Spooky survival game Angst knows just I want: Survival mechanics that get out the way of my quest to steal a sad orb from the guy in the basement

A portrait of a suited man in some distress.
(Image credit: Cherrypick Games)

Survival games! They're all the rage. Since the dawn of time, mankind has dreamt of exacting vengeance on its hated ancestral enemy: the tree. These games make those dreams reality—you punch trees, fashion their corpses into bizarre shapes, set them alight. Generally just a lot of tree torture going on.

Angst, whose ongoing playtest I spent a while mucking around in this morning, starts out much the same way. You wake up, it's cold, hit the trees, you know the drill. But things start getting weird when the tutorial voice on your banged-up ham radio starts imploring you to stick food in an old wooden chest. That would, ordinarily, be quite normal—you need to preserve food in these games all the time—but the voice makes clear that the food isn't for you.

Being chased by wolves.

(Image credit: Cherrypick Games)

Which hooked me, I've gotta admit. Although survival mechanics generally rub me the wrong way, spooks get my attention like nothing else, and Angst caught me in precisely the correct Halloween-y mood to pique my interest with its pitch-black nights, shadowy figures at the edge of vision, and a quest to collect an 'Orb of Sorrow'. Diablo 4's item-naming team must be moonlighting.

No, really, it gets dark. Pitch-dark. And when it's just you in the stygian night surrounded by the hungry eyes of wolves (also, at one point, a particularly violent rabbit; I'm not sure what was going on there), things do genuinely get quite tense as you try to grope your way back to the nearest safehouse. Descending into a basement in search of materials—or a sphere of sadness—even sparked my Stalker neurons a little. I didn't even mind the combat, a sparse mix of whack, block 'n' dodge that doesn't ask too much from you.

So I found myself genuinely surprised when, as an inveterate survival game disliker, I actually made it to the end of the playtest. The scares kept me interested, and to be honest, the survival stuff never got too intrusive. Yeah, you've got hunger, sleep, and temperature metres, but they never really decreased fast enough to bother me. Did I start starving a couple of times? Yes. Was this a problem eating roughly 300,000 berries could not solve? No. I don't know if it's necessarily a compliment to a survival game to say that I enjoyed it because I could mostly ignore a lot of the survival game stuff, but it's certainly how I felt.

Setting up a campfire and tent.

(Image credit: Cherrypick Games)

I suspect it might be going easy on me, at least for now. The game makes it very clear that it expects you to die, and every new day started with the game chirpily informing me that I'd broken my previous staying alive record. Does this foretell a harder game in a post-playtest future? One I will almost definitely bounce off of? Perhaps. But for now, I had fun.

So consider me tentatively interested to see where this one goes. And if you're on the hunt for something spooky to dip a toe in this Halloween, you could do worse than checking out Angst's playtest.

Joshua Wolens
News Writer

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

Read more
A hand holding a compass in the woods
Players are already finding creative solutions to Prologue: Go Wayback's grueling difficulty: 'You could just chug gasoline'
A man turns away from an open window while monsters gather in the dark
Look Outside is a survival horror RPG where you absolutely should not look outside
The view from a cliff in the forest
PlayerUnknown's upcoming game Prologue: Go Wayback! is full of grand ambitions, but there's still a lot of room for this survival game to grow
Facing an enemy in No-Skin
No-Skin is an incredibly simple horror roguelike about the worst party ever, full of strong booze, bad conversation and eldritch violence
Holding a compass in the snow
'I expect a lot of people will hate it': PUBG creator Brendan Greene doesn't care if his new game is too hard for players to handle as long as it 'elicits a reaction'
White Knuckle trailer still
Ascend through 'ten thousand meters of concrete and decay' in this horrifying 'first-person roguelite speed-climbing game'
Latest in Survival & Crafting
An Enshrouded player in a recreation of Erebor from The Lord of the Rings
Kings under the Mountain! 33 Enshrouded players spent 10,000 hours to recreate this iconic location from The Lord of the Rings
An April Fool's Day Palworld game concept about dating Pals
From Palworld movies to Palworld TV shows: 'Everyone under the sun pitched us every idea you can imagine,' says Pocketpair's communications director
Pacific Drive Endless Expeditions spring 2025 update trailer still - a sexy, tricked-out 1980s station wagon being blasted with magic healing electricity
Pacific Drive developers change their mind: A year after refusing to give it mid-run saves, it's getting mid-run saves
minecraft diamond level sword
Minecraft's never going free-to-play because as it stands it's 'the best deal in the world'
New shaders in Minecraft following Minecraft Live 2025
In the year of our lord 2025, Mojang is finally adding shaders to Minecraft, making reflective lighting and water effects more accessible for all
A dried ghast, a ghastling, and a friendly ghast all smiling
The latest Minecraft Live uncovered the tragic truth of the Nether's most bothersome mob, which has unlocked new levels of guilt
Latest in News
A screenshot from SaGa Frontier 2, showing one of the protagonists wandering through a quaint fantasy village
One of Square Enix' most underrated PlayStation-era JRPGs just shadow dropped on Steam
The titular character from Princess Mononoke is depicted riding the wolf goddess Moro and carrying a spear.
Studio Ghibli AI image trend floods social media, cheered on by OpenAI and denounced by critics as an insult to Hayao Miyazaki
Marvel Rivals tier list - Wolverine
Marvel Rivals director says a future patch will reduce the shooter's insatiable hunger for RAM: 'It's a very big problem'
Hogwarts Legacy potions professor holding a potion
An unannounced Hogwarts Legacy expansion and 'definitive edition' have reportedly been cancelled
Story of Seasons - A cahacter in a purple tuxedo stands outside in a town square talking to the player
Story of Seasons is doing another Harvest Moon remake and it might be the best the series has ever looked
Assassin's Creed Shadows change seasons - An upper-body shot of Yasuke looking cheerfully up into the distance.
Assassin's Creed Shadows puts up the 'second highest day-one sales revenue in Assassin's Creed franchise history'