar ground! I know how to chop things down with axes, it’s part of every Viking metal band, of course. In no time at all I smash the huts to firewood, Odin wants it that way!
I then use the leftovers to build my own resort. At least in the demo, this works simply by picking up wood and right-clicking on it to put it in the specified places. Later I’m also supposed to paint my walls in pretty colours “so that the guests feel comfortable”. Wait a minute, guests?
I guess Island Lady has suddenly taken a liking to ecotourism and is purring to me that the ocean is just carrying the first visitors to me. Anxiously, I grab the spray tool and want to paint my bungalow green as a sign of peace. Unfortunately I can’t, so I use Zahnfeerosa, time is short!
No sooner have I finished painting than I’m supposed to hang lamps. Here the unexpectedly huge choice of colours completely overwhelms me and in my panic I simply decide on pink again. What a mistake. I have created a nightmare in pink that would make many a brothel green with envy:
Luckily, Island Lady is apparently colour-blind and lets me get away with my love-nest bungalow. I’m supposed to gather around the campfire and celebrate there with my guests. Briefly, I’m sure I represent the meal being roasted over the little fire.
Fortunately, I am wrong. Thrilled, I realise that the tourists have brought instruments with them. I open a lukewarm canned beer in front of the monitor, and already it feels like a festival back home. Nice here.
During the 30 minute demo I collected an estimated three tons of rubbish, built two bungalows and survived the merciless island lady. It even got quite cosy at the end, with music and dancing. Maybe the island isn’t so bad after all? I thought so until, in the last seconds, a cajoling voice offers me a fortune if I burn down the forest for it. Cut, game over. I stare at the main menu, hooked.
Yet I still don’t know what kind of game this will actually be when it’s finished. A building sim with a story line? Or rather a story adventure with building elements? Blank horror? The Steam description is not very enlightening, talking about puzzles to solve, but also about managing my holiday resort. It remains exciting! In any case, I’m dying to know what happens next.
It is not yet clear when the curtain will rise. Camping Builder has not yet given a concrete release date. But I will wait patiently and uncover the dark secrets of the island lady, count on it.
Editor’s Verdict
In all honesty, I’m not the biggest simulator fan running around out there. But sometimes I see a game that does make my fingers itch. That’s what happened with Camping Builder. And I was quite surprised. Actually, I thought I’d just spend an hour knocking around a beach house. Far from it!
Instead, I ended up in an environmental thriller that made me grin quite often, but also made me cringe. Island Lady is pure nightmare material, let me tell you. I was definitely quite entertained by the unexpected story with horror overtones. Hopefully, in the finished game we will have real creative freedom in building, which is not unimportant in a simulation!
But I’ll probably do more tidying up than rooming when I pick up Camping Builder again. That’s a habit of mine in real life too, I quite like collecting rubbish. Even without being threatened by old women. There’s nothing more soothing than cleaning up a piece of nature, especially in difficult times.
