Conan Exiles Early Access

When I think of Conan, a survival game isn't the first thing that comes to mind. In all fairness that wasn't the first idea for Fun Com either, as they did do that MMORPG first. But I digress, this is about Conan Exiles, a survival game set in the Hyborian world. You don't play as Conan but as either a male or female exile, who after being freed from death by crucifixion, is thrown in a harsh, desert surrounded country, filled with beasts, monsters, hostile people and ancient ruins.

So yes, a survival game, set in the world of Conan. And it's still in early access. There are two things I'm not that keen about: early access (says a man who has given money to crowdfunded games) and survival games. But, as I do like Conan and Robert E. Howard, I decided to bite the bullet.

While Conan Exiles is an MMO game, there's a single-player mode in it. It's pretty much the same as the MMO mode, but with fewer other people messing up your groove.

Again, Conan Exiles is in early access, so everything about it might change drastically. So anything I say here now might be different next month.

Beating up whatever in the name all that's holy that thing is with a stone sword

You start out as a figure strapped on a crucifix. After you've chosen your sex, you'll see more character creation options. As a note, CE has full nudity, so if seeing floppy dicks, vagina or breasts is offending to you, don't play it. There's also a possibility to choose either partial nudity, where bits are covered, but still there or full Barbie doll mode, so even those who are offended can play. But to hell with those people, if designers give a possibility to see an axe fielding warrior beating up monster with his dick flopping left and right or breasts bouncing,  why you'd want that censored is beyond me.

Besides all-important physical features, you can also choose your religion. You can worship either Crom, Mitra, Set or Yog. Out of these gods, Crom doesn't really grant you anything, as it's up to you to prove if you're worthy enough for him, but the other gods give you some additional building recipes.

After all that character building, you finally get to the game. You are thrown in a desert, either fully nude or with standard barbarian loincloth underwear, where your first task is to find some info about what the hell is going on. There's a couple of notes here and there as well as some raw material for crafting and it shouldn't take long to gather enough in order to fashion some clothing and simple stone weapons. Then you just start exploring, gathering materials, levelling up and gaining new recipes. You kill stuff, you build stuff. You make yourself a better fighter with better weapons. From stone to steel and whatnot.

Crafting and inventory menu. There are more crafting options available through different kinds of workstations you can build. I.E. better armour requires an armourers table on so on.

And that's pretty much all there's in the game at the moment as far I see it. Conan Exiles is a sandbox game, where you can go where ever you want, but you might get killed trying to do that. In order to get somewhere, you need to craft better gear in order to be able to kill tougher enemies.

The better stuff you want to create, the more you need to build other stuff. You can build a house for your protection. In there you can gather thralls and make them work for you. I haven't captured any yet though, as I've just been dicking around with the crafting stuff and cheats that are in the early access version. The crafting is actually pretty well done already, though as it is with these kinds of games, gathering stuff in order to build something is what it is. A lot of game time, at least in the beginning, is used just to whack down trees or chip up boulders in order to get raw materials.

A house that cheating built.  But then again I didn't get that armour through gameplay either.

I can't really say if there's something novel about Conan Exiles as such, as my knowledge about the genre itself is very lacking. But as such, it does seem to be heading in a good direction. It looks good, the crafting works and building up stuff is reasonably well done. The combat is okay, the pretty standard you'd expect to see in a 3rd person or 1st person game (you can play in either). All in all, a solid base to build on and it will be interesting to see what's planned next. I still ain't a fan of the survival genre, but for Conan, I'm willing to give it a go.

As of now, there's not much actual story content in the game. There are those notes here and there, and the obvious starting position of the game, but I do need to stress, that at least for now, Conan Exiles isn't a story-based game and I have no idea if there will ever be a grander story in it or will it play out more like Elite: Dangerous for an example, where there are only small bits of narrative here and there, but the main thing is on doing the tasks just like in CE it's in crafting and whatnot.

If you want to check Conan Exiles out yourself, it's in Steam right now. But it might be wise to check out some gameplay videos before you plunge.