Islands to make a life on
Sail between the West, Desert, Alpine and Cinder isles in your own boat. Chop, mine, craft and build a homestead with a bed, stashes and a dock. A deadpan townsfolk cast who have opinions about all of it.
How to
Survive
Coming soon
The gods are watching. Give them a show.
How to Survive is coming soon
Not out yet. In the meantime, make sure you own the six games below.
Requires the following games to play
How to Survive doesn't include any of these games or their files. It reads them from your own installs, so all six need to be installed on the same PC.
- How to Fish
Every body on the islands: the player, townsfolk, creatures and fish. Fishing, the fish shrines and their monsters, footsteps and the UI font.
- Roboquest · RyseUp Studios
The gods. Every boss behind the fog wall, its god room, its attacks, effects and sounds.
- Far Far West · Evil Raptor
The skeleton gunslingers that roam the West, their camps, the western guns, and thirty of the spell cards.
- PEAK · Aggro Crab & Landfall
Weather and its sounds: rain, sandstorms, blizzards, chimney smoke.
- R.E.P.O. · semiwork
The things that live in the haunted manor, plus the flashlight you carry in there.
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition · Bethesda Game Studios
First-person swords and their swings, and the six Arcane spells: Candlelight, Detect Life, Ward, Paralyze, Fury and Invisibility.
“Some nights, out on the water, I hear laughing.
Up there. Like a crowd.”
About this game
The old world ended a long time ago, and somebody built a set out of what was left. The islands are a show now, run by AI gods who love old westerns. The cowboys out in the desert are skeletons, and every day you stay alive is another episode.
You wake up on the shore, find the town and get to work. Fish, chop, mine, build and sail. Spend your gold in the saloon. Then go down into the crypts. At the bottom of each one somebody pried a door open, and the god on the other side can't shut it. So it floods the doorway with everything it has. Hold out through the siege, walk through the fog wall and meet the god.
Bring friends. It takes everybody to stand in that doorway.
What is a mega mod?
A mod changes one game. A mega mod is a whole new game built from several games you already own.
How to Survive has its own world, quests, systems, story and co-op. The people, creatures, gods, guns, swords, spells and weather come from six other games. When it starts, it finds your installs, reads what it needs from them and puts it all on the same set of islands. Nothing from those games ships with it.
How to Fish + Roboquest + Far Far West + PEAK + R.E.P.O. + Skyrim = How to Survive
What's ours
The borrowed games supply the cast. Almost everything they do, and everywhere they do it, was made for How to Survive.
205,000lines of game code
33quests
1,100+voice clips
4islands, plus treasure isles
The world
- The West, Desert, Alpine and Cinder isles, their terrain, coasts, weather and day and night
- Towns, docks, saloons, a casino, a jazz lodge and chapels, laid out by hand from licensed building packs
- Procedural crypts, the sieges at their end and the god rooms behind the fog walls
- Treasure maps and the procedural jungle isles they lead to
The game
- Levels, XP, gold and the economy, shops and traders
- The skill tree, crafting, the forge, set bonuses and rolled gear
- Homestead building, boats and the fish collection
- Magic loadouts, relics, dynamite, ailments and potions
- Pastimes, the photo album, pings, emotes and New Game+
The people and the story
- The lore of the gods and the show, and everything the townsfolk know about it
- Every quest, every line of dialog and every character, with designed voices
- Townsfolk routines, wandering, sitting, singing and playing
Under the hood
- Five-player Steam co-op, saves and join-in-progress
- The tools that read Unity and Unreal game files from your installs
- Rebuilding each borrowed boss, weapon and creature with its animations, sounds and effects, and balancing them against each other
- Boss themes, saloon songs and many sound effects
What comes from the other games is what they made best: the bodies and faces, the creatures and fish, the gods and their attacks, the guns, swords and spells, and the sound of the weather. How to Survive gives all of it somewhere to live and something to do.
Fish everything
Cast from docks, boats, ice holes and crypt lakes. Fill the fish collection, read the boat radar, and wake the shrine monsters (a whale, a crab, and worse) when you think you are ready.
Down through the crypts
Every crypt ends in a siege. A god opens its portal and floods it with everything it has so you never reach the door. Hold the altar, kindle artifacts for bigger rewards, then walk through the fog wall.
Kill a god
The boss behind the fog wall is the god itself, in a floating room built for a show. Billy Boom, Diggy, Dr. Turret, Catercoaster, Judgeball, Beetle Royale and more, each with its own music.
Saloons, casinos and chapels
Live bands, a jazz lodge, a casino with roulette and cards, and chapel pianists who play their pieces for you. Sit down, emote, drink, lose your gold.
Bring four friends
Online co-op for up to five players through Steam. Shared quests with a party card, pings, emotes and a ready-up before every god.
Also on the islands
- Skill tree with five branches, role paths and keystones
- Crafting with rolled grades up to Epic, perks and set bonuses
- 36 spell cards, relics, dynamite and a forge
- Clothing sets with tiers and perks, and a character creator
- Day and night: nights are more dangerous and pay more
- Treasure maps to procedural jungle isles
- Pastimes: shells, stone skipping, a fishing derby and a photo album
- Voiced quests and a story told by the people who are still here
- New Game+ for those who make it to the end
System requirements
Minimum
- OS
- Windows 10 64-bit
- Processor
- Quad-core, 3 GHz
- Memory
- 8 GB RAM
- Graphics
- GeForce GTX 970 / Radeon RX 470
- DirectX
- Version 12
- Network
- Broadband for co-op
- Additional
- The six required games installed through Steam
Recommended
- OS
- Windows 11 64-bit
- Processor
- 6-core, 3.5 GHz
- Memory
- 16 GB RAM
- Graphics
- GeForce RTX 2060 / Radeon RX 5700
- DirectX
- Version 12
- Storage
- SSD
- Additional
- The six required games installed through Steam
Provisional, and may change before release. Disk space depends on the required games, which you install separately.