Ark has you looking over your shoulder for devious dinosaurs. The Forest throws cannibalistic mutants at you. In Subnautica, it’s sea monsters and the constant threat of running out of oxygen. On the whole, survival games love to stress you out. It’s part of the charm. But here’s an upcoming survival title that prides itself on “positivity and relaxation” while still looking like a really engrossing experience. It’s called Astrobotanica, a botany and exploration-focused survival experience, and its developer just revealed plans for a Kickstarter campaign to help realize its potential.
I understand that, for many, a non-stressful survival game isn’t for them. Some may even say it defeats the point of them in the first place. I disagree. In Astrobotanica, you embody an intelligent extraterrestrial called Xel who has found their way to planet Earth 300,000 years in the past. That, in itself, is a pretty cool premise. This is basically the dawn of humankind, and you’ll encounter primitive humans as you explore what looks like a truly breath-taking open world.
To survive, you must learn to become one with nature. You’ll “nurture plant species and learn how to manage gardening in Earth’s prehistoric environments,” research different flora, and use them to make tonics that you can use as bargaining chips with the Neanderthals you meet.
Alongside becoming a gardening expert, you’ll have to become an adept explorer and puzzle solver too. The map is littered with islands that represent different biomes, each with various flora and fauna (some of it hostile), environmental puzzles, and hidden secrets.
We’ve been charting Astrobotanica’s development for a little while now, and today marks another significant moment for the project with the reveal of its Kickstarter campaign. Developer Space Goblin, which is also aiming to self-publish the game, says it’s doing so to “accelerate the development timeline while maintaining the high level of quality seen thus far” and will also use it as a way to start getting player feedback early on in the process.
“This campaign is foremost about collaboration,” says game director Arek Woźniak in a press release. “We want our backers to have a say in how the game evolves, and we’re excited to give them access to a pre-alpha build before anyone else so they can help care and cultivate Astrobotanica alongside us.”
The actual fundraising will commence in the spring, but if the game’s premise or the opportunity to get pre-alpha access has got you interested, you can check out more details about it on its Kickstarter page here.
With its full release seemingly a long way off, here are some other incredible open-world games and single-player games you can get lost in instead.
You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or join our community Discord to stay in the know.