There's a new survival crafting game with a twist that instantly has my attention: it's also a straight-up horror game where you're tasked with surviving the elements and the relentless stalking of a Wendigo.
Heat or Die, as it's aptly called, was just announced from Brazil-based solo developer Dylan Maffeis of Mounpeak Games. Maffeis tells me in an email exchange that the game is still very early in development, but that it takes inspiration from open-world survival game The Long Dark and investigation/survival hybrid Kona. Mounpeak's debut title, Heat or Die is a "short but intense" game in which you're lost in the middle of the forest during a snowy winter, and just as luck would have it, your only living company is a starving Wendigo.
If you haven't heard the urban legends, tracing back to Algonquian folklore, the Wendigo is a malevolent spirit taking on various, mostly bipedal forms, but with long limbs, sharp claws and teeth, and its signature feature, horns. In folkloric tales, they often possess humans and curse them with a hunger so insatiable that they murder and eat other humans. So yeah, pretty messed up.
However, that's exactly what draws me to Heat or Die and has the potential to pull me away from games like Palworld and Enshrouded. Not only am I fascinated with these kinds of urban legends, but also the idea of taking the stress and anxiety of an open-world survival game and amplifying it with the presence of a terrifying monster biologically inclined toward killing and eating you. Are you even a horror fan if you don't have slightly masochistic tendencies?
Anywho, the Steam page for Heat or Die is pretty barebones right now, with only a handful of screenshots of its early development and not a trailer or even teaser to speak of. The description says you'll explore an open-world in search of precious resources to overcome challenges - presumably hunger, coldness, sleep deprivation, and the like - and there's a heavy focus on resource management aspect that requires you to make "strategic choices" about what ingredients you expend on various crafting recipes.
It sounds like your three biggest challenges will be navigating the densely forested open world, maintaining and staying close enough to your campfire so you don't freeze to death, and sneaking around quietly enough to avoid becoming Wendigo poop.
It's entirely too soon to know whether Heat or Die will earn itself a spot amongst the best survival games, but in an extremely crowded category filled with some of the biggest and most viral games of the moment, it's encouraging to me that it's doing something new and unique. I'm told a trailer is on the way "soon," so we should have a clearer picture of what's in the works at Mounpeak Games shortly.
