Survival game UnReal World is getting an update this October: Here's why that's rad:
- The game launched in 1992 and it's still getting patches
- The 34-year-old game is considered the first open world survival game—it even has a Guinness World Record for it
- Its creator, Sami Maaranen, has no plans to stop updating it: "When I accomplish one feature, I always have two more waiting"
- The update will bring "fundamental new clothcrafting features" to UnReal World
- This isn't just some simple outfits being added: "the most complex garments [take] days and days to craft"
That last bullet is important. Materials for garments are expensive: one of the screenshots in the patch notes shows a woman, Heta, bartering for nine feet of linen cloth with another characher. She is offering up a hunting bow, 5 arrows, and a handaxe, and the seller still isn't willing to close the deal.
"Heta is haggling over the price of 9 feet of linen cloth. That's just the length required for making an undershirt," the developer says. "Oh how light, soft and cosy undershirt it would make, but there is really a price to pay for that."
Yeah, this isn't a survival game where you quickly grab some plant fiber or animal skins and sprint to a crafting bench to instantly bang yourself out new set of pantaloons. It's gonna cost a lot and take quite a bit of time to make your clothing.
"I've already become quite fond of having the characters spend their evenings or short winter days crafting a whole new set of things, developing their clothcrafting skills, and enjoying the satisfaction of making good-quality garments for themselves," the dev says.
This is my favorite quote from the patch notes:
"Heta has spent several moonlit evenings making socks for herself. Few more evenings to go, and she can finally try them on."
Several evenings. Just making socks! And after a few more nights of hard work she'll be able to actually put them on. Now that's a survival game.
Here's UnReal World on Steam and the full announcement about "The Survivor's New Clothes" update. One more link: why not check out our 2025 feature about the two developers behind UnReal World, Sam Maaranen and Erkka Lehmus of Enormous Elk.
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Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.