Homeseek is a post-apocalyptic survival strategy game created by Traptics and published by The Iterative Collective. I first saw this game in action at PAXAUS 22, but now, it has a demo available on Steam for everyone to try out.

In Homeseek, the world has been destroyed by overpopulation, exploitation of the environment, and disregard for natural resources such as water, which is now worth more than gold. It is up to the player to keep a group of survivors alive, rebuild a settlement for them to call home, and live off the land. Every choice you make may impact the life or death of the settlers you are taking care of.

Regardless of whether you’re welcoming outsiders that may turn on you or putting off building or researching important structures, you need to constantly keep an eye on the people’s stats, focusing on the sick or injured, or just straight-up upset, as it will all impact the camp.

Like many strategy games, your point of view will be looking down on the land, and you place and build structures for the settlers to build. Certain buildings, such as water plants, will also need a storage unit built and linked to it, and this will allow you to store the resource.

Other buildings, such as houses, provide cover during storms and offer a place for settlers to rest up after work, and provide accommodation as more settlers join the ranks wanting better living conditions. You can also invest in medical centres to treat injuries and illnesses caused by harsh environments.

As you gather more resources, you can build more to expand the knowledge of the settlers, increase the number of building options, lower the cost of building, or how many resources can be gathered in a shorter time.

You will need scrap to unlock more in the building tree, though each area I was able to try out had at least five scrap mines to send survivors to. Think of scrap as wood in any other RTS game, and water would be gold. You need both to build and keep things rolling smoothly.

You can also send settlers out to explore with the expedition system. They will be gone for some time, but they could return with plenty of rewards. Or they could be lost to the wasteland. As you play, random events will occur, such as new people arriving at the camp and wanting to join, or storms approaching that you will need to react to and deal with.

Sadly the settlers don’t seem to have any stand-out features as you are unable to see a breakdown on a set person to see if they would fair better collecting scrap or being sent off an expedition so there is nothing that really sets the settles apart other than numbers to throw into marking for resources.

T Homeseek starts with an amazing cinematic and an old man describing the events leading up to now. All hope is left with the youth, as they still have the strength to harvest and explore. During gameplay, the graphics continue to look amazing, with ramshackle buildings and impressive environments, but it feels a little empty as you’re unable to interact with the settlers and there are limited sound effects. There is a bit of background music which helps to relieve the emptiness a little, but the lack of sounds from the settlers is quite unnerving.

The Homeseek preview we had access to takes place over five different days, and these will reflect the different environments you can find, from barren wastelands to frozen tundras, there is a zone to test all player’s skills.

There are plans for competitive multiplayer at release, but this preview is just single-player, and it ends if you fail. You’ll really need to hone your skills if you’re wanting a longer experience. Multiplayer sounds like it will be a whole lot of fun, raiding other camps, stealing resources, or even playing it safe and teaming up to survive.

Homeseek is trying a different approach when it comes to RTS games, with random world events that will force the player to rethink their approach to survival. Planned for a Steam release in 2023, the currently available Homeseek Demo will give players a chance to try it out, and even if you’re not a fan of the RTS genre, it is well worth giving it a chance.

UPDATE (26/01/2023)

Homeseek’ the post apolcayptic survial strategy game has had a new update to the test build and has offered players a new level to experience since the last preview.

The test experience has not changed from the bleak and barren wasteland we have seen before, with survival for as long as possible being the goal to aim for. What I was impressed to see in this new update was the addition of an event for rainfall. With this new inclusion, the rain has to fill up a dry creek bed and you must find a way to build and capture the fresh supply of water before it dries out again. This being an easy-sounding task can be pretty difficult as you need to research as much equipment to do so as fast as possible in a short window while also keeping the settlers around you happy and alive.

While aiming to use the limited timed sources such as water, heat and sickness are still a major issue for the people of the land, knowing when to have them rest or what to build to keep things going is always going to be a challenge to learn for all players. I myself am hoping to see how the frozen wastelands work and find a way to adapt to the cold environment, so hopefully, that will be coming as an update in the near future.

Written by: Shane Walsh