Project Silverfish
Last updated: 2025-08-06
- Impressive Early Access content and polish
- Engaging, intense core gameplay
- Strong STALKER-like experience
- Unbalanced AI and difficulty
- Lacks content and world depth
- Visuals and audio need polish
Emotions
Players are highly satisfied with the game's core gameplay loop, particularly the polished gunplay, immersive atmosphere, and engaging exploration. The game successfully captures the 'STALKER vibe' while offering unique elements, a rewarding progression system, and a surprising amount of content for an Early Access title. The overall quality, performance, and attention to detail contribute significantly to player enjoyment.
Excitement stems from the game's overall quality, engaging world, and significant future potential, especially for a STALKER-like experience. Players are thrilled by the emergent gameplay, intense gunfights, and the continuous discovery of new lore, monsters, and hideouts. There is strong anticipation for future updates, content, and the game's full release.
Frustration primarily arises from technical issues such as performance problems and graphical errors, as well as gameplay mechanics like unclear quest objectives, difficulty distinguishing factions, and overly accurate or janky AI. Players also express frustration with punishing death mechanics, unbalanced difficulty spikes, and issues with loot and inventory management.
Players enjoy the game's challenging yet fun gameplay loop, immersive world, and engaging exploration. The unique blend of STALKER-like atmosphere with unexpected elements, along with satisfying combat and the discovery of hidden secrets, contributes to a highly enjoyable experience. The game's current content and sandboxy nature also provide significant entertainment.
Anticipation is driven by the game's strong potential and the desire for future content and features. Players are eagerly awaiting updates, including new missions, expanded factions, modding support, and the eventual full release. The game's current quality in Early Access fuels the expectation of even greater things to come.
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 96% · Negative 4%. Score: 4 / 100
Positives:
- Players are overwhelmingly positive about the game's current state, especially for an Early Access title. They frequently praise the substantial amount of content, high level of polish, and overall fun factor, often stating it feels like a full release. Many consider it a 'gem' and a great value for its price, expressing strong enjoyment and addiction.
- The core gameplay loop is highly engaging, offering intense and satisfying gunplay that feels impactful and lethal. Players appreciate the challenging yet fair difficulty, the palpable tension, and the immersive survival horror elements. The game's pacing and responsive controls contribute to a deeply immersive and addictive experience.
- The game is widely praised for successfully capturing the essence and atmosphere of the STALKER series, often being called the 'spiritual successor' or 'STALKER-like' that fans have been waiting for. Reviewers frequently compare it favorably to STALKER and its mods, noting its streamlined mechanics and improved stability.
- Exploration is a highly rewarding aspect of the game, with players consistently discovering hidden content, secrets, and lore. The map design is praised for its density, interconnectedness, and the way it encourages players to think and observe rather than relying on markers. This fosters a strong sense of discovery and accomplishment.
- The game's art style, despite being low-poly, is highly effective in creating a compelling and immersive atmosphere. Players commend the detailed environments, clever lighting, and excellent sound design, which collectively enhance the tension and overall game feel. This approach is seen as a strength, proving that high-fidelity graphics aren't necessary for a rich experience.
Negatives:
- The enemy AI and overall difficulty balance are major pain points. Players report issues with enemies having overly accurate aim, inconsistent behavior, problematic spawn rates (too close or too numerous), and a general feeling of unfairness, leading to frustrating deaths.
- Many players feel the game lacks content, particularly in terms of story, quests, and overall world density. The world is described as empty, with unfinished areas and a general lack of engaging activities or narrative direction, which is partially attributed to its Early Access status.
- Players report that the game's visual presentation, including its low-poly art style and overall darkness, is often unappealing or detracts from the experience. This also extends to sound design, which is described as shallow or distorted.
- A significant number of players desire more robust weapon customization options, as the current system only allows for finding pre-modified weapons. This limitation, combined with issues in gunplay animations and sound design, impacts the overall combat experience.
- The looting system is widely criticized for being unrewarding and frustrating. Players frequently find empty containers, useless items, or experience issues with loot scattering due to physics, making exploration and resource gathering feel pointless.
Gameplay:
- The game is a single-player FPS with strong inspirations from STALKER, featuring exploration, looting, and survival elements. It's often described as a 'Furry STALKER' due to its unique anthropomorphic lizard/kobold characters and low-poly aesthetic.
- Players start by creating a character and paying off a debt, engaging with various factions that fight each other and mutants. The faction system is a core element, allowing players to build reputation and influence the dynamic world, though some aspects are still under development.
- The game features a non-linear, hands-off approach to quests and story, with no quest markers or detailed logs. Players must rely on environmental clues and exploration to progress, which can lead to aimless wandering for some.
Performance:
- Many players report excellent overall performance, with stable frame rates and minimal to no bugs, even on older hardware. The full game shows significant performance improvements over the demo.
- There's a suggestion that 8GB VRAM cards might offer a smoother experience, implying the stated 6GB VRAM minimum requirement might be understated for optimal performance.
- Developers have actively optimized the game by removing heavy Unreal Engine features like Nanite, which has contributed to the improved performance.
- NVIDIA Overlay users may encounter issues with recording or clipping gameplay, requiring them to disable desktop privacy mode as a workaround.
- A peculiar issue has been noted where GPU usage appears to directly mirror the framerate percentage, suggesting an unusual scaling or reporting mechanism.
Recommendations:
- The vast majority of players highly recommend the game, praising its quality and value even in its Early Access state. Many suggest purchasing it to support the developers.
- Many reviewers suggest trying the free demo first to gauge interest, especially if hesitant about the Early Access status or price. Some advise waiting for more content and polish, while others believe it's already worth playing.
- Players are highly optimistic about the game's future, believing it has the potential to become a masterpiece or a fan favorite upon full release. They eagerly anticipate future updates and content additions.
- Many reviewers emphasize the importance of supporting the developer, especially given it's an indie project. They believe the game deserves financial backing for its quality and potential.
- Reviewers frequently recommend checking out the developer's previous game, ADACA, especially its Zone Patrol mode, as it shares similar gameplay elements and quality.
Miscellaneous:
- Players are highly anticipating future content and updates, especially given the game's Early Access status. There's a strong desire for more missions, expanded factions, co-op mode, weapon customization, and general game progression.
- The game is recognized as an Early Access project, primarily developed by a single person or a very small team. Players acknowledge its early stage of development and the long road ahead.
- Players are requesting specific features such as controller support, co-op/multiplayer, more animations, weapon customization (e.g., modular scopes), and language support (e.g., Chinese).
- Players commend the developer's work, often referencing their previous project, ADACA, as an example of their capability. There's a sentiment of wanting to support the developer.
- Suggestions include easier landscape navigation, clearer guidance, the addition of more animal types (e.g., wolves), and potentially slower player movement.
