Once Human review: A risky experiment

NetEase’s Starry Studios has released its first game, Once Human, to the public. It’s a post-apocalyptic survival game focusing on exploration, crafting, combat, and base-building. It’s got an impressive suite of quality-of-life features and content at launch, but the shoehorned live-service elements left me scratching my head.

The world has changed

Once Human depicts a post-apocalyptic world in which a dangerous Stardust material has turned most creatures and people into Deviants: violent beings that roam the land, bringing destruction and chaos with them. However, not all is evil in this new world. Deviations are helpful creatures that can aid you in combat, farm resources, and make your life easier.

Once Human dumps a lot of exposition on you in the opening hours, and leaves you to piece the rest together through exploration and discovery. It’s a narrative you can choose to engage with, reading every memo and meticulously searching every major point of interest for clues, or you can completely ignore it. You get out of it what you put into it. It’s mostly generic sci-fi jargon but adds fascinating color and context to the world.

The rebuild

Once Human packs all the core features you’d expect from a survival game: crafting, base-building, combat, hunting, etc. You have hunger and thirst meters that need to be routinely replenished, and food that sits in your inventory for too long will go bad. It’s the standard juggle of resource management that survival fans eat up, and this game does it well.

Through the Memetics screen, you can use points to unlock recipes for new furniture, foods, and weapons. Since it’s a server-based multiplayer game, you’ll share the world with other players. For my first go-round, I played on a PvE server and built my house along the road in the starting region. I chopped trees and mined rocks until I had the resources to not only build a house, but outfit it with all the necessary crafting stations and storage crates. There were a few other players who lived near me, and one of them left a message outside of my house: Your walls are inside out. The message had been given a thumbs up by 21 players. It was a bit embarrassing, but also hilarious.

I loved how I organically interacted with other players in Once Human. There was one evening when I ventured out for resources and loot, and stumbled upon two players fighting a large eldritch creature with a satellite on its head. They were struggling a bit, so I helped them defeat it, explored the rest of the town with them, and we went our separate ways. This sort of thing happened frequently, and it was always neat to hear gunshots in the distance and see other players amid a battle on their own journey, while I was occupied with fishing or mining rocks.

Once Human has the visual jank that you see in a lot of open-world survival games: bad textures, pop-ins, and peculiar animations, but the art style makes up for it. Contemporary meets cosmic horror to create some unforgettable creature designs and locations. One of the most notable creatures is a bus with massive legs that walks up and down the road, offering you a bundle of free gear once per day. I nearly yelped the first time I saw it. I also want to shout out to the character creator, which actually has a diverse set of features and hairstyles to choose from.

How did we get here?

Once Human, like so many free-to-play games of today, is completely modeled in a live-service format. I’m talking seasonal content, battle passes, a cosmetic store, premium currency, you name it. On one hand, I like the idea of a survival game having frequent content updates and timed events that encourage me to log in. On the other hand, it feels like a complete betrayal of the survival game ethos when I can unlock food, fuel, and health packs through a battle pass.

I hate that there are cool building materials that are exclusively locked behind microtransactions. There are hairstyles within the in-game store. There are way too many currencies. It’s like a decent meal that’s being smothered with unnecessary condiments. I think the purchasable skins are pretty harmless, but I wish the game just stopped there.

Find your humanity

At its core, Once Human is a survival game that encourages and rewards exploration. It nails the gameplay loop of gathering resources and gear, upgrading your character, and then venturing out to do it all over again. I had a great time running around and fighting alongside friends, and I’ll probably continue to jump in and play when I get that survival itch. However, it’s hard not to be put off by forced live-service elements that undercut mechanics and lock unique items behind a paywall.

This review is based on the Steam version of Once Human. The game is available now.

Donovan Erskine

News Editor

Donovan is a young journalist from Maryland, who likes to game. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokémon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge Scream nerd and film fanatic that will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_