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It has simple graphics but offers a decent survival horror experience | 1 Bit Survivor - Full Review

1K View2023-02-10

1 Bit Survivor is a rogue-lite survival horror with simplistic 1-bit graphics but an artistic stylized presentation. The atmosphere is definitely classic Resident Evil 2 and 3-style, an obvious inspiration especially with sound bits when starting a session complete with typewriter sounds to tell the story, and the menacing sound effects that you hear. The comparison however ends there as the gameplay features a 1-bit retro game design and monochromatic graphics.

🟩Pros

+Simple gameplay but will engage your mind

+Charming stylized 1-bit visual presentation

+A decent survival horror experience considering the limited 1-bit gameplay

+Play in vertical or landscape format

🟥Cons

-Not much to do after beating it, other than replay it again.

The world is lost, an unstoppable virus wiped out humanity, turning most living things into mutants. In 28 days they will use a bomb to wipe out the world. You have no reason to live anymore, but meeting Leo — a stray cat — gave you a new lease on life. There is a bunker, and you have exactly 28 days left to reach it. You have your trusty car, you need to stop for gas once a day, and have a pistol with 4 bullets remaining.

Playable in both vertical and landscape format, 1 Bit Survivor is a rogue-like game at its core where you need to survive the 28 days, or die trying and have to restart from day 1 again. Start off in a randomly generated level biome: village, sewers, hospitals, graveyards, etc. They are just visual flavor and do not really make a difference with enemies or item spawns. Every 7 days the biomed changes and the game gets slightly harder. There are nine different enemy types ranging from the simple zombies, to infected animals like bats and spiders.

Levels are rectangular and are littered with the infected plus 3 types of random loot. The gas, which always spawns; a random ammo pick up to replenish the 4 bullets; and a health pick up. The gas is the only thing important in order to proceed to the next level, you can ignore the rest if the situation calls for it. You can’t see everything in the level, because of the cute little fog of war system they have in place.

The controls are a bit hard at first, it feels like everything is in a rush with its small cramped levels. Thankfully you can tweak the settings and the position of the gun fire button to your liking. I find it better when it is in the center of the D-Pad for movement, and it feels like the old tank controls from the Resident Evil games.

While the actual gameplay only features small, vague 1-bit character sprites, it is elevated by the highly detailed — still 1-bit — animations overlaying on the screen when doing actions like shooting, reloading, healing, etc. A nice touch that adds a lot of noir-like personality to the game that I could never get tired of seeing. Something about these animations reminds me of the 80s and 90s era for some reason.

Even though the game has ultra simplistic mechanics, the compelling tactical aspect caught my attention. The game doesn't explicitly tell you this, but 1 Bit Survivor is not real-time, and sort of turn-based where the game only continues when you are performing an action. If you don’t move, everything else won’t either. So there’s no point in rushing. Once you get the hang of it, the game will be much easier.

Not that easy though, as even though you already know everything about the game, 1 Bit Survivor is still a challenging game to beat. Easy to learn but hard to master. Sessions usually last a few minutes tops, especially if you die early — Perfect for short bursts and on-the-go gaming. Although once you get a flow going and have started to make a run into actually completing all 28 days, it can eat up your time. Luckily, you can save your progress and continue the run for another time, when needed.

Aside from using your pistol with limited ammo, you can also melee the infected, but you risk getting damaged and your health depleted. Different enemies have different durabilities, some will go down in 1 hit, some multiple gunshots or melee attacks. This makes some encounters pretty intense because not everything dies instantly.

As you keep playing, you will unlock two more objectively better character types than the starting one, with their own starting weapon, health, and ammo providing a slight variation to the gameplay.

1 Bit Survivor allows for some interesting resource management elements, some choices in the game will require you to forego an ammo or health pickup so you can escape and not risk death if there are still enemies present, or to carefully balance your supplies; maybe deplete your ammo first before going on an ammo pickup, or in order to save ammo, you can try and exchange melee hits with an enemy first before taking that health pickup.

After you die trying, or have somehow survived; you are given a summary of your run: playtime, kills, days survived, shots survive, etc. After that, you can start a playthrough again, nothing more, nothing less.

Conclusion:

1 Bit Survivor has very simplistic graphics and mechanics, but it is still effective in portraying a proper survival horror experience with its tactical decision making elements and rogue-like progression system. Very simple to play, but hard to master.

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