Back in February, I came agonizingly close to beating an early build of Prologue: Go Wayback, the super-tough survival game being made by the new studio from Brendan Green, better known as battle royale trailblazer PlayerUnknown. Knowing Prologue was targeting a summer release window, I'd hoped it was coming to Steam Next Fest, and when I discovered a demo ready and waiting for me, I jumped in almost immediately. After all, I had to prove myself.
Prologue: Go Wayback is supposed to be "as hard a survival game as you can make," but its premise is simple. Starting from one point in its machine-generated wilderness, you have to make your way to a weather tower, which can be found on the highest point on the map. That map is inspired by the Czechian countryside, and is around the same size as a PUBG island - an 8x8km environment that's being generated by the technology that Greene founded his studio to work on.
The trouble is, Prologue is keen to abandon several of the more traditional tenets of modern video game convenience. The most notable of those is a total lack of minimap. Instead of granting you easy access to a world overview, Prologue provides you with a functional compass and a world-accurate map. To navigate, you'll have to align yourself against natural landmarks - the bends of rivers, the slope of a valley - matching up to your 'real' orienteering tools to find your way.
That can be hard enough on a well-marked hike, but in the densely-forested countryside of Bohemia, it's extremely easy to get lost. And that's usually when Prologue's other real kicker sets in. It can be hard enough to keep your body temperature - one of three survival criteria, alongside hunger and thirst - up during a clear day, but I'd barely left my starting location when the hail started to fall. Prologue is prepared to throw the very worst of central European weather, and while it'll offer clues as to when it's likely to roll in, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to find shelter in time.
Thankfully, the journey from the cabin I started in to the nearest shelter wasn't too difficult, but the bad weather combined with my flimsy starting kit meant that I was visibly shivering by the time I arrived. Thankfully, there was enough food in this new cabin to stave off any hunger overnight, and a quick change of clothes and the firewood pre-prepared in the grate meant that I could spend the night toasty warm, and set out again the next day, mostly refreshed.
I say mostly, because even though my belly was fully, I'd struggled to find any fresh water to drink, and my thirst meter was getting a bit low. Nevertheless, I started out making good progress - the sun was shining, and I quickly found the steep valley I'd been looking for. I'd spotted on the map that I could use it to find a tributary of the major river that ran through the middle of the map, and indeed it wasn't too long before I was standing on the bank.
Unfortunately, by then the fine weather had given way to a rapid snowstorm, and with the temperature and visibility dropping, I had to make the extremely risky decision to wade across the river. It was a decision that nearly killed me, but one I'd had to make - I would have frozen to death in the sudden storm, and I knew that I could find overnight shelter on the opposite bank, once again using the map to locate exactly where I could safely spend the night. I slammed the door shut and used my trembling fingers to shower a hastily-assembled pile of kindling with sparks, relishing in my rising body temperature.
But this shack had much less food than the last one, and absolutely no water. I was forced to set out early in the day in a desperate search for another shelter. Each one was marked on the map, but with a thick fog replacing the snow, my faith in my ability to find it was limited. And as my thirst built, I started to hallucinate, the lines on the map getting harder and harder to read. Eventually, however, despite the odds being stacked against me, I saw what I was looking for. I audibly gasped as I spotted the outline of a nearby cabin, setting off at a sprint. My only hope was that I could find something to drink as soon as I stepped inside, but it wasn't to be - my thirst meter hit zero just a few moments from the door, the post-death screen oh-so-helpfully revealing that I was exactly 13.993 meters from the nearest shelter. It was the final blow in a run where it seemed like the odds had been stacked against me from almost the very first moment, but I remain resolute. I have a week to beat Prologue, and by god I'm determined to do it.
I lost all my progress in a single catastrophic fall in this impossibly hard open-world Steam Next Fest demo, and I'm not even a tiny bit mad about it.
