I Am Future PC Review

Mandragora Games might not be as well-known as other studios, but the work they’re doing might just put them on display for all to see. With a small team of developers and thinkers based in Armenia, they have a drive and passion to create great but also interactive games to leave a lasting mark.

Like any new developer, they started small on the Indie front with mobile games with their first release in 2013, Knitted Deer, an interesting side-scroller that lets you play as a deer on a square of knitted fabric. They had a good pace going and expanded to other platforms with their releases of Skyhill Point ‘N’ Survive in 2015, a survival point-and-click game with some rogue-lite elements, and Freaky Awesome in 2017, an action-packed rogue-lite filled with monsters and strange encounters.

Fast forward to now brings us to the Early-Access release of I Am Future on 8 August 2023, a cozy survival game that might be a little rough around the edges, but it has a unique charm. However, there’s a lot more to I Am Future than just charm. You’ll need to get yourself established and survive. After all, that’s the purpose of a survival game.

I Am Future doesn’t give you much to work with regarding a story initially, but this is part of the fun on offer. You’ll start I Am Future with a quick cinematic showing an old billboard advertising the “Last chance to leave the Earth” with a seagull casually flying by. We follow the seagull and get a brief overview of what the city looks like, aside from being overgrown with nature, it’s also mostly broken down and flooded with what we can only guess is the sea.

That same seagull lands on one of the rooftops to snack on a worm. This is where you are brought back from your ‘cryo sleep pod’ when the seagull stands on one of the buttons for it.

Unfortunately, not much is known about the character you play at first or how he even became what seems to be the last human on the planet. This is since he’s suffering from some serious amnesia, but you’re not entirely alone, at least. You might be the only human around, but you’ll find some interesting companionship in the android / robotic friends you’ll make along the way.

However, the plot thickens even more as you meet more androids and discover more about your character’s history and what happened to the world. One thing is certain: you’ll need to survive, but you’ll also get to be cozy while doing it.

You start your singular mission on rather simple terms, and mostly, you’ll need to gather supplies and get a little base setup. This is made incredibly easy as the rooftop is littered with materials you can salvage and repurpose for your needs. Luckily, the tutorial will also guide you through a few basics, such as walking around, monitoring your health and hunger, salvaging, and more as needed.

As mentioned, you’ll need to salvage and collect everything. However, you’ll need a few tools. Luckily, your first tool is your Cybernetic Hand, which connects to your character’s prosthesis. Your prosthesis is your most important tool because of how versatile it becomes and what it gives you access to.

Though your first tool is the Cybernetic Hand, it’ll give you a decent strength boost and allow you to carry heavy objects like wooden planks and metal sheets, the usual things you can’t exactly carry in your inventory because of their size.

You'll probably also discover the Suitcase shortly after getting your nifty new hand. This is the place to be for those who like to customize their characters. Unfortunately, it’s not a full-scale character creator, and you’ll be quite limited on clothing options, expanding your options is relatively easy though.

Some of the clothing options can be unlocked through the Eco-Vending machines, and others you’ll find through expeditions and lockboxes. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how quickly your wardrobe can grow after spending some time cleaning up the rooftop.

Now, you’re probably wondering if there’s a form of story or quest system. You’re in luck; there is a quest system of sorts, though it can be a bit messy at times. While it can be useful sometimes to check your quest notepad, it’s easier to just explore, upgrade, and talk to everything you can.

You’ll still get the story, some interesting backstory, and occasional quest rewards. This might not be too appealing for some, as it makes the quest log a bit redundant, but it’s still a survival game.

Now that you’ve had time to explore and collect a few resources, you’ll need to start building your cozy little base and preparing for what’s to come. Typically, the first things you’ll need are the Crafting Bench and a Campfire, you’ll be introduced to the Construction Menu which carries all your blueprints for structures you can build.

From there, it’s pretty easy to get started – Choose the structure you want to build, place it, and start building. However, this only places a construction site; you’ll need to give it the required materials to finish the building. Everything you need can be found all around you; if not, you can make it or find it elsewhere.

With your Crafting Bench and Campfire up, you’ll officially have the basics to survive, but it’s not enough yet. You’ll need to discover, craft, or buy the rest of the tools for your prosthesis and their respective upgrades to get more resources and clear paths to explore the rooftop further.

The tools in question are – The Hammer, Drill, and The Fluid Extractor. Each one has its upgrades that will allow you to salvage materials from what’s around you further, but there are also certain requirements to salvage certain things. Without knowing where to go or what to do, this can slow your progress quite a lot.

Gathering materials and crafting new things is all good, though you’d starve if you didn’t eat now and then. Your character will need food, and aside from keeping you alive, it comes with a nifty strength boost. If you keep him well-fed, you can pick up more heavy materials in one go. Luckily, you’ll find tons of vegetables, plants, and other things around you on the rooftop, though these don’t provide much on the food front.

On the other hand, with some further exploring, you’ll discover the fishing spot, too, where you can go fishing for the various strange types of fish as long as you have the right bait. Back at the campfire, you can cut your fish to get the individual resources and make yourself a better meal. However, life isn’t easy, and you might have to experiment with some of your ingredients to figure out the recipes for better meals.

So, you’ve built a cozy little camp with all the basic requirements, but you’ve probably also encountered one of the more hostile things on the rooftops. The first one being the strange but oddly hostile plants that will spew out a cloud of poison, naturally, this poison is bad for you. Then you’ll also have Electrosites to deal with at night.

These even more odd worm-like creatures are attracted to anything warm or electrical, and they’ll destroy your whole camp if you’re not careful. Lucky for you, you can craft a pesticide that’ll make short work of them, and you definitely should. Leaving them to expire naturally at sunrise causes them to create a smaller but still dangerous plant that needs to be removed, or they’ll spread all over the rooftop.

I Am Future doesn’t leave you confined to just the rooftops, you’ll eventually find the Unicorp Smart Tower, though it’ll be in really bad condition and need some repairs. Getting up and running again will allow you to use the drone and explore the rest of the city for materials, odd encounters with other androids and a few shops.

Sadly, the drone runs on a rather limited battery, so you’ll need to plan your daily trips carefully. The resources you get from revisiting other areas in the city don’t make a huge difference, but the shops are what counts the most in this case. You’ll just need some U-Coins to make your purchases from the shops, but this is well worth it, even more so to progress some of your quests.

Naturally, you’ll need to make money to be able to spend it. I Am Future has you covered there with the Crypto Farm and a generator for electricity. Moving into the electrical age with upgrades will unlock more crafting recipes and make life so much easier on the survival front. However, one of the better things to come from this is the ability to build minions.

Robotic servants can handle some of your busy work as long as there’s a charging station for them. Unfortunately, minions aren’t quite perfect as they can still get stuck in odd places, or they’ll simply vanish. However, if you’re lucky, they’re amazing to have around because they lighten the workload.

The odd minion bugs aside, the Smart Tower will serve an extra purpose if this gets fixed in future patches. While your minions are incredibly simple and basic at first, you can purchase upgrades at the Smart Tower that will let them do more than just gather.

These upgrades will allow them to help with building and even farming, and both would be incredibly useful for getting your camp running smoothly. The Smart Tower comes with one other perk: if you have Encrypted Lockboxes, the Smart Tower can unlock them for you.

Something to keep in mind is that I Am Future is still in Early Access, so you’ll need to expect a bug or two and possibly even a missing name. If all goes well, it will all get patched out, and we’ll likely see a lot more features being added as time goes on. However, all we can do for now is hope that the developers will grow this game.

I Am Future doesn’t quite play the rules on the visual front for a survival game. Keeping in mind that the game has to be cozy as well, it relies heavily on a simple but not quite low-poly design. You’ll see that the world and everything you can interact with are designed to be soft on the eyes while maintaining a nice flow between colors.

While there isn’t much detail in the animation, environmental objects like trees and grass still wave in the wind, which adds a nice touch. The use of outlines around anything you interact with can be a bit distracting sometimes and does make things a bit confusing, given how densely packed the rooftop already is.

With regards to music and sound engineering, I Am Future really captured the meaning of comfortable and cozy. Between the day and night shifts, each one has its own unique soundtrack for background music that gives a new layer of life to the game. Unfortunately, there is a little voice acting for your character, but only during the initial cinematic.

The rest of the time, it’ll be a quick and repetitive ‘yay’ while fishing or a grunt while getting hurt. The androids you talk to rely on scratchy and muffled buzzing noises when they talk; having I Am Future fully voiced would make things a bit more interesting instead of just getting a yay.

Overall, I Am Future is literally the embodiment of cozy survival down to its core. It’s the type of game you’ll find yourself losing hours to without even realizing it; the occasional bug might be annoying, but it’s not enough of a hindrance to stop the fun. The only sad thing about I Am Future is how short-lived the current content in the game is, though we can only hope that more will be added in future updates.