Welcome to this week’s Forage. Tried something a little different this time—mixed in two list styles to help both skimmers and full-on readers. Let me know which one works better for you in the comments?
🔮 Upcoming Game News
- Among the Trolls
Dungeons? I just…I don’t know. I feel like it’s straying from what it could have been under the old team into just..something like Nightingale or Enshrouded. Something trite and overdone. - Subnautica 2
A new devLog, this time featuring several of their world designers. - Hiraeth
The playtest has been updated – check it out before playtest access is locked down! (probably join the Discord as well, to stay informed.) - Bushcraft Survival
Though the graphics are wonky, the concept is resonating with folks! - A Silent Desolation
A bit of a shocking development. - THE SIGNAL: Stranded on Sirenis
What a mouthful. Anyway, there’s a new playtest, and they announced a publisher partnership. - Blind Descent
As someone who participated in the original playtest, the changes detailed in this post are kinda meh to me. It’s starting to read more slick and surface level – like Forever Skies or Retreat to Enen. Guess we’ll see after getting our hands on the next playtest! - Paleolith
Some core systems are coming online, though the ‘adding fuel to the fire’ animation is perplexing in terms of player POV, it seems like the camera view needs to be adjusted.
🧠 Big Thoughts
7D2D was never really my game. It’s one I play with my sister—easy, dumb, mindlessly repetitive, and doesn’t require much effort. Perfect for pairing with Netflix, gossiping over VoIP, and being half-dead after a twelve-hour workday.
It’s always felt kind of phoned in: the POIs are predictable, the mechanics barely a tickle. But lately? The past few months of changes have been worse somehow, and I don’t get why it’s going downhill post-1.0 instead of getting better. Can they not focus through all the money this game’s made?
The 2.0 update—now pushed to live—continues their half-assed attempts to add “depth” and “difficulty” by making things slow, grindy, and clunky. After years of being overly simple, it now feels like they pulled a full WoW-style time-gating move. And players are receiving it about as well.
And then—cherry on the shit sundae—they dropped some paid cosmetic DLC.
7D2D 2.0? More like SCUM 2.0.
How do we roll back to the games we used to like? (Or in SCUM’s case… love?)
DayZ, whaaat the fuck are you doooingg?
I’ve loved and defended you for years, and you’ve just let the game limp along as a gun-fuck-fest, sidelining some genuinely interesting mechanics. (Plz fix colds, Tetra dependence is bad mmkay?)Then you dropped Sakhal, which I was actually hyped for—until I got hands-on and realized it’s just a limp attempt at doing what Namalsk has already been doing better for years. (It’s sitting at Mixed for a reason.) And now you announce another upcoming DLC: Badlands—which looks like TakistanPlus wearing a dollar-store mustache. Wtf?
Fix the janky-ass cars and broke-as-fuck zombies before you keep copy-pasting broken systems onto new maps. (Credit where credit due, though, I will take your zombies over SCUM‘s puppets.)
#️⃣ Hashtag Backend Changes
To celebrate Steam’s Summer Sale, I updated a large portion of the Curator blurbs – go shop! Multiple paid posts hit Patreon, and the latest Reddit Recap is live on our subreddit. A new Q&A with Romain (Derelicts) is slated to go live tomorrow.
I know we talked last week about this small calendar I was working on, but I’m also wondering if something like this -with countdown timers- may work as well. Thoughts?
Oh- I also made this fancy Carrd, so enjoy our links in one spot!
Steam Summer Sale June 26th- July 10th
Spotlight: Event
BUY BUY BUY
💥 Quick Shots
- SCUM posted a little summary of life after the 1.0 launch.
- Mayday: The Survival Island has partnered with indie.io.
- The new Polylithic demo is live!
- The Q2 update for The Last Plague: Blight is now slated for July 14th.
- A slew of fixes and new content with HumanitZ‘s latest update, Armored Frontier.
- Escape the Pacific has dropped new content: new island clusters, custom starts, and a Farmer role—survival just got strategic.
- A chonky content patch for ASKA with multiple fixes and new content – like animal husbandry!
- Bootstrap Island’s Riverlands update is out now. It’s their biggest so far, with a new biome and additional content. Peep the video!
- Here’s a pretty neat devlog on player movement from the developer of Fargone.
- UnReal World details some updates on the horizon.
🕸️ Around the Web
- Cool video – ‘Simulating Africa for 100 Days‘
- Who says you can’t hike in high heels?
- Tell me more about how sugar made you healthier, plz.
Remember—don’t keep Hashtag to yourself. Link it to a friend, sneak it into a Discord, or wedge it between some hot takes in your favorite comment section.
Till next time!
