For my game I decided to play the Roblox game Natural survivor. The general goal of the game is to survive different natural disasters (ie. Flashflood, earthquake, acid rain, social virus, tsunami, thunder, snow & sand storm, fire, volcanic eruption) in different locations varying from barn houses, to race tracks, to prison.
You start off at a tower spawn point where you can overlook the current game, and also see the score board of people who have survived the most. Once in the game you have a good minuet or two to explore around the environment your in, and prepare for the ND (Natural Disaster). One “flaw” that I noticed is that the skyline can a lot of times give away what the disaster will be, which can also help you deduce what the other disasters will be as well. From what I’ve gathered – when the sky turns white, it’s either a snow or thunder storm; yellow would be a sand storm; grey would be acid rain or flash flood; and a clear sky means it’s a ND that will directly start from the ground vs the sky. Surviving each disaster also falls within a pattern; however, it gets slightly more technical when factoring in the different locations. Luckily, the game only has a set number of locations it cycles through, so you’ll get a lot of repeats.
A fun aspect of the game that I think can be underappreciated is the multiplayer aspect. You’re put into a game lobby with up to 50 other random people who are all going about the game in similar or drastically different ways. There is a chat feature so you can communicate with everyone, but unless you’re on a computer, it can take away from the experience since the text screen takes over the entire screen; prohibiting your ability to move around (which is not ideal). And the keyboard is annoying to use since the keys are so small, so unless you’re a 10 year old, you’re going to click on things you didn’t mean to.
On that note, in terms of who this game is for; Roblox in general has a fairly young demographic. however, I’m hesitant to say that the demographic for Natural Disaster is more so in the mid teens range since it’s such an og game on the platform, and also hasn’t updated much. It was quite nostalgic for me since I used to play with my bother all the time when we were younger. But the biggest difference I noticed was the lack of interaction within the chat that used to be there.
Overall, although the game play does get repetitive, and the challenge of surviving each disaster gets easier. The concept and digestible execution of each disaster makes up for a constant stimulus the player may be lacking. Playing with friends and playing on your own but still around people make the solo and multiplayer experience equally enjoyable and it’s just such a simple but fun game and I’d always highly recommend it