After six years of development, PUBG creator Brendan Greene has now released his new survival game Prologue: Go Wayback on Steam. The community’s reactions have been mixed.
After the hype surrounding Brendan Greene’s battle royale hit PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds began to slowly subside in 2018, the Irish developer announced his next project at the 2019 Game Awards: the survival game Prologue: Go Wayback!
According to Greene, the core of the game should be a simple survival gameplay loop: every time you start a new game, the map is procedurally regenerated – similar to Minecraft. No two rounds should be the same. The goal of the game is to get from one side of the map to the other while braving difficult weather conditions. There are no bells and whistles.
Prologue: Go Wayback! is now available in Early Access and actually follows this minimalist approach very consistently: the game focuses on survival itself. There are no quests, enemies, NPCs, or HUD – just your character and the deserted, miles-long map.
An empty game with technical problems …
However, not everyone likes this approach. The Steam reviews currently paint a mixed picture following the early access launch of Prologue at the end of November: only around 69 percent of user reviews are positive.
While some are already praising the successful survival atmosphere, other players are criticizing the lack of player guidance and technical problems with Prologue. For example, SethTheHex writes:
“It’s an unspectacular walking simulator that feels like a poorly optimized tech demo. It’s far too resource-intensive on the PC, and there’s hardly anything to do except walk around hoping to find a hut with items. And even then, those items don’t seem to have any effect. I drank five lemonades and ate two cans of Spam, and I’m not even halfway through the hunger and thirst meters.”
– SethTheHex (Steam reviewer)
… or a good foundation for the years to come?
Overall, most of the critical voices also complain that the game is too “empty.” However, the creator of PUBG says he expected negative reactions to his new game. In an interview with colleagues from PCGamesN, Greene says:
[Prologue] isn’t a traditional single-player game with a ton of missions, quests, and tasks. It’s more of a bunch of simple systems that allow you to experience your own adventure and choose what you want to do. It’s primarily a game against yourself. I knew that kind of criticism would come, but I’m very proud of the team […].
We have an update in the works with a bunch of new content, such as batteries and the like. We managed to improve our rating from, I think, 55 percent to 70 percent in just over a week, which is a credit to the team […] But yes, those comments were 100 percent to be expected.
I’m just glad that most people seem to understand what it’s all about.
– Brendan Greene (PlayerUnknown)
And indeed, the review average for Prologue: Go Wayback! seems to have improved significantly in recent days. If the game exceeds the 70 percent mark, it would move into the mostly positive rating range on Steam. Until then, however, some players will probably have to get used to Prologue’s unusual new gaming experience.
