A demo of Homeseek, a post-apocalypse survival strategy game slated for release late this summer or early fall, is now available on Steam. Really... You can't save everyone.

In Homeseek's world, at least in your part of the planet, water is precious and food is scarce, a dry, dusty wasteland. Even the little water that is available is often contaminated or contaminated with radiation or poison, and your little settlement is always on the verge of collapse.

While in other games it is often just a thematic threat, "Homeseek" is broken up into missions, each with its own objectives, and resources are truly scarce. Just playing the demo gave me a sense of this: the little water I could draw from the well and the food I could scavenge from the bushes were often consumed by the end of the day. Often the last few people who strayed from the day's work would go hungry.

By the time we had found our way out of the valley and hopefully to a new, more water-rich settlement, I would say that only about 20% of those who had joined my settlement were still alive. There is an acceptable amount of resources in the settlements and it is up to you to find them. (I didn't find it.) That's the attitude the game accepts. Remember, "You can't save everyone, but you can make sure that every lost citizen has contributed as much as possible before they perish."

It was frankly very cool to see a post-apocalypse city builder building a world where you would want to turn away people who tried to join your village or avoid contact with larger groups to protect resources for the people you have now. On the other hand, sometimes you need to bring in new people to make sure that someone can operate the water purification system you just built.

As has become a staple of the genre, you can send out expeditions into the world around your village. This often means equipping them with precious food and water for an overnight journey, which is truly thematic. Sometimes people at home need to go hungry so you can send food and water to explorers who will find a future for the entire group.

I quite enjoyed the demo of Homeseek on Steam, and I expect it to be a nice contribution to the survival strategy genre once it is more polished and the mechanics are refined and the game system is more clearly explained.