Long before Bethesda took the helm of the series and Walton Goggins donned ghoul makeup for the captivating TV adaptation, Fallout was an isometric action RPG, viewed from a bird's-eye perspective. It's this classic style of wasteland exploration that the upcoming Survive the Fall seems to draw inspiration from, at least based on my initial hours with the game. This deadly post-apocalyptic survival tale builds on the original Fallout's template—quite literally with its robust camp development system—and its squad-based combat and scavenging create a fresh experience, though the somewhat static story presentation slightly hinders its full personality from shining through.

Unlike many other post-apocalyptic settings, the devastated world of Survive the Fall wasn't caused by nuclear fallout. Instead, humanity faced a catastrophic event similar to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs: a comet collision that decimated a significant portion of the world's population and left behind a toxic mist called Stasis. Survivors either avoid this otherworldly plague or embrace its power, mutating into stronger forms at the cost of their humanity. Throughout Survive the Fall, your squad of scavengers must forge alliances with various factions across three distinct biomes to survive and thrive, from the Stasis-embracing Shroomers to the enigmatic cult known as the Sighted.

As I tackled quests from Survive the Fall's numerous task-givers, I quickly grew fond of its squad-based mechanics. Navigating a party of up to three survivors through the expansive national park setting at the story's outset, you can manually search for resources or delegate tasks to your team, allowing for a more natural division of labor and speeding up the process of scavenging each settlement. The only downside is the occasional clutter of button prompts when interactive elements are closely grouped, but these instances were rare.

Combat in Survive the Fall is also team-oriented. Given the scarcity of rifle and shotgun ammunition in the early game, I approached encounters with marauders and ghouls with stealth as my primary strategy. Each infiltration felt like a careful stalk reminiscent of Commandos: Origins—hiding in long grass, creating distractions with thrown stones, and quietly dispatching enemies before directing my squad to hide the bodies. The game offers satisfying environmental hazards to exploit, from explosive barrels to cargo pallets that can be dropped on unsuspecting guards with a well-timed shot.

Survive the Fall - Preview Screens

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Clearing out clusters of cultists was rewarding, but when stealth failed and combat ensued, the experience became slightly cumbersome with a controller. Targeting enemies with the lasersight was tricky, leading me to rely more on melee attacks and dodging. However, pausing the action to direct my squadmates to focus on specific targets, similar to systems in Wasteland or Mutant Year Zero, was a useful feature, allowing them to tackle tougher foes while I handled the support crew.

After a day of battling mutants and gathering resources in the game's deadly badlands, Survive the Fall shifts into a base-building management sim at your camp. Documents found in the world can be researched to earn knowledge points, which you can invest in a comprehensive technology tree to unlock crafting options for everything from bunk beds and kitchen areas to water filtration systems and an armory. Resources like timber can be transformed into planks for constructing new structures such as plant boxes or defensive gates, while foraged herbs and meat from wolves and deer can be prepared into meals for your next expedition. There's a lot of depth here, and I can see myself spending considerable time turning my settlement from a heap of rubble into a thriving community.

Beyond my base, Survive the Fall offers intriguing areas to explore. From a crashed passenger plane converted into an enemy fort to a farmstead teeming with Stasis-infected ghouls, the game rewards exploration in every direction. The impressive detail in these areas, like the luminescent mushroom clusters in the Mycorrhiza swamplands, occasionally impacted performance, causing frame rate drops. I also encountered game-breaking bugs that forced me to reload my save after getting stuck in menus. Fortunately, with a month until release, developer Angry Bulls Studio has time to optimize the game further.

While Survive the Fall offers diverse locales to explore, the lack of voice acting in character interactions results in a somewhat flat experience, relying solely on on-screen text. Though characters like Blooper, who humorously referred to the Stasis smog as "fart wind," provided some laughs, most conversations felt like mere quest prompts rather than deep character interactions.

The bonds between your squad and the factions might deepen over the full game, and we won't have to wait long to find out. Survive the Fall is set to release on PC this May, brimming with post-apocalyptic potential. If the rough edges in controls and performance can be smoothed out by then, this could become a survival-based action RPG worthy of your hard-earned bottlecaps.