When it comes to survival games, I’ll admit that my tendency with them is to be a bit of a grump. There are absolutely ones out there that manage to strike a great balance between cultivating, collecting, crafting, and some sort of action, but they can also tend to get bogged down in minutia or are just otherwise a bit dull. Kentum absolutely tries its best to have a fun sense of humor, as well as some decent platforming action, and a reasonably-sized map to help maintain your level of engagement, but it still does struggle a bit. The one bright spot is that at some point the game begins to transition into you creating and managing automated systems to handle a lot of tasks, but the issue is that at least for now that phase also runs into problems.

After proving to be both tremendously lazy, and quite stupid, your character Kent has managed to strand himself in the year 10,000. Unfortunately, it appears that the planet has become a bit of a barren wasteland, leaving you stranded and your prospects not looking terribly promising. In order to survive you’ll need to venture out, collect resources, and begin working to get your home base fully functional and then begin to get more ambitious, building out a factory-like facility to really turn things around. The challenge is partially in being compelled to continue playing to get to that point, and then whether the transition more to a different style of gameplay will continue to suit you.

On the exploration, collection, and combat side of the fence you’ll likely have the most potential for fun, just expect it to be a bit of a grind. Venture out, collect plants, minerals, and some meat perhaps, and then come back to base and see what you’ll be able to craft with it. Early on there’s a flurry of things to build, mostly machines for refining or combining your resources in some way, and in doing that you’ll continue to get new gear, new capabilities to help you get around quicker and more efficiently, and more. The thing is, there’s only so far you’ll be able to go repeatedly doing that, so you’ll need to begin to set up some automation to do some things without the need to be directly involved, but there’ll still be some tasks that you’ll continue to manage and do, but this can start to make the experience a bit less satisfying as cultivation tends to just be more grind without much to keep things fun. So as the gameplay evolves some people may choose that they’ve had their fill. It at least makes for a somewhat satisfying experience, but whether you’ll be inclined to see it through to the end may be a fair question.