You crashed your spaceship on an unknown planet … not a smart move! But, can you survive the planet and find a way off?.. perhaps by using the residual technology left behind an ancient advanced race? Sounds cool, right? A bit like Terraria in space? Yes, I had the same thought – sadly, it was not.
Kickstarting Residual
What started as a Kickstarter in 2020 moved on to release on the Nintendo Switch and other platforms. It felt like a cool idea back when I saw it on Kickstarter, but it never grabbed my full attention, so I decided not to back it then. However, when the review code dropped, I decided to give it another try, and I’m personally happy that I did not fork over the money back then; it’s sadly not the game I hoped it would be.
Genre Mashup
Normally, I’m a sucker for these kinds of games. A bit of pixel art, rogue-lite elements, and some survival were added to the mix. Sadly this was not one of these games. Residual throws you onto a procedurally generated planet with no humanoid lifeforms. Your task? Survive! – It’s time to explore caves, scavenge, craft, fish, pluck, chop, climb, jump, push, pull, solve puzzles, and survive! Unfortunately, the game offers zero explanation about how this works, just like surviving in the wild when you grew up with the only tech around you.
To make the genre-blend even weirder, they threw in a bit of Metroid because you stumble into the remnants of an ancient (technology) civilization. And yes, it’s time to scan and dig up the residual technology and possibly fix your spaceship and escape the planet! But, again, zero help or tutorial features – only a stupid robot that made jokes all the time – and not in a claptrap way.
Nature Engine
However, one cool feature was Orangepixel’s new Nature engine, where the whole planet is procedurally generated based on nature rules. Sunlight, heat or coldness, vegetation or sand, darkness or brightness will all dictate what type of life lives on the planet, how it survives, and the resources available to hopefully escape the planet.
In one game session, you might find yourself on a lush green planet but a dry, hot, barren world the next. Or perhaps an ice-cold planet were keeping some fire going will be the main focus of survival. Last one – me! Before I figured out how to beat off the wildlife or make fire – I ‘died’ a few times too many and wanted to give up on the title as a whole. Sure, Residual will always hand you the tools to survive and escape, but the placement, shape, and usage of those tools will vary vastly from game to game – to make it even more gamer..friendly..? Maybe I’m just missing the point of the game, so if you like this title, let me know what I did wrong!
After a few restarts, I figured out the basic concepts and moved towards other game sections, encountering the ancient tech I mentioned a bit earlier. Still, the annoyances were there. Feed yourself! Your stamina is lowwwww. Eaaaaaat something. I have deep respect for games that try to be different, like adding NO guns to a game, like Residual. But the whole picture is just … not clicking. Another neat feature to stay on the positive side is the creature feature! Residual features over 3000 beasts. When scanning for lifeforms, you can open up your Residex to browse the creatures by “species” discovered and then show the various creatures within that species.
Conclusion
And, that’s all I can say about it. It’s a weird mashup of genres that don’t work for me. I didn’t enjoy my time with Residual and didn’t recommend buying the game in its current state. If you like Dark Souls survival games, wear yourself out; just don’t come crying to me when you have the same realization I had a few hours in the game. I might sound like a spoiled nitpick at the moment – but gaming hours are scarce with kids, so I try to make the most out of it. But hey, I’m just a random guy on the internet…
