Grim Tales From The Black Death
The Black Death is brutal, but the plague wasn’t exactly sunshines and rainbows.
Around every corner something that can kill me could be lurking. Needless to say I’ve yet to survive more than two in-game days in The Black Death from developers Syrin Studios and Small Impact Games. Each death was caused by something different, and one thing that is for certain is that I would not survive very long during the plague. These are my early experiences with The Black Death as the starting class, Beggar.
This early access medieval survival game can either be played on a PvP or PvE server. Given my disdain for other people, I joined a PvE server expecting a more relaxed experience, but those initial couple of hours are spent wandering around finding materials and not dying. There aren’t carnivorous dinosaurs to look out for, or zombies, but infected civilians, rats, bandits, and even monks.
Being a survival game you can bet your bottom dollar you have to track food and water. In its current state, The Black Death is scarce of much food for the start. Any nourishment for me came from berries and garlic. But my head is on a swivel looking for better nourishment and other materials. As it turns out, this is a sure fire way to stumble across those who will kill you – inadvertently or otherwise.
I had ventured out towards the Highlands, going about my business collecting sticks and cotton. I hadn’t thought much about the monks farming and collecting rocks nearby. They seemed like nice men, but while collecting wood, one of them threw a rock at my head. This monk had a Scottish accent, so I definitely was in the Highlands alright. I thought I had escaped only to be engaged in combat by more monks.
Earlier, I’d mistakenly approached a man with a red marker above his head. You’d think my years of playing video games would have prepared me for the punches he threw. This was a bandit, but the red marker didn’t necessarily mean he was going to attack me. He had the plague. I had escaped this infected fiend, but minutes later had succumbed to the plague.
The visuals of the game match the bleak, morbid, grim nature of everything and everyone you find. May you have more luck than me in the wilds of The Black Death. I hope you have at least learnt from the errors of my ways that monks are evil and they gang up on you, the bastards. It’s everyone for themselves in The Black Death.
