Drift Into Eternity is a survival game in which we find ourselves lost on a hostile planet following the crash of our ship. When you notice that the initials form the word DIE, ie die in English, I think a lot has already been said!
I start the game and land in my cabin, that's the menu, but I can already move my mouse and move the camera in FPS mode as will be the case in the game afterwards. After having made a quick tour of the options, I begin my game. A loading time, then the game conforms to the menu booth. I explore my two rooms and move forward with the arrow keys on the American keyboard, WASD. The mouse allows you to interact with the interactive elements of the decor, such as switches to open doors or crates to loot.
I go out and I discover vast passageways. Immediately I am lost. Like any survival game, the character has gauges that must be constantly monitored: life, thirst, and morale. And it goes down very quickly ... Everywhere, there are objects to recover which go up these gauges, like fruits, combat rations, sodas, bottles of water, comics, music. For morale, certainly the most difficult gauge to maintain, there are also objects that can be activated once a day, such as a teddy bear or a stress ball.
The ship is really full of usable stuff even though there is less and less consumable food over time (and here I wish I wasted the combat rations now that the fruits are rotten). There are a lot of items to collect everywhere that are used to build other items or to repair the ship. To create, you have to find the right room and have the right components, which is complicated in that there are no maps, just plans on the walls, and the rooms are everywhere.
Rather lucky, during this part I managed to find the infirmary, the water recycling systems and a laboratory.
My first attempt ended after 6 days of survival, in particular because of huge fires which broke out in the vessel, forcing me to repatriate myself in a part, which unfortunately ignited in turn.
Recluse, I gradually exhausted all available resources and the fire finished me off when it finally managed to reach me, forcing my character to die, locked in his cabin.
There isn't really a tutorial, but an AI talks to us regularly and gives little tips. Expect to foolishly die a few times before you figure out all the ins and outs. After just one game, I knew the useful items, knew how to beat a fire, and how to create other items. Clearly, if the fire had not spread so much, and if I had kept my rations, I could have lived at least several more days!
Before concluding, Drift Into Eternity offers many possibilities:
- explore the ship
- repair the damage
- explore and maintain systems
- prevent or treat injuries and illnesses
- explore the ship for upgrades, developable technologies, and unique items
- adapt to the environment to find a way to survive
If you are wondering about replayability, the position of all non-generic parts of the ship are randomly generated (about half), as well as the contents of each box and the events. All this is random in order to force the player, even experienced, to adapt.
The 3D graphics are decent, according to the press kit inspired by Le Corbusier and the architectural movement of brutalism. The sound environment adds to the immersion with crackles and the voice of the AI which regularly interrupts the oppressive silence or the discreet music. Necessarily a little repetitive in its mechanisms (move forward, search everything, take what is useful, eat / drink / heal / play, move forward, search ...), Drift Into Eternity is however a much more complex game than it is. It seems at first glance to really master it. If you want to rise in the rankings and position yourself among the best players, or even why not beat the current record of 17 days, you will have to show great ingenuity.
