The year is Future. The time? Also Future. Me? I Am Future. Or at least, a man with a magnificent ginger beard is Future. Yes, it’s a cozy building and survival sim I Am Future from dev team Mandragora. The game has just been released in early access on Steam, and in it, you play as the aforementioned beardy man, who has woken up after six years in cryo-sleep with no memory of who or where he is.
With only a big bushy beard and a cybernetic hand at his disposal, it’s time to do a bit of recon around the area. Looking around, Sir Beards-a-lot appears to be on an overgrown and junk-filled rooftop while all around him below is flooded. It’s like Waterworld but interesting. Amongst the junk and scrap on the roof are a few semi-functioning remnants of technology, edible plants, and some less edible plants. In fact, these big, bulbous plants seem to emit a toxic gas when you get near them. Best to keep clear of those for now.
Also littered around are various metal and wooden structures that you can destroy for plans or sheet metal, but jokes on you, Harvey Beardman; you need specific tools to dismantle certain things. You don’t have those tools yet, so pick up that backpack you just found and then be confused when it appears sentient and flies around behind you smiling benignly. Once you have the upgraded tools, you can access more areas of the roof and find even more treasure.
Also on the roof is a fridge, and after restoring the power, the fridge introduces itself as Earl. Through Earl, you can glean a bit more information about the world you are in. Firstly, technology exists to transfer human consciousness to electronic devices, hence Earl. This is the city of Cosmopolis, meant to be a refuge for humanity until something happened that caused flooding.
Earl isn’t sure exactly what happened, though. He also tells you about gross leech-like creatures that have infested everything and only come out at night. These beasties will munch down any crops you plant and try and suck up any power you have running. I hate them! But you do get an achievement labeled “Uppies!” if you pick one up. You can also take care of them with some bug spray once you construct your workbench.
The basis of I Am Future is crafting, exploring, and finding out your own backstory. Who is this bearded technology wizard? More of your story is revealed as you find more relics and technology infused with human consciousness. Some of the technology/people knew you in the past and can shed some very fragmented light on who you were. There’s also the mystery of the flooded city to solve. Is the whole planet flooded? And where have these horrible leech things come from? The game is in early access, so you won’t get all your answers yet.
You will get a veritable cornucopia of crafting, building, and venturing further into the world through your trusty drone. As someone who gets distracted easily in games and tends to wander off, I spent a lot of time just building up my supplies and building the things I could build in the early game. You can also set your difficulty when you start the game – do you want no threats to your happy home? You can do that.
There is also a fun cooking mechanic where you can combine ingredients to create recipes and fillet fish. Speaking of fish, you can fish in this game! This is another way to get food and occasionally some other resources that you may need. Basically, there’s already a lot to do, and I haven’t even mentioned the expeditions with your drone to get supplies and scavenge for goods.
It is easy early on to think you couldn’t ever need the amount of planks and metal you can gather, but you are wrong. Once you get to later buildings, you will need to use those resources in the resource printer to create new and different things. The game is technically designed for you to linearly step up your crafting and tools as you go and complete missions, but as I said, I get distracted.
The only problem with my ADHD brain whistling while I made the Great Beardini shove biomass into his face is that I would forget what to do next. Conversations with your fridge etc., will elicit quests to complete before you can progress. Sometimes though, after doing my own thing, I would forget the nuances of quests. I knew what to do, but how was occasionally a mystery. There is a task journal that lists objectives but no other information. Having some information available as a reminder would be helpful for those of us with magpie brains (Oh, that’s shiny!) For most, it won’t be an issue, though, and it doesn’t detract from the game.
As an early access game, there’s a little bit of jank present, but I didn’t experience anything game ending during the twelve hours that I played. There were a few graphical issues, like sheet metal shimmying around like it was at a disco and objects popping in and out. A couple of objects and peoples’ names were also missing and still displaying the placeholder [emptystring]. You also starved very quickly; however, this has already been addressed in a patch from the devs. One downside is that the ability to save your game isn’t currently available, but it saves itself every few minutes after you complete something.
I was immediately sucked into the world of I Am Future. I’m a big fan of farming and resource management sims like Stardew Valley and Story of Seasons, and this has all the classic elements. There are all sorts of crafting, including making little minion robot friends. The best thing about these guys is that the charging station you build for them is a swimming pool with a rubber duck. Of course, they also help you build and collect materials.
I can see myself in the future and am still playing this game. Almost certainly too much.
8/10
I Am Future is out now in Early Access on Steam
