Skip to main content
PC Gamer PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES
Sign in
  • View Profile
  • Sign out
flag of UK
UK
flag of US
US
flag of Canada
Canada
flag of Australia
Australia
  • Games
  • Hardware
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Guides
  • Video
  • Forum
  • More
    • PC Gaming Show
    • Software
    • Movies & TV
    • Coupons
    • Magazine
    • Newsletter
    • Community guidelines
    • Affiliate links
    • Meet the team
    • About PC Gamer
PC Gamer Magazine Subscription
PC Gamer Magazine Subscription
Why subscribe?
  • Subscribe to the world's #1 PC gaming mag
  • Try a single issue or save on a subscription
  • Issues delivered straight to your door or device
From$32.49
View
Popular
  • Tech recommendations
  • PC Gaming Show
  • SGF
  • Dune: Awakening
  • Nightreign

Recommended reading

A spellcaster and muscular barbarian face down against an army of skeletons.
Action If you ever thought Vampire Survivors was missing gore, lore, and buckwild nudity, then do I have a game for you
NPC hands the player supplies on a desert island
Survival & Crafting Lost Rift is a base-building, survival sim, extraction shooter mashup that you can try at Steam Next Fest
Chaos ensues on the bloody battlefield as players and enemies unload their guns in all directions
Roguelike OK, I can see the vision for why they call this co-op roguelike shooter Guntouchables
A zombified construction worker wearing a hard hat and hi-vis vest stares into the camera
FPS Co-op zombie shooter No More Room in Hell 2 is bringing back the fan-favorite Broadway map to kick off its summer of updates
The Last Caretaker trailer still
Survival & Crafting The Last Caretaker is an oceanic first-person survival shooter that tasks you with rebuilding humanity in a drowning world
A very angry looking robot from Supplice's new 4th episode
FPS Fill the Marathon-shaped hole in your life with Supplice, the best prog-heavy boomer shooter you've never heard of
A vagabond stands in the foreground as another spacesuit-wearing character shoots a white beam from a crouched position
Survival & Crafting Where do survival games go from here? Atmosfar's answer is a sci-fi road trip
  1. Games
  2. Action

Surviving the post-apocalypse now in Survival: Postapocalypse Now

Features
By Christopher Livingston published 22 April 2015

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Welcome to the time after the apocalypse

Welcome to the time after the apocalypse

Survival: Postapocalypse Now is not messing around. It's crammed as many important words into its title as it can, not even stopping long enough to use a hyphen. If it included "Early Access" and "Probably Has Crafting" in the title too, you probably wouldn't have to even play it!

Actually, you don't have to play it. I did, though, because it's only five dollars! I just can't resist the temptation of inexpensive unfinished survival games. Here's how I spent my first hour.

Page 1 of 13
Page 1 of 13
Don't cry, wolf

Don't cry, wolf

I begin my post-apocalypse shirtless, with a baseball bat, standing on a road in a wooded area. A wolf that barks like a small-to-midsize lapdog charges me from the bushes. He's very cute, but clearly angry, so I whomp him a few times with my bat. He gets in one good bite, and my character screams ear-splittingly. I win, though, and the wolf-dog lies in a weird jiggly pile. I eat part of him.

Page 2 of 13
Page 2 of 13
I'll trade you that shirt for a bag of advice

I'll trade you that shirt for a bag of advice

I find a downed chopper with some food, supplies, and a revolver. While trying to figure out how to load it, I examine my inventory, which is now filled with ammo clips and... advice? Maybe advice is the currency here in the post-apocalypse. My advice: bring a shirt.

Page 3 of 13
Page 3 of 13
A friend indeed

A friend indeed

While looting an apartment block, I encounter another player. "Hello!" he says. "I'm friendly. Do you have a mic?" I do, but I don't know what key activates it and I can't access the options menu while playing. I hop up and down and crouch, hoping my body language will signify I'm also friendly. He seems to understand. We start looting together.

Page 4 of 13
Page 4 of 13
The protector

The protector

My new friend grows very protective of me. When we hear gunshots outside, he suggests I wait while he goes to check it out. "Don't worry... I have a gun," he says dramatically. I do to, though I haven't shown it to him, because I don't want to appear threatening, and also because I'm thinking about maybe shooting him at some point. He has a cool coat.

Page 5 of 13
Page 5 of 13
Spectator: Postapocalypse Now

Spectator: Postapocalypse Now

Eventually I become stuck in a doorway, and after several minutes of trying to free myself, I click the helpful "suicide" button on the menu. While dead, there's a 60 second respawn timer, and I discover I can cycle through the other players, which is fun. I watch a tattooed player rifle through some drawers in his drawers.

Page 6 of 13
Page 6 of 13
Sliding drawers

Sliding drawers

Speaking of drawers, all the individual drawers in the game can be open and closed when you're looting. I find this more fun than DayZ, where stuff is just sitting on surfaces, and H1Z1 where you're simply shown a timer while searching cabinets. It's the little things that make the post-apocalypse worth surviving.

Page 7 of 13
Page 7 of 13
Bat man

Bat man

While in a house, I hear footsteps outside. Still unsure of how to communicate, I decide to let my bat do the talking. We trade blows, both of us comically shrieking when we get hit. I win and he flops weirdly to the ground. I encounter another guy outside and beat him to death too. I think I'm winning, a rarity in any game.

Page 8 of 13
Page 8 of 13
Slaking my thrist

Slaking my thrist

I find some food and drink, which is good because my status was "LowHungry" and "LowThristy," a dangerous state (I think?) for any half-naked man in the post-apocalypse. I also realize I have no actual evidence that this really is the post-apocalypse. As far as I can tell, we're just a group of assholes running around murdering each other.

Page 9 of 13
Page 9 of 13
Backshot

Backshot

Opening and closing drawers has led me to a shotgun and some shells. I come across a man who's killed a wolf-dog, and blast him in the back. I eat the dead dog and scour another building, finding a revolver and a few rounds. I'm definitely winning.

Page 10 of 13
Page 10 of 13
Unstoppable

Unstoppable

Another survivor invades the building I'm looting, and I pump a few rounds into him. My last few rounds, as it turns out. I fumble around with my inventory, trying to unload clips and find bullets for my guns. No luck. I'm back to bats.

Page 11 of 13
Page 11 of 13
Stoppable

Stoppable

Finally, I run into a more skilled batsman, and I die. While I wait to respawn I stare down at my precious collection of ammo, weapons, and advice scattered near my twisted body. No one loots it, but when I respawn I'm nowhere near my corpse. It's really not a lie when I say I've done better at this game than pretty much any other survival game, ever.

Page 12 of 13
Page 12 of 13
The end times

The end times

Well, Survival: Postapocalypse Now obviously isn't much to look at, even with the settings turned up to "Fantastic." It's a bit buggy, being Early Access and all, but it runs really well, it's a definite bargain at $5, and I had a good time being the biggest survival jerk I've ever been.

Page 13 of 13
Page 13 of 13
Christopher Livingston
Christopher Livingston
Social Links Navigation
Senior Editor

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.

Read more
A spellcaster and muscular barbarian face down against an army of skeletons.
If you ever thought Vampire Survivors was missing gore, lore, and buckwild nudity, then do I have a game for you
NPC hands the player supplies on a desert island
Lost Rift is a base-building, survival sim, extraction shooter mashup that you can try at Steam Next Fest
Chaos ensues on the bloody battlefield as players and enemies unload their guns in all directions
OK, I can see the vision for why they call this co-op roguelike shooter Guntouchables
A zombified construction worker wearing a hard hat and hi-vis vest stares into the camera
Co-op zombie shooter No More Room in Hell 2 is bringing back the fan-favorite Broadway map to kick off its summer of updates
The Last Caretaker trailer still
The Last Caretaker is an oceanic first-person survival shooter that tasks you with rebuilding humanity in a drowning world
A very angry looking robot from Supplice's new 4th episode
Fill the Marathon-shaped hole in your life with Supplice, the best prog-heavy boomer shooter you've never heard of
Latest in Action
A screenshot of the PC port of Red Dead Redemption, taken using maximum quality settings
'Exciting' Red Dead Redemption news less exciting than previously thought, says John Marston actor: 'Rockstar Games makes announcements for Rockstar Games'
Green toy soldiers led by a man in a skull mask
PlayStation's attempt to summarize the plot of Death Stranding in six minutes is heroic and doomed
GTA Online Money Fronts fist bump
How to maximize Money Fronts profits in GTA Online
Sword of the Sea's opening cutscene, just showing a close up of the Wraith's eyes. They're glowing bright blue behind the character's gold and ornate mask.
Sword of the Sea fuses Journey with Tony Hawk to make a pro skater game that feels as good as it looks
Gex stands against a fiery background.
Dark day for humanity as Gex Trilogy achieves 'huge success,' patches in its cursed EU voices from Red Dwarf's Cat and the 'Ding dong' guy
The witch Melinoe holds up her ghostly hand to conjure something magical with her staff in the other hand. A dark blue sky broods in the background with a skeleton man on the right side of the frame.
Hades 2 adds nastier bosses and new weapon variants in its last major update before it leaves early access behind
Latest in Features
An orange Rocket League car with flaming horns on the top.
10 years later, no one has replicated Rocket League's mojo
Sword of the Sea's opening cutscene, just showing a close up of the Wraith's eyes. They're glowing bright blue behind the character's gold and ornate mask.
Sword of the Sea fuses Journey with Tony Hawk to make a pro skater game that feels as good as it looks
Rematch kick
How ranks work in Rematch: What you need to rank up in each league and division
Date Everything
Date Everything claims to be a dating sim, but it doesn't love or understand its own genre
Key art for Aethus, showing a figure in a space suit standing on top of a large planetary base.
Survival game AETHUS sees you rebuilding a sci-fi colony after the ravages of galactic capitalism—and forging a new kind of future from the wreckage
A bird man character from Elden Ring reads a book in a library
Elden Ring Nightreign's relic system could learn a lot from MMOs like World of Warcraft, which figured out pure RNG loot sucks years ago
  1. Annapro carrying case, GameSir Nova Lite controller, SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds, and Asus ROG Falchion RX Low Profile keyboard on a blue background with PC Gamer Recommended logo
    1
    Best Steam Deck accessories in Australia for 2025: Our favorite docks, powerbanks and gamepads
  2. 2
    Best graphics card for laptops in 2025: the mobile GPUs I'd want in my next gaming laptop
  3. 3
    Best mini PCs in 2025: The compact computers I love the most
  4. 4
    Best 14-inch gaming laptop in 2025: The top compact gaming laptops I've held in these hands
  5. 5
    Best Mini-ITX motherboards in 2025: My pick from all the mini mobo marvels I've tested
  1. The Turtle Beach Stealth 600 gaming headset outside with the microphone and buttons on show.
    1
    Turtle Beach Stealth 600 (Gen 3) review
  2. 2
    Gamakay TK75HE V2 review
  3. 3
    Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army review
  4. 4
    Gamakay x NaughShark NS68 review
  5. 5
    Das Keyboard DeltaForce 65 review

PC Gamer is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

  • About Us
  • Contact Future's experts
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies policy
  • Advertise with us
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Careers

© Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.

Please login or signup to comment

Please wait...