Here at PCGamesN, we like to relate to the stories told in the games we play. Maybe that means we like playing narrative-driven, emotional games, but just once we’d like a game inspired by that one time when we journalists – all of us – were trapped on islands with secret government experiments. Good times.

Well, in Withstand: Survival, we’re going to be able to do just that. How thoughtful of Egidijus Bachur, the main developer of Withstand, to include our experiences in his game. Withstand isn’t out yet, but we’ve been talking to Bachur about his choice to use Unreal Engine 4, post-apocalyptic atmospheres, and how he learned to make a game in the first place.

Like many other videogame fans, Bachur enjoys a good open-world survival game but found many on Steam to be unsatisfying. “Unfortunately there are a lot of unfinished games on Steam with a lack of content, abandoned, or with terrible optimisation, so I decided to create my own product – one that I will enjoy playing too,” Bachur tells us. “There are many reasons why unfinished games release every day on Steam – zero budget or a lack of experience, for example. Before I started Withstand, I acquired five-plus years of development experience, working in studios. I learned how to develop efficiently and in an optimised way, and correctly plan all development stages. I think every indie dev needs to get that experience before starting their own project.”

Bachur concedes, however, that it isn’t easy to create the right dystopian atmosphere in a game – even with his development experience. “It’s always hard to create a believable post-apocalyptic atmosphere. I need to spend a lot of time on aspects like models, colours, lighting, visual effects, music, and sound. With the right approach, all these parts can be combined into a single world and create the right mood for a survival game.”

The inspiration for Withstand stemmed from Bachur’s fondness for survival titles and the open-world genre as a whole, which led him to try his hand at something similar. “My favourite game series are Fallout, Far Cry, Half-Life, and Bioshock. I think they all inspired me somehow, but if we’re talking about survival games, I like 7 Days To Die and Subnautica,” Bachur says. “Days Gone and Horizon: Zero Dawn inspired me visually – they really pushed graphics to their boundaries so they motivate me to try to match their quality.”

If you want to play it once, you can... alternatively, you can live on the island forever Egidijus Bachur

You can see the influence of games like Days Gone in Withstand’s zombie enemies, or Far Cry in its forested environments, with objectives dabbled throughout. Withstand will give you missions and challenges to complete while surviving the island and its inhabitants. “You will need to use weapons and supplies, farm, hunt, craft new items, and upgrade your vehicle and skills to stay alive and fight your enemies.”

You’ll also have to contend with the weather. In the lore of Withstand, the island suffered an accidental chemical spill, contaminating its water. Without protective clothing, players will take damage from rain and swimming in lakes, making the environment all the more dangerous. But despite the zombies and murderous monsoons, you may not want to escape at all. “If you want to just play it once, you can just run through the main storyline, complete all quests, get all the answers, escape, and finish the game,” Bachur says. “Alternatively, you can live on the island forever, and build farms, start growing food, build vehicles, and explore even more hidden places.”

Unlike Withstand’s journalist hero, Bachur isn’t alone – he knows when he needs a hand, despite his years of experience. “My wife is helping me with writing the story, and marketing and social media. I also hire a lot of freelancers to do smaller tasks, such as rigging characters for animations, creating sound effects, or optimising game models. In the future, I want to start hiring people full-time and grow the team.”

Unreal Engine has very good features to make open-world locations Egidijus Bachur

Withstand is being developed in Unreal Engine 4, as with all the games in the Making it in Unreal series. We asked Bachur why the engine was the right choice for the game’s development. “When I started developing the game, I tried several engines, but Unreal Engine seemed to be the most ideal. One of the main reasons was its broad open-world toolset: a lot of features to work with seamless worlds, foliage, and a large number of assets.”

When you’re creating an open-world game, it needs to really be open-world – too many loading screens and it would feel too modular to be an open space. On top of that, the world needs to feel like a world – calamities and critters included. “One of the main technical challenges of Withstand is that players need to navigate through the island in a seamless fashion without loading screens, while also meeting other living things along the way: animals, characters, and so on. Unreal Engine has a very good set of features to make open-world locations without any troubles.”

In particular, a new update to the Unreal Engine 4 (update 2.24) has helped Bachur with the open-world environment development. “The Epic Games team made UE4 even better by adding improved landscape tools and layers system, which allows us to use a non-destructive pipeline while creating terrain. All characters in the game are also made on top of the default Unreal AI System (behaviour trees, blackboards), which was a great basis.”

All characters are made on top of the Unreal AI System Egidijus Bachur

The landscape tools in Unreal are particularly useful in an open world environment – creating a massive amount of terrain for a player to navigate is no issue, even across a multitude of devices. Behaviour trees are part of the AI tools in Unreal and combined with the blackboard, it’s an easy way to get NPCs up and running for an open-world.

When it comes to gameplay design, Bachur also found that Unreal had helpful prototyping solutions. “I needed to have the tools to test a lot of assets and Unreal already has a solution for that. It’s a visual scripting language and there are a lot of free sponsored assets and friendly developer communities on Discord and Facebook, which helped me to test and polish all features before I implemented them into the game.”

What might come as a surprise is that Bachur isn’t working with any publishers or investors on Withstand, nor is the project being funded through Patreon or Kickstarter – the project is running entirely on his own time and money. He also says that he’s “trying to make all development processes as transparent as possible. Everything I show is how it looks and works in-game. I have awesome, engaged fans who are helping me to create a lot of features through open discussions in Discord and Twitter.”

Although Withstand has only been in development for about a year, it’s releasing in Steam Early Access in just a couple of days – March 5 – so Bachur can engage his fans for an extended period of feedback. Buchar wants to “work in collaboration with gamers to improve the gaming experience and make the game that players want”.

Bachur’s ultimate motivation doesn’t come from his fans but from himself. He’s is making the game because he enjoys it. “Making games for me is both hobby and work all in one. When I start working on a game, I get so into it and lose track of time. I just enjoy the process. I think that the most fun thing of creating Withstand is the ability to work on the game itself and not think about the details of the engine or how it works since so much has already been done for us by Epic.”

Withstand enters Steam Early Access on March 5. Unreal Engine 4 development is now free.

In this sponsored series, we’re looking at how game developers are taking advantage of Unreal Engine 4 to create a new generation of PC games. With thanks to Epic Games and Egidijus Bachur.