A base-building game with automation where you explore a sci-fi planet, mining resources and fighting off alien bugs? It almost felt like Factorio, but in first-person, at least in terms of premise.

After spending some time with the early access version, which launches on January 6th for PC, the appeal of StarRupture has become a whole lot clearer. There’s a way to go yet, and definitely some improvements required in certain aspects, but it scratches that itch for one more unlock while pushing further and further across the planet.

"You see, Arcadia-7 is in the Ruptura System, and for some reason, the planet likes to go supernova every so often. That means a giant fiery wave roiling across the surface, incinerating anything and everyone in its wake (including me, as I unfortunately found out)."

And what a place Arcadia-7 is. You play as one of four convicts who join the Argos Program, which requires landing on the planet sans much equipment to mine its resources. And while the Claywood Corporation looms in the background, the focus at this point is to ship products for five different corporations: Selenian Corp, Clever Robotics, Moon Energy, Griffits Blue Corp, and Future Health Solutions. Supply them with specific goods, be it Titanium Rods or Wolfram Wires, and you’ll earn points towards their standing. Level those up enough, and you can redeem different rewards.

Now, you could take your piddly mining laser and try to extract those resources by hand before refining, but automation is the name of the game. Setting up an Ore Extractor with rails to feed into a Fabricator and a Smelter is only the start. You also need to set up Orbital Launch Devices to fulfil different orders, set up Solar Generators to feed power, collect resources to upgrade your Base Core, expand your Habitat to make room for more stations and fend off hunger and thirst. You know, the basic stuff. Before you know it, you’ll be rerouting rails, installing junctions, optimizing supply chains, and looking for shortcuts to supply the corpos faster. While the various animations weren’t quite as detailed as, say, Satisfactory, there’s still something oddly hypnotic about sitting back and watching your machinery diligently hum away.

Also, make no mistake – StarRupture offers a lot to unlock, even at this point in early access. Beyond producing more complex resources like Ceramics, Rotors, Metal Sheets, and whatnot, you’ll also need to unlock recipes for them. These require heaps of resources and Data Points, which are also used to progress your standing with corporations, providing a nice boost towards the next unlock. However, some of these will also need blueprints, which must be found in the wild, and don’t count on all the requisite resources being near your starting point either. As such, setting up multiple bases becomes essential, and they’ll especially come in handy when disaster inevitably strikes.

You see, Arcadia-7 is in the Ruptura System, and for some reason, the planet likes to go supernova every so often. That means a giant fiery wave roiling across the surface, incinerating anything and everyone in its wake (including me, as I unfortunately found out). Fortunately, you can always go back and collect your stuff on death, though some of it could end up broken. Multiple shelters thus become important in the early going. It’s more than an incredible sight – after a wave passes, your machinery overheats, but new materials and meteorites become available to harvest.

"Remember how I said you play as one of four convicts? Well, the other three are still connected to you and will chime in occasionally. At times, it can be interesting for learning their backstories, but some interactions felt like they’re missing something."

This leads to another core aspect of StarRupture – the exploration. Venture far enough away from your base, and you’ll discover a Geoscanner and a free pistol. Unlock your map, and this quickly becomes a way to scan the surroundings to provide more information on points of interest. It also serves as a mini horde event of sorts, attracting alien bugs keen on tearing you to pieces.

While they all die relatively the same, I was surprised at the variance that each had to offer, whether it’s the leapers that aggressively attack, the infection-carrying exploders or the slag-shooting pests that preferred to hang back. It may be easy enough to handle a few initially, but once their numbers increase, you’ll want to invest in some serious firepower (which requires collecting a completely separate currency).

Even if the current slate of POIs feels somewhat limited, Arcadia-7 has some pretty interesting locations to go with the mysteriously radioactive Monoliths, dead bodies, and drone wreckage. Despite being uninhabited, other similar crews came here before you. Two guesses on what happened to them. Alongside the various datapads, you’ll find voice recordings painting a grim picture of not just the planet but how the corporate overlords chose to handle things.

Unfortunately, it’s offset by the other narrative element of StarRupture – the cast. Remember how I said you play as one of four convicts? Well, the other three are still connected to you and will chime in occasionally. At times, it can be interesting for learning their backstories, but some interactions felt like they’re missing something. Even without hearing from the others, my own character would mouth their own one-liners, which got a bit repetitive. This may be a hit or miss for some players. Honestly, there’s probably someone out there who’s a fan of hearing their avatar say “om nom nom” while eating food, but I’m not one of them. The voice acting isn’t all that bad, though, and some of the interactions with the AI assistant can be amusing.

"I’m not quite sure how StarRupture will ultimately measure up against either Satisfactory or Factorio in terms of pure automation in the long run, but that’s the thing: It doesn’t necessarily have to."

There are other gaps for StarRupture to fill – which should be addressed through subsequent updates – but I’m still quite impressed with just how much Creepy Jar has managed to cram into early access. The automation aspects are complex enough to allow for extensive optimization, and that’s before we even get into arming your bases with turrets. As you perform different actions, you’ll level up combat, stamina, and survival, which allows for equipping LEMs to further customize your character with benefits like increased health, faster weapon swap speed, and so on.

Creepy Jar also has the right idea when it comes to the fundamentals. Despite some iffy rail connections, I experienced one bug, ironically, a bug floating in mid-air, and no performance hiccups (except for the occasionally brief stutter when saving). As always, your mileage and settings may vary, but even the production values are nothing to sneeze at, with some genuinely stunning sights and an odd yet fitting synth soundtrack.

I’m not quite sure how StarRupture will ultimately measure up against either Satisfactory or Factorio in terms of pure automation in the long run, but that’s the thing: It doesn’t necessarily have to. As long as it can expand and improve on its own gameplay loop, where combat, exploration and base-building function as one harmonious whole, then StarRupture could very well serve as a compelling third option. For now, if you’re looking for a first-person automation title to fill the hole left by Satisfactory, it’s worth checking out.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Green Hell’s current-gen release will be accompanied by updates 17, 18, and 19 – which were previously only available to PC players – also become available for console players. That said, Creepy Jar has confirmed that cross-gen cross-platform multiplayer will not be supported, while save transfers from last-gen versions to current-gen versions won’t be supported either, which means everyone is going to have to start fresh. 

Additionally, support for the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game is being dropped. With Creepy Jar turning its attention to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, Green Hell’s last-gen versions won’t receive new updates and patches going forward.

Check out the announcement trailer for Green Hell’s PS5 and Xbox Series X/S release below.

The third part of the storyline will see the conclusion of Jake’s journey with the Amazonian tribe, which started back in January last year. Apart from that, the game will receive additional new content, such as a new Amazonian fishing tribe called Habukku, three new trial arenas, a completely new region, four new legends, two new weapons, and more.

A trailer has been released to offer a quick glimpse of the update, while also confirming its release date. Green Hell – Spirits of Amazonia Part 3 will be available later this month, on March 29. Check out the trailer below.

If you’ve ever played a real survival game from the last ten years or so then you basically know what to expect here. You will be dropped into a hazardous world with a handful of metrics to manage, terrain to familiarize yourself with, resources to gather, and of course, plenty of antagonistic forces to contend with. Of the many things that need to be constantly managed are Jake’s health, fatigue, hydration, and a balanced diet. It can be done, but don’t expect to come out of the gate swinging without making a lot of mistakes at first. Some mushrooms are good for certain situations, and some are not. Water is easy to find but must either be filtered or gathered from rainfall to be safe to drink. Weapons don’t require much to craft but the stones needed to make good ones are not super easy to find, and will change location on every spawn. Every inch of this world wants you dead, so every move you make in it needs to be purposeful and calculated. So, while Green Hell’s requirements of you are fairly simple in nature, they are not by any means easy to achieve.

"While the tone of Green Hell’s story and setting might remind you of Eli Roth’s Green Inferno, don’t let the superficial similarities lead you to think they are somehow related to one another. This is certainly a similar sort of tale that you would see from the tribal cannibal movie crazy of the early 80’s but it is also very much its own thing and it’s a story worth seeing if you can survive the game’s many treacherous obstacles – both intended and unintended ones – long enough to do so."

By design, there will almost always be something going horribly wrong. Maybe you’re away from your camp but also become so thirsty that you are forced to drink dirty water to buy you some time, which will almost certainly result in you ending up with internal parasites, which will also have to be dealt with. So, for every problem you solve, there will almost always be a new one created. This is how survival games work, but it’s particularly intense in Green Hell, both in terms of the speed at which things can deteriorate, and the sheer number of variables to keep a constant eye on. In a way, it can feel that this particular breed of hardcore survival game can conflict with the idea of progressing through a narrative. Given that my hands were always so full with problems that required immediate attention, it was hard to carve out short moments where I actually felt confident enough to move the story forward. All of this is of course even more pronounced in the beginning, as the short training section at the start does very little to initiate you to Green Hell’s numerous facets and how they impact each other. None of this is necessarily what I would call a flaw in an objective sense, as your personal appetite for punishment and hardcore survival situations will profoundly affect how much fun this sort of thing ends up being for you.

One thing that did stick in my craw however was the somewhat obtuse menu systems and inconsistent manner in which certain objects are crafted. Some items are created on your crafting table, while others require you to select them from your notebook, pick a spot, and place items into that spot to make the item manifest. Both of these methods work well enough, and I eventually understood the differences between – and purposes of – the two methods, but I still think it would have made more sense to just apply one method to everything. Couple that with the menu systems feeling quite clunky and unnatural for a controller, and you have a game that challenges you with learning how to use its various functions almost as much as it does with its actual intended gameplay. Some games make graceful transitions to console with liberal adjustments to their PC-centric menu systems; Green Hell is not one of those. Despite my best efforts to see one, I never quite felt like there was any one consistent functional language across all of Green Hell’s processes and mechanisms. Instead of the game’s moderately complex actions becoming second nature to me like they have in other similar games, I consistently found my eyes darting around the screen looking for visual cues of what button I needed to press to tell the game what I wanted to do.

While I do think that Green Hell’s difficulty could certainly be seen as one of its stronger qualities, especially for the right players, I seriously doubt that wasting precious time fumbling around with incoherent menu systems while my health continues to decline is the inferno that the developer intended. You can play an easier mode that turns off the insanity meter as well as native attacks, and for newcomers I would highly recommend this – at least until you are fluent in the game’s many quirks. Playing online could also theoretically yield benefits I suppose if you’re lucky enough to come across helpful players who can give you some tips, but I had little such luck in my time with the game.

"While I do think that Green Hell’s difficulty could certainly be seen as one of its stronger qualities, especially for the right players, I seriously doubt that wasting precious time fumbling around with incoherent menu systems while my health continues to decline is the inferno that the developer intended."

That said, once you are able to dig yourself out of the deep hole that the game initially drops you in, you can start to see glimmers of a grander system that these many different interconnected elements ultimately add up to. There is a bigger picture here that is sure to satisfy those who like the rush of constant struggle and reaching for a north star of stability that they will rarely if ever actually get to.

The visual performance of Green Hell on the PS4 Pro is impressive in terms of the detail that they were able to pull off on the platform. Details on Jake’s arms and legs stand out nicely. The Amazon rainforest is aptly dense, and everywhere you look you’ll find color, movement, and life. Sun and moon light bounce off of wet dirt and leaves in a convincing way that might momentarily trick you into thinking it’s well-optimized, but sadly overall, not so much. Screen tearing and frame drops are sights you will be very familiar with in this version of the game, especially when chopping down trees or engaging in combat. It can also interfere with normal tasks like crafting and picking up objects as button presses might not register because of a lag in the game, which can be particularly annoying in tense situations, which is most of the time. Why these haven’t been ironed out for the PS4 Pro version when the base version has existed for over three years now is beyond me, but if you are particularly sensitive to this sort of thing, I would advise you to tread lightly with getting the PS4 Pro version at this time.

Music in Green Hell is largely nonexistent but there is a nice series of eerie sounds that slowly swell as Jake loses sanity and experiences hallucinations. This well-designed soundscape helps those moments feel far more alarming than they otherwise would, and that successfully ratchets up the tension in an already constantly tense game. Voice acting is also pretty good across the board, so as far as audio goes, the game has made a seemingly perfect transition from PC and should satisfy what most PS4 Pro players are expecting.

"Green Hell makes no bones about what it is and can’t be faulted for being a purposefully difficult game that knows how to keep your back against the wall. Even after you get your arms around everything that’s expected of you, it doesn’t really feel like it loses that edge over you, so for that, Green Hell accomplishes exactly what it seems to want."

Green Hell makes no bones about what it is and can’t be faulted for being a purposefully difficult game that knows how to keep your back against the wall. Even after you get your arms around everything that’s expected of you, it doesn’t really feel like it loses that edge over you, so for that, Green Hell accomplishes exactly what it seems to want. It’s a relentless test of your ability to plan, solve problems, and adapt. What it doesn’t do is give you a user interface that facilitates your already steep uphill climb of getting the hang of things, nor does it land on the PS4 Pro in a way that keeps the gameplay feeling smooth and responsive enough to praise this version very much as a port. Thankfully, the flaws of this version don’t ever quite stop it from being a fun challenge that manages to remain enticing despite the abuse it dishes out.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.

"Green Hell wouldn’t be what it is without Steam Early Access."

How helpful was the early access period for Green Hell, in terms of listening and responding to feedback from the community and figuring out what works and what doesn’t?

Green Hell wouldn’t be what it is without Steam Early Access. The ability to update the game frequently and maintain contact with our dedicated community — who was constantly reviewing all our ideas — is something that allowed us to polish the first Creepy Jar game. But of course, our limited budget was also one of the factors why we decided to launch the game as Early Access.

The survival genre is one that’s seen a lot of excellent releases over the years, and recent years especially have seen some great survival games. Did you look at ay games in the genre in particular for inspiration?

The Long Dark was a clear inspiration because of the extremely realistic survival feeling. It’s you against ruthless nature/environment. The pace is slow — it’s not an action game.

Also, The Forest’s Steam Early Access and developer dialogue with the community showed us the right direction. Honestly, we were looking at many different productions that were gaining big groups of fans. Not just survivals, and not just Early Access games either. Under the ‘survival’ tag on Steam, you’ll find a virtually endless list of titles, but in fact, very few of them are survival per se. Our favorite titles were: The Long Dark, The Forest, and Stranded Deep.

How much of an emphasis does Green Hell place on storytelling?

At first, when we launched Green Hell it had no story, only survival and challenges. People wanted to play a story but it wasn’t essential to get the game off the ground. We knew what we wanted our story to be when we released it and simply put, we needed a lot of time to make it perfect. The narrative in Green Hell is really dramatic and emotional. It has two endings and many layers so even if you think you know what happened it later appears that the story is much deeper.

"Green Hell is above all a realistic, unique setting with a ton of attention to detail."

Green Hell’s Amazon rainforest setting is an interesting one, and it’s fair to say that it suits the game’s tone quite well- but what led to you picking this as the game’s setting? 

Green Hell is above all a realistic, unique setting with a ton of attention to detail. Before starting development, we did a lot of research and were surprised by how few games took place in the Amazon especially considering it’s such an interesting place. It’s the perfect environment to make a survival simulator game! With all its dangers — sickness, predators, conditions — alongside the indigenous people’s knowledge of how to survive, it’s the richest setting on Earth.

Now that Green Hell is out of early access, how has your approach to updating the game changed? Does the 1.0 tag do much to change how you look at additional content or fixes and updates?

Green Hell felt like a success long before the premiere of version 1.0, and we hope that it will stay alive and active for at least the same amount of time after it. Further additions and updates depend on both our ideas and resources, as well as the suggestions of our community.

Now that the PC version of Green Hell is fully released (with more updates to come!), it’s time for consoles — both of the big ones with PS4 and Xbox One, as well as Switch. Our friends from Forever Entertainment, who have extensive experience in customizing games for Switch, are already dealing with Green Hell on the Nintendo hybrid console.

As for the PS4 and Xbox One, the final decision has not yet been made – we are still wondering whether to do it alone or with a partner. We aren’t thinking about a sequel yet and are instead focusing on free DLC with co-op mode being top of mind. Green Hell, before the launch of 1.0, gathered so many fans that we will definitely come up with something. 

Green Hell’s survival mechanics are particularly interesting because they’re as much about mental well-being as they are about physical well-being. How did the idea come about to blend these two together in what seems like a mixture of survival and horror?

We wanted to give survival players something fresh — a different approach to already known mechanics. We had been reading a lot of books, watching movies and programs with Bear Grylls and Ed Stafford, and we took notice that both physical and mental health are strongly connected to each other. With low mental health, your body is weaker and the healing process is slower. And low health — wounds, worms under your skin — can drive you crazy. We felt that one condition almost couldn’t exist without the other, and only by having both mental and physical health to take care of would players feel the realism of Green Hell.

"In the Amazon rainforest, everything can kill you — drinking dirty water, sleeping on the ground, walking through bushes."

What can you tell us about the Body Inspection mechanic and how it plays into the game’s survival elements?

In the Amazon rainforest, everything can kill you — drinking dirty water, sleeping on the ground, walking through bushes. We designed the game to be as physical as possible with your notebook, maps, and even your own body being able to be inspected closely. This feature not only makes our game interesting, but incomparable to anything else out there in the genre.

After a lot of research into worms, parasites and other dangers lurking in the jungle, we decided that things like these could even become our USP (unique selling point). The key was making this feature as immersive as possible. Alternatively, we knew it could be tricky having so much danger in the game and we risked making players frustrated. The key was to find a good balance. We feel we have created that balance and the features are ready to play.

Can you speak about Green Hell’s dynamic environments, and how they change during gameplay?

In Green Hell there are two seasons affecting gameplay. The wet season or rainy season can cause rivers to swell — areas where river beds are normally dry turn into rivers and streams — and it’s harder to dry meat or start a fire. Alternately, the dry season will force the player to move out of well-known and comfortable locations in order to find water. There are also day/night cycles which affect the fauna around the player. When the day ends birds and butterflies hide letting bats take over the starry sky.

Roughly how long is an average playthrough of Green Hell?

Survival mode is sandbox so players can spend a lot of time in the game — the longest save we have seen (posted by a player in one of Steam threads) was above 300 in game days.

Story mode takes a couple of hours for very experienced players and about 10-15 hours for those new to the game. Of course, if someone focuses on survival aspects not following the story the playthrough can extend to several dozen.