➤ Mr. Prepper, the PC review 🎮

In our episode of Top 5 Indie dedicated to this month, we had pointed out among the most interesting titles that Mr. Prepper, out on March 18 on Steam, who today we are here to review. The title developed by Rejected Games it is full of interesting ideas, put together in an intelligent and intriguing way. After a few years of waiting and some success also in the recent Steam Game Festival, we are ready to give you our final judgment in the PC review by Mr. Prepper.

Escape to Victory

Mr. Prepper, the PC review — Mr. Prepper: the greenhouse room.

The world is no longer what we knew, the government controls everything and freedom is just a distant memory. Within this scenario there is Mr. Prepper, a particular title in which, playing the role of the Prepper, you will have to try to carry out your escape plan. How did that famous fellow always say? Between saying and doing there is the sea. Escape from the world of Mr. Prepper is not that simple, your previous escape attempts have been disastrously shattered and therefore what you need to carry out now is a complex and layered plan that starts from the foundation of your home. Creating a bunker is not a simple thing and you will discover it at your expense.

In Mr. Prepper the goal is to create your personal underground bunker in which to put into practice every key step of your escape plan which, no spoilers, does not involve the use of orthodox means of transport. To do this, however, you will have to learn to survive, craft objects, to trade with shady individuals and manage not to be discovered by the government (worth the end of the game). Before delving into the gameplay, however, we want to underline how Rejected Games has well inserted in such a peculiar title several layers of narrative capable of stimulating the player, intriguing him at certain moments and causing that desire to discover more that was a panacea to break. the intrinsic repetition of certain mechanics.

A 3D game in a 2D world

The game will take place almost entirely in your home: the 2D plan you will work on creates a cross-section of your home, allowing you to navigate between the various rooms with the click of the mouse and interact with each element on the screen. The only really important room will be the bedroom, for the rest all the others will serve as an alibi and outline to the real nerve center which will be the ensemble of underground rooms. A small tutorial will welcome you at the beginning of your Mr. Prepper game, allowing you to familiarize yourself with the main features of the game. However, not everything will be explained to you and the gameplay it will be discovered a little at a time. In fact, we found this introduction a bit hasty, poorly maintained compared to the other components of the game. For those not used to this genre of games but especially for those not used to the mechanics of crafting and obtaining materials in a survival game, the first impact can really be brutal. Mr. Prepper is not an easy title, in order to build and be efficient you will have to remember to eat, manage your strength well and above all rest. Sleep is a fundamental factor, taking naps when you are too tired and remembering to go to bed at the right times will allow you not to lose efficiency and not to suffer malus. If being efficient with respect to your escape plan will be the most important thing then, immediately below we find survival from your Prepper. The management of materials is placed in the third step of the priorities.

In Mr. Prepper, materials can be crafted in the workbench, obtained through exploration of certain areas or recovered through trade. There mailbox outside your home will allow you to interact with the neighborhood and various shops (as well as some individuals who will contact you during the game). This aspect will be very important: in fact you will not always be able to recover the materials you will need and being able to fully understand all the dynamics of trade will be crucial for the success of your plans. For example, dismantling the glasses in the pantry is a great and quick way to obtain glass, too bad that by emptying the cupboard you will trigger a dangerous mechanism of suspicion in the government. In fact, in Mr. Prepper, the main antagonist (the government in fact) acts through his employee who every few days (you will have a notice on the calendar) will come to check your home looking for activities that go against the law.

At the end of the government inspection you will be shown a report. If the inspection has caused a large increase in suspicion, you may as well lose the match. For this reason, careful management of materials requires the player to be able to juggle every single way of obtaining materials. Precisely for this reason, the ability to explore certain areas such as the desert, mines or the forest to recover materials comes to the aid of the player. The 2D exploration will take place through multiple levels where you can to hunt, retrieve materials, set traps, face wild animals in captivity, and even find some NPCs to undertake some with side quests. The important thing will be to better manage your forces, leave prepared and be able to get as much as possible from each exploration.

Graphics and technique

Playfully Mr. Prepper really offers several intriguing solutions: energy management, crafting, government suspicions, exploration even upgrading the rooms you will create. This last point convinced us the most. The rooms that you can create are very varied and the management of the bunker will be very personal, with the possibility for each player to create a set of peculiar, unique and personal rooms although some of them are the same for everyone. Each element then has a remarkable depth, with interesting mechanics that will always keep your attention high. Even growing carrots in an underground greenhouse will require a series of precautions that make such a trivial action fun.

As for aspects like graphics and sound instead, Mr. Prepper clearly does not aim to impress from a technical point of view and indeed, some models leave something to be desired. We would have preferred a greater cleaning especially of the explorable areas. The various levels of the forest, for example, have the same pattern in sequence and the textures in general seemed a little less refined than those in the house. As for the house and the bunker, we are instead very satisfied with the results obtained, especially as regards the lighting of the environments (which has its implication also in terms of gameplay) and in the management of the weather, which is also important for the purposes. some game dynamics. In terms of sound, the game does not offer great ideas and even in this case, perhaps we could have dared in the open areas, perhaps to make them more memorable.

Comment

Tested version PC Windows Digital Delivery Steam Resources4Gaming.com

7.5

Readers (5)

8.5

Your vote

Mr. Prepper offers several hours of fun. The player's mind is constantly stimulated for the purpose of a careful management of resources, a wise organization of time and a continuous search for optimization. Mr. Prepper is not perfect, both on a playful and technical level, but it is certainly a peculiar experience that, especially in this period, can offer many hours of entertainment. There is one aspect of the game that didn't really convince us and that is the introduction to the mechanics, the tutorial. It is not said that those who play Mr. Prepper are experienced in the genre and not even that those who approach the title have several hours of familiarity in survival dynamics as those who are writing to you, for this reason we believe that a less diluted and richer tutorial of reports about key mechanics (assuming that the water for underground plants is initially recovered from the sink should not be taken for granted for example) would have been a great way to make the game more accessible to those who are not passionate about the genre .