Joining the ever-growing list of survival-adventure titles, Early Access survival co-op title IfSunSets promises an experience that should - on paper - appeal to most fans of survival games.
In this game, your character crashes on a remote island packed to the brim with pirates, monsters, and surprisingly punctual zombies. You’re greeted by a fairy who starts off the conversation by calling you a fool, and things unfold from there.
To survive, you have to find clean water, food, and a safe spot on the island to build a fortified safe house to protect yourself against things that go bump in the night. Your character can do everything from hunting to crafting, and there are plenty of secrets to uncover on the island.
Here’s a breakdown of my time spent with the Early Access iteration of IfSunSets, looking at the good, the bad, and the slightly confusing.
The good
The day-night cycle in IfSunSets is fun. The day is the safest time to explore the island, while the night is referred to as the Night of the Dead and is much more dangerous.
It felt like I was playing two games at once. I spent the daytime scavenging, building, and fighting new enemies across the island, while I spent the nighttime deciding whether to battle the approaching horde of zombies head-on or via traps in my base.
The hordes last 5 minutes with enemies that scale as you level up, so strategy is key.
It’s not just a case of building spiky walls to defend yourself, either. I was intrigued by the variety of traps on offer, ranging from automated turrets and spinning pillars of spikes to simple glue traps and bone swings. Having this much variety in a crafting system is always exciting.
IfSunSets has a standard RPG skill point mechanic; it allows you to invest in HP, Stamina, Attack, and Defense, along with a somewhat barren skill tree that lets you gain access to new benefits, like a faster run speed or higher damage output. It’s not overly unique by any means, but it does offer a sense of progression as the days tick by.
The nighttime can be avoided by offering up a resource called Cthuga’s Stone at altars dotted around the island. This prevents the Night of the Dead, which provides more time for resource gathering and base-building, with the zombies politely returning the following night.
These altars can also be used to fast travel - as can beds - which I found particularly convenient for resource gathering. Even zones with high-level enemies were worth briefly popping in and out of to pick up resources while I built higher-tier gear and tools.
The threat of the zombie horde did make the daytime crafting feel more meaningful, and it offered a huge bump of experience along with a nice reward like fairy XP, resources, or armor to help with the next night.
The bad
Movement doesn’t feel fantastic in IfSunSets. The character moves somewhat clunkily, and the physics aren’t overly consistent, so moving around the island didn’t feel great until I’d leveled up my Stamina. Sometimes, I’d get flung out of the way by a gate opening, or pushed to the side by a very determined crab.
I also found combat to be quite underwhelming. Provided you’ve leveled up and grabbed decent gear, almost any battle is essentially just click, click, step back, block, click.
The hack-and-slash style was fun during the nighttime at first - who doesn’t want to carve their way through a horde of zombies with a saber - but it became less interesting as time went on. It would’ve been great to see combat developing and becoming more complex as the game unfolded.
After around three hours of gameplay, I experienced a fatal crash, which caused the game to close down fully. Additionally, the game crashed during a particularly hectic Night of the Dead, booting me back out to a loading screen briefly and taking me back to 6:30 p.m., causing me to lose progress.
I also came across a fair few issues with textures not fully loading, floating text boxes or prompts, significant lag, and glitchy enemies getting stuck in rocks or cliffs.
While this Early Access review was predominantly of the single-player mode in IfSunSets, it’s worth noting that there are community reports of significant lag in multiplayer lobbies. Additionally, many players have shared their frustration at only being able to play with one other person at a time.
As mentioned, the developers have been actively engaging with the community and implementing regular updates. The game has been updated three times while I’ve had access to it, with at least some of the visual issues patched in that time.
The odd
Something I do like is the ability to choose from various difficulty modes, as well as whether or not to play them solo or with a friend - but I did run into some issues when picking my difficulty level initially.
I decided to have two games on the go, with one standard playthrough and one safe playthrough with the mode that removes zombies, to test how the modes felt compared to one another.
It was startling to get the prompt that zombies were coming to get me on the latter playthrough - the game modes were slightly jumbled up, and the zombie-less mode decided to give me plenty of zombies anyway.
Recent developer notes do acknowledge that some bugs relating to difficulty modes have been ironed out, so it’s unlikely that this will be a recurring issue, but it was a unique problem to come across in the first few hours of gameplay.
There is some story to uncover in IfSunSets, although it’s a little strange in places and feels quite piecemeal.
The inclusion of Blifia, the fairy, felt fairly unwarranted. She’s funny and offers a brief introduction to the story of the game while providing a useful ability here and there, but the game would’ve arguably been exactly the same without her. I rarely relied on her for any of her abilities other than removing contamination.
Speaking of contamination, this mechanic felt the most unnecessary. When the player character dies or uses specific objects, they become contaminated, which takes away a chunk of the health bar. This can be fixed by speaking to Blifia and spending Cthuga’s Stones.
Dying or drinking contaminated water, for example, is already punishing, either through the loss of items, item durability, or health. The contamination feature doesn’t feel necessary and overcomplicates the death mechanic, which I found frustrating by the end of my playthrough.
Final thoughts
IfSunSets does have its promising points. There’s a lot to explore with this game and it’s clearly been made with love. The day/night cycle is interesting, the gameplay is relatively fun, and the variety of enemies and zones on offer is great.
It’s also great to see the developer team actively taking community feedback and improving upon issues during the Early Access period. They’re very active on Steam, updating the player base with known issues, fixes, and quirks that’ve been ironed out.
Some of the issues I found during my first 5 hours or so were fixed by my next play session, for example, and other issues that I’ve noted, like the limited number of players able to hop into a multiplayer game, have been pointed out as things that the developers want to amend in future updates.
That being said, this game is still rough around the edges and doesn’t feel cohesive yet.
Ignoring the performance issues I ran into, some areas of the game just felt inconsistent. It wasn’t always clear why I could build on one surface but not another, or why only one type of barrel could be broken, but another was invincible.
If you’re a survival game fan who’s willing to look past some bumps, IfSunSets might be worth your time. It’s not quite there yet, but it could grow into something exceptional, especially with improvements to the multiplayer mode. There weren’t any elements that stood out as particularly unique, but I did have fun playing it and I’m looking forward to the full version.
