Considering the fact that Minecraft is one of the most successful video games ever made, it’s not all that surprising that more and more games resembling it are being released. Much like Stardew Valley has been a common influence for indie creators, Minecraft’s blocky aesthetic has been mimicked in a good deal of projects. Hytale is perhaps the most widely known example, but there have been other projects like Steam’s Astromine and the upcoming Direland that fall under the Minecraft-like umbrella. And now, Strayward is about to join this lineup, bringing an increased focus on combat to the table. Specifically, gunplay.
While there have been a fair few Minecraft mods that add guns to Mojang’s sandbox hit, the base game has always focused on more old-school weaponry via its swords, crossbows, and so on. Steam’s Strayward, then, will instantly stand out from its clear influence by offering “a realistic firearm system with authentic ballistics.” In addition to this key combat difference, Strayward offers multiple maps to explore and build in instead of a randomly generated world with various biomes. Random events, roaming bosses, and distinct points of interest all ensure Strayward is more action-packed than Minecraft, but it still maintains the most important aspects of the hit game, such as building and survival elements.
Strayward Features List
- EXPLORE voxel maps full of towns, buildings, and wilderness areas solo or with up to three other players.
- SCAVENGE materials and HUNT animals to craft gear and make food, both of which are essential to stay alive.
- WIELD melee weapons and a “variety” of guns, the latter of which can be affected by different shooting conditions and ammo types.
- BATTLE not just regular enemies, but bosses too, some of which can be persistent threats that group up with other bosses or forever roam certain areas of the map.
- ENCOUNTER both random and predictable events that can instantly change plans.
Strayward is an open-world voxel survival game set across a series of strange and isolated regions. Explore, scavenge, gather resources, build shelters, and fight to survive as you venture deeper into an unfamiliar world filled with persistent threats and unexplained phenomena.
Strayward’s Visuals, Building Mechanics, and Survival Elements Bring the Minecraft Vibes
Visually, Minecraft’s DNA could not be more present within Strayward, as the blocky voxel character models, speckled grass, and trees that players will punch holes into all look like they were pulled right out of that game. Even the UI is similar, with a hotbar for favorite items present at the bottom of the screen that will look very familiar to gamers. Fortunately for interior design fans, though, Strayward doesn’t seem to be against actual furniture like chairs, tables, and dressers, all of which should make building significantly easier. And when it comes to the design process, the promise that every single voxel within the game’s world will be editable is surely something that will get the gears turning in creative players’ minds.
Within their hand-made shelters, players will be able to set up areas for crafting stations and storage as well as comfy living spaces, perfectly replicating the “spawn, gather resources, and build a house” approach that so many casual Minecraft players take. The actual resource gathering will resemble Minecraft, albeit with a lot more looting, as players will regularly search crates and storage containers in abandoned homes as opposed to only finding chests once in a blue moon via mines and temples. They’ll need to hunt animals as well, a process that could utilize the guns that are present throughout Strayward’s marketing.
Strayward’s Multiple Maps Will Keep Explorers Very Busy
Outside of the various rifles and sidearms players will be wielding (all of which have realistic physics built-in), Strayward stands out by swapping Minecraft’s seed system for “multiple” hand-crafted maps. While there is certainly beauty in Minecraft’s randomly generated worlds, as some truly special seeds can be found, the benefits of custom-made worlds to explore are obvious. Strayward’s developer can add distinct POIs to each map, allow all the terrain to flow naturally, and populate each with distinct mobs to fight and resources to gather.
Speaking of mobs, Strayward won’t just offer regular enemies for co-op groups to deal with, but proper boss battles as well. Some of these bosses will be traditional threats that have chunky health bars and are permanently gone once eliminated, but not every boss will function in the same way. For instance, some threats will be “persistent” and patrol specific parts of the map, pressuring players whenever they encroach on their territory. “Boss teams” are also mentioned, which will see a few tough foes working together to properly combat a full co-op group. While Minecraft has bosses that players can go out of their way to trigger, it sounds like Strayward will be making them a more present threat.
While Strayward is still at least 6 months away from its launch, interested gamers can download a free Steam demo for it right now. The demo in question only offers 10% of the full game’s content; however, none of the maps that will be in the final version are present. Instead, the demo features “a small, streamlined level” that highlights all the core systems, properly teasing what’s to come. Fortunately, four-player co-op is enabled within this trial level, allowing groups of potential players to test out the Steam survival game together. While it only has 11 user reviews so far, 81% of them are positive, with users stating that it has “potential.”
Hopefully, that potential is realized, as Minecraft with guns is a simple but effective premise. After all, games like Palworld have already shown that mixing a beloved family-friendly franchise with firearms can lead to a fun time, so Northoryn Games might just be on the verge of something special.
