Vantage: Primitive Survival Game Reviews
Vantage is a passion project created by a solo developer where your main objective is simple... to stay alive! You explore the massive world searching for food, creating primitive tools and weapons to hunt, and craft other items to make life easier. Play Online/Offline Multiplayer or Single Player.
App ID | 342910 |
App Type | GAME |
Categories | Single-player, Multi-player, Co-op, Online Co-op, LAN Co-op, Steam Trading Cards |
Genres | Indie, Simulation |
Release Date | 2 Dec, 2021 |
Platforms | Windows |
Supported Languages | English |

2 Total Reviews
0 Positive Reviews
2 Negative Reviews
Negative Score
Vantage: Primitive Survival Game has garnered a total of 2 reviews, with 0 positive reviews and 2 negative reviews, resulting in a ‘Negative’ overall score.
Recent Steam Reviews
This section displays the 10 most recent Steam reviews for the game, showcasing a mix of player experiences and sentiments. Each review summary includes the total playtime along with the number of thumbs-up and thumbs-down reactions, clearly indicating the community's feedback
Playtime:
2233 minutes
This may have taken the dev 10 years to get to this stage but I do not intend spending 10 years trying to progress in this game. It is such a grind, 35 hours in and I can still only carry 1 item in each hand, Someone says they like grinding, this is definitely the game for them.
👍 : 46 |
😃 : 3
Negative
Playtime:
1827 minutes
Where to start? I wasn't sure at all about trying this game. It looked like the kind of game I would enjoy but the mixed reviews, some of them rather strongly worded, and the fact that it is in the early stages of early access put me off for quite a while. So I bought it on sale thinking if I didn't like it or it didn't work properly I wasn't out much.
I like to read the bad reviews of a game to get a feel for some of the problems I may encounter and see if the complaints are actual problems with the game or just personal preference and opinion so I will start with some of those issues.
First, if you are the type of gamer that likes to jump into a game and be the biggest baddest warrior, builder, survivor, or whatever in an hour or two this game is definitely not for you. If you like games where you can walk around carrying several tons of supplies, equipment, and food in your personal inventory, forget it. In this game even if you have one of the containers available at the start of the game you will only be able to carry a few items at a time. If you don't have the container(s), you will carry one item in your left hand and one in your right hand. That's it. You also don't learn new skills or advance your characteristics (strength, wisdom, dexterity, etx.) very quickly. It takes time just like real cavemen would have.
The Ui is not very user friendly. Some things I think (hope) the developer will change. Like starting a solo game. Right now it is rather more complicated than I think it has to be. Right now you have to choose multiplayer or solo game, choose a server (yes you need a server for a solo game), create an account, log onto the server, then you can start the game. At least a solo game shouldn't have to be that complicated. I've played other games that required a virtual server for solo games that weren't that complicated.
There are some other issues that I'm sure will be addressed by the developer. Such as crashes during the tutorial due to losing server connection. If the server is on the player's computer how can we lose connection? So far it only happened in the tutorial, not regular game play.
The crafting interface is rather awkward but I'm not sure that can be changed considering they way crafting works. You don't just chop down a tree, get logs, then make planks, to build things like most games. The player needs to know what they need since wood can be cut into several items (small, medium, large sticks, and logs) and each larger item can be broken down to the smaller ones right down to making tinder from small sticks. Various things you craft will need one or mare of each type of wood. You can see the crafting tree is very in depth with a lot of detail. It also takes time to learn the skills to make more complicated items. It also helps to have some real life knowledge about the world. The first thing you should probably do is make a sharpened stone, or two. But you can't use just any type of stone. Limestone or sandstone won't work. Think flint or obsidian for sharpened stones. Edit: I just succeeded in making sharpened stones from sandstone. Either I didn't have the skills or a proper billet to do it when I first tried.
Another thing people complain about is the enforced permadeath. Yep, if you die you have to start all over. It is a survival game after all, if you die, you lose. When permadeath is available as an option I always use it in survival games just for the realism. When it isn't available I usually play under a self imposed permadeath.
If my information is accurate this game is an effort by a single person developing the game. Checking the update history indicates that updates have been pretty consistent at about one a month, sometimes more often, sometimes slightly less. I believe the developer is dedicated to this game and will see it through.
My Personal Experience so far:
I spent probably and hour or so in the tutorial. As mentioned the game did crash a few times during the tutorial which can be annoying and if you have a low frustration tolerance may discourage you from going farther. Part of my problem is that I am just a slow reader and there is a lot of reading in the tutorial. If you take the time to do the tutorial I does a fairly good job of explaining the mechanics of the game even though there is room for improvement.
The first time I started a game I let it drop me into a random location. Big mistake, it dropped me on an island in the frozen tundra with absolutely no food to gather. Snow covered land, mammoths, rabbits, trees, and shrubs. Being new to the game I had no clue what to do so I used it as a learning experience. Did a little exploring, tried various things, checked to see what I could and couldn't craft. Then decided to start over.
So at the time of this writing I have nine hours play time according to Steam. In my new start it has taken me several game days (a few real time hours) just to get a primitive fire going. Be prepared to fail on crafting attempts. Just like real life the first few times you try to make something it will probably not work. But we learn from our failures and it is the same in the game. Each time you try and fail you gain experience and can be better prepared for each attempt and gain more skill until you succeed. I didn't keep track but would estimate it took me about 5 or 6 attempts to get the fire going in between gathering and making the tools I needed to do it.
In summary, if you are looking for quick advancement and immediate gratification give this game a pass. But if you have the patience and determination to survive a more realistic situation I would highly recommend it. I haven't gone far in the game yet but I am looking forward to what is to come.
👍 : 12 |
😃 : 1
Positive
Playtime:
89 minutes
This game is unplayable. Refunded and no, it is definitely not recommended.
Running the game for the first time and trying a local single player game, the local server keeps freezing (or crashing). Watching the server control panel in task manager it constantly goes unresponsive (Not responding). The client agrees. Simply trying to craft a sharpened stone and the server seems to go out to lunch for so long that the client reports that the connection to the server is lost. The server seems to be accessing or writing to the disk constantly and might be the reason for the apparent freeze or crash.
Whatever is being done server side is a very very bad idea and needs considerable rework before this becomes remotely playable. You might have better mileage running on and SSD, I don't know. Even so the game needs to learn about caching.
The concept is sound, but the implementation of many things just isn't there. Even the simplest thing isn't being done such as immediately greying out or deselecting a button after clicking it is not being done. There is no feedback on the UI at all that it has received a click. Just picking up a loose stick or coconut on the ground seems to take minutes while the server 'processes' the action and you just sit watching it with no progress bar or any reasonable UI response.
No, just no way at all can this be recommended at this point in development.
👍 : 5 |
😃 : 0
Negative
Playtime:
1040 minutes
Recommending this game just to counter the (mostly unjustified) bad reviews. I find it unfair to give a bad review after not even trying to spend one hour to test the game (which are like 90% of the bad reviews here). Most complaints seem to come from people used to getting silver spooned and not getting it here. If you do not want to keep an open mind for a little different experience than you are normally used to from most mainstream games, better to just keep your distance.
👍 : 10 |
😃 : 1
Positive
Playtime:
38 minutes
For an Early Access game it doesn't look half bad. If you purchase this game you will need to have a lot of patience as you will die very frequently as you read through the tutorial. You have no inventory, no starting gear besides an apple & a chunk of wood in each hand with no clear tutorial as how to even eat or use them. In my honest opinion the entire tutorial needs to be completely rewritten in layman's terms (dummy) so even I could understand it. You click on a tree wow a thousand items show up yet you can't pick up a single thing??
👍 : 31 |
😃 : 2
Negative
Playtime:
280 minutes
So far, I've just gone through the tutorial and wandered around a bit, crafting a few tools. I really enjoy the detail involved in crafting. This isn't a game of quick progression where in a couple hours you're making towering walls and fancy houses. There's other nice games out there for that. What I appreciate about Vantage, is the realistic detail that is just deep enough to make it complex without ruining the fun aspect. Of course, there IS progression but I think it's properly earned.
Other aspects of the game are touched on by other reviews, but particular one I very much like is that the dev tells us this is a large world. I hate small play fields. Even if I never see a large part of a world, I like knowing it's there and can go there if I want. Now that I'm talking about it, I think I'll become a nomad and see how big this world really is.... see ya.
👍 : 30 |
😃 : 3
Positive
Playtime:
40 minutes
Multiplayer didn't work. Followed the directions in the Steam discussions/forums, which forces you to run your own dedicated server to play, but no matter what we did we could not could not connect or play together. Couldn't connect via the local option either, and also couldn't connect to the displayed official test server. Bought to play together with my spouse and couldn't.
👍 : 12 |
😃 : 0
Negative
Playtime:
2927 minutes
[h1] Vantage Review [/h1] (Early Access)
[b] Rating 2/5 - Good Idea, But ... Room for Improvement. [/b]
Vantage gives you the opportunity to act out the life of as a prehistoric / nomad early human around 250,000 B.C.E. It encourages crafting, learning, hunting and fighting to survive, Gameplay is rewarding and makes you earn all of your progress, but think twice about tackling that Mammoth solo. Gameplay, at the time of this review is limited, and incredibly slow, but has a lot of potential to be improved into a co-operative online multiplayer experience that would encourage players to band together, and war with other tribes.
The Good points :
[b] 1. Open World. [/b] There is a Good balance between survival and exploration, and the difficulty of survival can be raised and lowered according to your gameplay style, with relative rewards offered when making new Characters. (see Bad point 3 FFI)
[b] 2. Lots to do... (soon). [/b] Gameplay is versatile and allows for a player to specialize in any field of survival they are prepared to work on. Potentially this will be a bonus to the online multiplayer gaming, allowing new players to immerse into the gameplay faster by joining a tribe. - on this note, increasing a skill in this game takes a large amount of grinding, but the benefits that a player receives by leveling up a particular skill, make you feel like you've earned the skill. The skill tree and in game craftables are limited at the moment, however as the game develops, this should only get better.
[b] 3. Multiplayer or Single Player? [/b] Currently there is an option to play on public or private servers (not that the public servers work for me currently) this indicates that if you are a casual player, this gives an opportunity to play at your leisure, while paying attention to Podcasts or other activities. This is a trait in survival games that I personally appreciate.
Bad points :
[b] 1. Hunting. [/b] Weapons use is limited at this time. Weapons like spears / slings can be manufactured and thrown, but cannot be used while holding on to the weapon. When being mauled by a saber tooth tiger, there are few opportunities to defend yourself.
[b] 2. Crafting / Gathering Limitations. [/b] the Game only has the very basic tools currently in use (assuming the developer is planning to introduce more advanced tools.) This means that you will be constantly replacing any tool that you break while crafting or gathering. The main problem with this is that if you cannot finish a craft because a tool broke, and you don't have a spare nearby, you will lose all progress on that craft or gathering action and have effectively just wasted that precious tool that you made. This can be annoying, however will still increase your skills, if you're looking for a silver lining.
[b] 3. Dying. [/b] To put it simply, if you die, you lose all of your skills - The most valuable part of the game, - you have to start again, and that character is gone forever. While "realistic", this sucks, as grinding to level yourself up can be a waste of time. The Game offers a point system for after you die, to purchase equipment or skills for your new player, however at the moment I am unsure if this is a balanced and worthwhile system to continue gameplay from a similar level you left off from.
[b] 4. Should I have to breath manually? [/b] This game requires a rather high level of micromanagement. While you get used to it after a while, it is time consuming and slow to have to instruct your character for every little action. For example, to pick up an item requires a level of problem solving to get anywhere. [I] Select rock. Select pick up rock. Character wont pick up rock. Why? Hands are full with two other rocks. Open Accessories. Find Hide Sack information. Check for Room and Weight. Select rock. Click and Drag rock into Sack.[/I] This is time consuming and tedious. It also makes the gameplay rather stagnant when all you want to do is pick up a stick, or a rock, or that delicious looking banana. The game should have a tad more automation by automatically placing the items in bags, or hands if there is room via a single click. This will give the game some realism with the amount or time it would generally take IRL.
This game is a good idea, and has a good take on the survival genre that is becoming popular. This is definitely not a completed game, and shouldn't be held to a high standard ... Yet. At the moment, this game is good to kill some time on, and explore the environment and see if you have what it takes to survive as a Nomad, but isn't overly immersing enough to spend an enormous amount of time on, without getting bored or giving up. This Game only Gets a 2/5 rating, however, holds enough promise and potential that I will be keeping an eye on this game as it develops, and hope to be able to enjoy it when it is Finished.
Improvement recommendations for the developer -
some 'Features' to reconsider.
[b] 1. Dragging Items. [/b] The Player can drag items too heavy to carry. (dropping or placing an item when encumbered allows a player to slowly move larger items.) This is useful, and a nice feature for items like boulders, logs or a dead Saber tooth Tiger, however limitations should be imposed, as dragging a whole Mammoth by myself is slightly ridiculous.
[b] 2. Exploitable Hunting Bug. [/b] When hunting an animal that attacks back, standing in the water causes the animal to stand still at the shore and take the punishment until they die. The fact that water allows for escape is a good feature, however, the AI may need tweaking here.
Keep up the Good Work
--5th.
👍 : 27 |
😃 : 1
Positive
Playtime:
1138 minutes
So, this once appeared on my Steam Discovery queue and it was added to my Wishlist straight away based on my love of Early Access survival games. When launch day came I snapped it up and jumped in with great expectations- I was immediately disappointed. (Ensure you read further to see why I was wrong about that!)
Firstly, compared to more modern survival games such as Ark/Stranded Deep to name but two, this is far from beautiful and reminded me graphically like many games I played long ago (something I expected based on the Steam video footage). Visually, it’s almost quaint in a way and not a deal breaker as long as the content & playability was good...
I played offline single player for an hour and slowly worked out how the menu systems worked as they were not very intuitive. I had little to show for it except a few sharp stones and a few gathered bits of wood. Hang on I thought- just how long is this going to take me to build the other things I saw in the video? I saved my progress and went off to play something else with more immediate rewards.
But then I read more on how the developer has pretty much single-handedly crafted this game (and even the engine it runs on) for over a decade, originally starting on his Commodore Amiga which is a gaming platform I also shared. That’s some dedicated commitment so was I missing the point when being disappointed? Were my expectations entirely misplaced? The game sat there in my library like an itch I needed to scratch for a few days so I got stuck back in. And then the penny dropped. I had to put aside my comparisons to other survival games that are becoming ten to the dozen- This is not really a game at all- it's a labour of love on the whole principals of a dumb caveman that slowly and surely gains skills by repeating and refining skills at many basic tasks and learning new ones- almost a simulator if you will.
I have played (offline) for just 7 hours now and sure, I have crafted basic things over and over, but my skills are increasing and each time I level-up my skills I unlock a new crafting recipe & it feels like a genuine achievement. This game is getting its hooks into me. I got it all wrong with my initial expectations and I get it now. Evolution does not happen quickly.
The depth of resource harvesting is superb- even a humble tomato is complex, containing flesh, water and seeds that can be individually collected. Cut open a coconut, consume the flesh and water, then carry this to collect small resources like herbs and spices from plants. Kill a rabbit- sinew, brains, blood, meat, hide, and bone can all be extracted one by one. This game has REAL depth. Pretty much all the crafts and animals also have some tooltip text explaining the background/history of their importance. This game has some genuine thoughts and research going into it that makes it quite unique.
The game features character Perma-death, so you are not going to be hunting Sabretooths right away, in fact you are going to need to steer clear if you want to live! The game also includes a points system. You gain points based on your character progress, to use when you create a new custom character after death with better starting abilities and skills. That’s a good feature!
So, do I recommend it? Absolutely yes if you want to while away the hours in what’s actually a relaxing environment and slowly progress to greater things but come forewarned - you will not be a "high level craft-master” in a weekend. Given it’s playable online or single player, you can achieve this by looking for tribemates to team up with online or just play on your own and save progress each time you finish. If you are looking for something with immediate return and instant action then go elsewhere, but you may be missing the point in what this game is offering you and just maybe - a real gem!
I'm not going to list Pros/Cons for this game as I think the above review explains that the whole concept of the game could be seen as either of these, depending on what you look for. Do just consider this- if the Dev put that amount of time into making it, does it not deserve your attention- knowing in advance that great things take time to achieve?
👍 : 118 |
😃 : 8
Positive
Playtime:
12 minutes
I have a few recomendations to improve the game, I understand it is very new and in alpha and would like to assist the game to prosper. The controlls can be a bit confusing to start with (right mouse button to jump e.c.t.) which can be a bit confusing to start with. I understand this reveiw doesn't talk for everyone, but as an old fashioned gamer, I recommend sticking to the basics for simplicity (e.g. space for jumping).
I also recommend making the inventory system easier to control, I completed the tutorial and still found it troubling to equipt any weapon.
Again I understand that this may not be a shared oppinion but I beleive this game has a lot to offer and I completely reccomend it. Good work devs and keep it up.
👍 : 67 |
😃 : 8
Positive