Tokyo Jungle

[MrHealthy]

yeah, some of what I'm reading supports that. I never been interested in roguelike game due to perma death, but Tokyo Jungle sounds intriguing. It's kind of brilliant actually, a true survival game where survival actually means something...in the animal kingdom. Screw survival games with people in them. What do human beings know about fighting for survival? Animals do it every day.

It only has roguelike elements but it doesn't have the same punishing factor of perma death that roguelikes do. You see, you don't lose absolutely everything from death (unless you die in the first generation). Here, I'll break down the two game modes so you have a better understanding:

Survival (1-2 players)
Start by picking an animal, either a grazer, which must be more cautious and flee from combat, or a hunter, which must seek out combat all the time. (Just this choice in itself offers vastly different experiences).

Next you are dumped into the game world, your goal is simple, survive as long as you can. The world you are in is always the same but the enemy, food, event, weather and items are always randomized. The longer you live the more points you gain (yes, this game has arcade score attack type elements to it).

Then there are the challenges, complete a challenge to gain stat boosts and items as rewards. Complete certian challenges to unlock new animals as well. However, your animal can't just keep doing these things on its own. Age is an enemy in this game too. Get too old and your stats start to weaken (maybe even die, Ive never let it get that far) at which point you need to mate and produce offspring.

This offspring gains a portion of an stat boosts you aquired through challenges added to the creatures base stats. This is a permant addition, as in, once you game over and play again with that particular animal you will start off with all the stat increases you have inherited.

Story (1 player)
Story is pretty simple, play through some pre-set scenarios and missions using various creatures as they tell a fairly simple (on the surface) story. Thing is, story mode is locked from the start, so how do you go about playing it? Pretty simple actually, just kind of tedious at times.

In survival, 3 items will show up on your map, these are archives, snipets from the past which start to reveal what happened to the humans (and where the story starts going deeper). Collect all 3 and you unlock a story chapter. Complete said story chapter and 3 more archives will be added to survival, rinse repeat.

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Early on ignore going for high scores and surviving as long as you can. Just try and complete challenges that unlock more animals and collect archives to play through the story.

[Gamerforlife]

Yeah, I'm going to take the long term view of things being ultimately about beefing up every species and also acquiring more powerful ones, which sounds fun as it gives the game a certain rpg aspect and I love japanese rpgs. Plus, I got addicted to getting every animal in the game in Viva Pinata, so I think tokyo jungle will hold some appeal for me.

I'm downloading it now.

[Anapan]

Wow, this game is awesome! I spent a couple of hours playing it with my niece tonight and it's going great. She plays the deer and I play the cat. We're doing well, and I expect we'll be playing it for quite a while. We both just got eaten by some aligators. Lots of fun, and really well built. She wants to unlock the wolf so we can have a large pack of them. Anyone know how to get it/them?

Edit: I've been playing it during all my free time, and cannot stop. I wish the story mode and survival mode had been handled differently, but there's enough people ranting about that elsewhere on the net. I haven't been hooked on only a single game this good in a long while.