The Isle video essay - Experimenting with the survival formula

"Why hasn't Womble made a video in a while" Womble: I've been roleplaying as a dinosaur.

This game is literally: "I do not need to be faster than the predator, i just need to be faster than you!"

"Don't run in a straight line" "We're on an island!!' This is unexpected hilarity, random dinosaur voice acting...actual digestible information. It's got it all.

I remember playing as a young raptor and I was trying to take out a slightly smaller Dino (don't remember what kind) in the middle of the night when we both heard thumping footsteps from something much bigger than either of us approaching. I immediately hunkered down in a bush while the other guy scarpered, and I saw the big dude come thundering after him, running right past me without noticing with a roar. Idk if he caught the other small dude or not, but I could still hear him walking around and making the occasional sound for a good 15 minutes afterwards. I'd luckily just eaten recently so I could wait for quite some time, and after a while, everything went quiet again. I thought the big dude had finally left so I stood up and started heading to the nearby stream because I needed some water (otherwise I'd just wait out the night). Well as soon as I started moving the big dino burst out of the bushes next to me and killed me in one bite, scaring the living shit out of me in the process. He'd somehow guessed that I hadn't left, hunkered down, and out-waited me, that clever son of a bitch. The entire scenario had my pulse racing from start to finish. There is absolutely a market to be had in immersive non human sim style survival games with a food chain implemented, and I'd love to see more like it.

For someone who doesn't recommend me to buy "The Isle", you're really tempting me to buy "The Isle".

Womble: "don't buy the isle" Also womble: "you play as a dinosaur" I'm getting mixed messages

"A terrifying wasteland known only as Montana. Sounds positively dreadful." As a person from the terrifying wasteland known only as Montana, I concur.

I love how soviet can be so professional and passionate about these games, and then at 26:30 just loses his shit to a derp dinosaur lmao

Dayz: Go find the snickers bar The Isle: You are the snickers bar.

Womble losing his shit over the "curious looking herbivore" is so wholesome

I absolutely believe that The Isle’s developers have not noticed Twist B (or Twist A honestly) considering they still plan to add humans to the game. EDIT: They didn't get it. Humans are currently playable in The Isle.

As a biologist, I would LOVE to finally have a game where you played fairly accurately as an animal. It would give people insight into how animals behave and could even give researchers an interesting project into how behavior evolved overtime as you play.

Womble’s “professional” voice is something I don’t mind getting used to

I feel like you’ve brought up a much bigger problem of how scared most developers are to push the boat out

Unless he mentions it later, I think it should also be noted how much influence minecraft hunger games and survival games had on the battle royale scene. The whole forcefield slowly forcing you to the center, along with periodic random high tier loot dropping at spots throughout the match, forcing fights in focused areas, was very common here.

“Oh no I have a bacterial infection,” is like the most British thing you can say in a survival game.

19:59 "Don't run in a straight line!" "Why?!" "We're on an Island!!" That was some Madagascar Animation movie comedy right there.

damn now I really wanna play the isle but like, not the isle

I find it interesting that the Isle is basically a survival-driven dino chat room. You just dump a load of people into a space, give them something to do, and by extention something to talk about.

Saurian could be a genuinely brilliant game if they pivoted towards this. Their art design is unmatched, but they seem to be struggling to find an interesting gameplay loop.