The Wild Eight is an isometric survival game set in the snow-socked wilds of Alaska, as envisioned through a lens of The X-Files, or perhaps Stranger Things. You've got all your usual mortal perils to deal with—cold, hunger, wild animals—but there's something else going on, too. Something sinister.
That strange "something" was hinted at last month, when publisher HypeTrain Digital warned of "mysterious entities, unseen creatures, and objects that definitely don’t belong in this world." I'd hoped that this gameplay trailer would dig deeper into that aspect of the game, but sadly it does not. The focus is almost entirely on the conventional elements of gameplay, like crafting, building, and the need to stay out of blizzards. The multiplayer element, particularly the co-operative hunting, looks interesting, and also like the sort of thing that could lead to tensions among groups of survivors.
Things start to get more interesting around the two-minute mark, beginning with the promise of answers "to questions you wouldn't dare ask." I thought we were headed into "Alive" territory at that point, but instead the narrator immediately started talking about the game's "huge, procedurally-generated world." It's a jarring shift, but eventually the trailer gets inside some kind of high-tech installation of the sort that's generally kept super-duper-secret by the more shadowy elements of the government. And that kicker at the end—"There's no way out of here"—is a strong, if somewhat disturbing, way to finish.
The Wild Eight Steam page says the game will be out in the fall of 2016, which I'm feeling a little doubtful about, given that we're now a full week into November. I've reached out to the developers to ask if that window still holds, and will update when I hear back.
