Want to play survival games, but too afraid to go it alone? Developer, 8 Points, new Kickstarter project, The Wild Eight, lets you bring eight of your closest co-op buddies along for the hellish ride. The game centers around a group of people unceremoniously dumped into the Alaskan wilderness when their plane crashes. They (meaning you) must band together to help each other survive the dangerous new environment. If the cold doesn’t kill them, the local carnivores are happy to take up the challenge.

The top-down perspective is a pet peeve of mine, and while the art looks nice, it’s nothing we haven’t already seen implemented in other survive the cold style games. Outside of the possibly mysterious circumstances of the plane crash, I’m not sure how the developers plan to set this game apart. The campaign page teases the possibility of the survivors turning on one another and goes so far as to hint that cannibalism could be a potential outcome, but I’m not sure how player agency would factor into this.

The eight possible survivors follow standard archetypes; smart, lucky, strong, and pick up new survival skills as the game progresses. This allows them to gang up on and club animals to death with greater efficiency. Having a good group who is willing to work together seems to be your best bet at survival, which means the community will be a huge factor in determining how fun The Wild Eight ultimately ends up being to play.

The Wild Eight has a $50,000 goal, and not much to entice backers in the way of rewards. You have to hit the $50 mark for any physical rewards and everything up until then is just repackaged copies of the game or beta access. I get letting the game speak for itself, but even though I want to The Wild Eight, I feel like it’s missing the opportunity to do something new and different.

Track the progress of The Wild Eight Kickstarter in our Campaign Calendar.