Dead in Bermuda

[Version played: Steam v.1.1 (English)]

Dead in Bermuda is basically a management/simulation game about survival. You have 8 characters, and you pick who does what for the whole team to survive in a "deserted" island. While at it, they level up their skills, which is extremely important for things to go minimally well. As far as I could tell, there is no time limit (I finished the game on day 112, and I could have stretched it further).

The good things:

-The survival progression. From having a relatively "easy" situation where you can scavenge through the remains of the plane, to being on the constant verge of death as soon as you no longer find food in it -it's quite possible that some characters die then unless you load game dozens of times-, to having built a capable and self-sustainable sort of "tribe" that no longer has to worry so much about hunger, suicidal depression, or sickness.
I enjoyed a lot how the feeling of the game changed through this process, letting me relax and focus on exploring other elements.

-The art and sound departments. Again, for an indie company, the whole visual department is really fucking good. The music is barely there, but the few times there is, it's decent, and the sound effects are actually good and help the immersion. No complaints at all in those regards (one could say that the visual backgrounds are repetitive, yet they are cool enough to make up for it). A lot of things could have been done way cheaper or lazier, but they weren't.

-The setting and characters. The dialogues are nothing out of the ordinary but are decent and let you know and understand the characters, which are unique, personal, and believable enough. The setting is definitely above average; the more you explore the island, the less you can predict what you'll find next. It's definitely original, engaging, and pretty to look at.

One thing to criticize, though, is that the developers put heavy references about the tarot -specifically, the Marseille- all throughout the game, without making the slightest direct mention of it for the player to know. And this is important, because all the situations where the tarot cards are referenced can be solved with a better outcome if the player knows the cards and their meaning to some extent. As an enthusiast of that kind of stuff, I enjoyed it ("I see what you did there!" every now and then), but for someone that has no clue about the tarot, a lot of elements will seem random and nonsensical.

If you're gonna play this, I recommend having a sheet of the Marseille major arcana in front of you to consult whenever you see roman numerals, but unless you have a minimal knowledge about what the cards mean you will still miss some hints about what some things are for.

-The needs and results are decently balanced in most regards. The skill/trait system is very well implemented; it makes a difference having someone with low skill doing a task than someone with high skill -or having a team of madmen with low "Discussion" skill that want to kill each other vs being able to ease down their differences-, but it is never overpowered. This is also one of the reasons why progress in the game is enjoyable.

The bad things:

-The needs and results are not so decently balanced in some other regards. Some people complain that there is too much randomness in regards to results, and although I don't think it's severe, I think that the game would benefit from toning it down slightly.

But for me the worst aspects of the balancing here are the irrational elements that are hard to justify; fruit doesn't spoil (I guess they didn't want to make the game too unforgiving, but fruit not spoiling is a weird one...), you can cure yourself instantly from any level of sickness by just taking as much herbs as needed without a limit in a single day (this is the worst one; sickness becomes an absolute joke once you are able to scavenge for medicine herbs everyday), and the only resource that is not endlessly renewable through scavenging is the fabric for bandages (I have nothing against some elements being limited, but bandages being the one and only of them strikes me as odd).

Some people point out that it is absurd that the survivors have to "research" -in the middle of nowhere- how to make a basket, and then create one before they can just go forage. Also that fatigue is not lowered on sleep at night. Yep, it's a little nonsensical. But I'd say that some of it at least worked in making the game hard enough to be interesting.

-The main story itself is not that good. Not too bad either, it just unfolds into something mediocre the more it advances. It feels like the developers intended to make it underwhelming on purpose to bully the player. I don't know if they expected the player to like it or what their mindset was, but if you ask me, downgrading the plot of your own game like that for no reason is pretty dumb.

-The ending. This is what ruined the game for me; whatever you do, unless all the survivors die, you'll get the exact same ending. No variations at all. I was expecting that some of the choices I made or the results I got would matter in some way. Maybe there would be some mention of what fared to the characters that I cared for so attentively for hours and hours, related to what I made them do, how good their abilities became, the special objects they got, what was their overall state when the game ended... but no, that's not exactly what you get.

Giving the player so many things to choose and play with, so much room for improvement, and so much hardship, just to make it all matter just the same, is a really bad choice as a game developer. My rating would be considerably higher if all that was well exploited. As it is, there is no point in playing the game more than once. Yes, character traits -which are basically just bonuses- are randomized, and some map cells too, but what for? That alone doesn't add replayability.
Bad, bad choice to limit the ending in such a way.


So, all in all, Dead in Bermuda is a game that I enjoyed pretty much while it lasted, but that I wouldn't bother to play again nor I find real reasons to recommend it. There are other games of this kind far more rewarding. Cause that is the weakness here; not rewarding, no replaying value.