Nimble Neuron released Eternal Return: Black Survival on the 14th day of October 2020, though the game is still on early access it already gathered the attention of some players. They are also the company that produced the games Minimax Tinyverse and Black Survival. This game is free to play on steam and has a quite unique genre as it crosses between MOBA and Battle Royale, which have taken the interest of players from both casual and competitive scene of gaming.
The Lore
The story of the game circles around the human experimentations being directed by a suspicious organization known as AGLAIA. They transport all the human experiments on a deserted island called “Lumia Island” and their aim is to create extraordinary humans with unique abilities. As for the humans, they must survive until the end by scavenging and crafting materials. They will also be able to hunt and cook food for them to replenish their strength. While they try to survive by not being taken out by other humans, random locations are being shut down where it triggers the timer inside a human if they stay for too long; if the time went down to zero, the human will explode and be eliminated in the experiment. The ways in how the organization creates and tests the human experiments are quite painful.
The Game Itself
The tutorial of this game is not much time-consuming, you’ll have six tutorials to give you time to learn the surface of how you will be playing the game. Some players can just finish playing the first part of the tutorial and proceed on joining public lobbies. There will be two free characters that will be given after the tutorials which are Jackie and Aya, these two characters are quite user-friendly for new players to the game. The game can be played on both Normal and Ranked mode, but players will be able to access Ranked mode once they reach Level 20. Players may choose if they want to survive the island as a Lone wolf or Solo, they will face against 17 other players. Also, if you are more into team fights, you can queue up with people on both Duo and Squad.
To take a glimpse of how you will survive, each character has a unique set of materials and weapons, which they need to find around the island. A player will be shown with six routes on their map, and these locations are the best ways they will be able to find the materials they need to craft and strengthen their character. As a Battle Royale genre, players will still need to compete with other players on gathering the materials first and to avoid getting trapped in a Red zone. The players engage in a fight with one another, unique abilities will be used, which will require SP or mana; also, defensive structures are not present just like other MOBA games. When players gather, cook, craft, and open boxes it will require them to consume some of their SP as well.
The developers also added a feature where players can create private lobbies or custom lobbies. The players will be able to play with up to 17 players, and it also gives a chance to others to be the spectators in the game. Allowing custom lobbies to be made like this, is most likely that developers are targeting on putting the game on the competitive scene.
Our Take On Eternal Return
The Eternal Return: Black Survival gives fresh air to players who have been playing Multiplayer Online Battle Arena and Battle Royale games; also this is quite friendly for both casual and competitive players. The part that I like in this is the art style of the game, the gameplay that has a unique mixture of two genres MOBA and Battle Royale, and it doesn’t have a heavy system requirement. The things that are kind of a turn off are that the Home screen is a bit cluttered, and the spectator mode for Custom lobbies still have rooms to improve, especially if the developers are planning to put it on the competitive scene. The game already gathered quite the interest of the Korean players and players worldwide, and they have already started conducting small tournaments exclusive only for Korean residents. I look forward to the growth of the game and I hope that the developers and Nimble Neuron will extend their support to the organizations that are interested in organizing their own tournaments for the game. The community and the game are both continually growing, and we don’t know that it might become an esports title.
You can download Eternal Return on Steam.