Mr. Prepper | PS5 Review
Mr. Prepper, developed by Rejected Games and published by Ultimate Games, is a base building survival and simulation game. It is currently available on Windows PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch, and for the purpose of my review I was playing the PlayStation 5 version.
Mr. Prepper, as the name would have you imagine, is all about being prepared. Nuclear war is on the horizon, and you must get ready for what is coming. You must fight for your freedom along the way and survive what is coming for you. Your aim is to build an underground shelter, craft new machinery and facilities to keep you alive and sustained, while you can trade with neighbours to help them get what they need but also help you get new stuff as well. With anything in this game, preparation really is key. The entirety of Mr. Prepper comes down to two vitally important steps in your character's plan - build a bunker and escape the dystopian society in which he now exists. Along the way, you’ll also have to dodge the authorities because you're also on probation after being released from jail. You will randomly have police officers show up, so you’ll need to rush around to hide anything illicit or suspicious that you're up to. If you fail to do so, you’ll make them suspicious.
The game plays as a 2D survival game with lots of emphasis on resource management, as you would expect. The 2D style was something very different to what I’m used to from other survival games I’ve come to love, such as Green Hell and The Forest, but the 2D style just really worked for me. If you were a fan of the 2D aspect in This War of Mine, then perhaps you’d also perhaps want to check out Mr. Prepper. The main hub where you spend the bulk of your time is your bunker that you must upgrade as you progress. As you become more familiar with your new home, you’ll acquaint yourself with your neighbours, who will have tasks for you to do to help them out.
Mr. Prepper takes part in a day and night cycle, so you’ll need to plan and think about how many tasks you will be able to accomplish throughout the day, all the while you need to monitor your hunger and energy metres. These two factors will contribute to creating a “preparedness” metre. The game explains to us that your preparedness is affected when you're lacking any of the important necessities and if any of those stats fall below 50% then it’ll become harder to complete the tasks that you need to do. I did find Mr Prepper to be quite tough initially to balance things and keep all the plates spinning appropriately, but after a few attempts and untimely incidents I found my groove and really enjoyed it. The micromanaging was quite difficult but again, once I got to grips with the systems in play I was cooking with gas and moving along nicely.
I did find some aspects to be a little too challenging in areas that I didn’t expect. I assumed that because there’s only really three stats to monitor it would be quite simple, but these stats become a bit of a juggling act to get right and when I got one right and achieved a few things, I’d find I was deathly hungry. The balancing could do with some tweaks in my opinion, but other than that, I really had little to complain about. I found if I just spent a bit of time grinding, I’d eventually managed to catch up with myself and get things balanced again. Any good survival game wouldn’t just let you coast along happily without throwing a spanner in the works whenever possible, so I’ve sort of come to expect these things, and Mr. Prepper didn’t really let me down.
For something so simple there really was a great element of challenge for me. This is one that I would absolutely go back to and revisit happily and recommend to survival friends. With it being available on all platforms it would be something that would be great to play on the go and according to the Steam website, Mr Prepper is Steam Deck compatible which is another major winning point for me as well.
Lj’s Rating: 4 out of 5.
For more information on Mr. Prepper please use the following links...
Rejected Games - Developer | YouTube | Twitter
Ultimate Games - Publisher | Facebook | Twitter | Website
Many thanks to Ultimate Games for the Review Key.
Mr. Prepper | Windows PC | PlayStation | XBox | Nintendo
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