Dead in Bermuda

Standing as an interesting little indie offering, Dead in Bermuda sets out to give a different look on the tried and tested indie-trope of partybased survival. Like many of these games, the team behind it is based from somewhere in Russia. I think this to be a good thing as the dominance of Japan and North America in the industry isn't really taking the evolution of games and gaming forward. The downside is that the eastern european scene has just bronzed their first pair of shoes on the one hand and on the other hand is struggling with a lot of shovelware studios hoping to get rich quick. The studio behind Dead in Bermuda, CCCP, is however genuinely trying to uplift the scene with well thought out products.

The plot in Dead in Bermuda is very simple, a travelguide and his party of tourists are returning home after a successful tour as their plane crashes. They of course survive and realise that if they want to last till rescue they'll have to work together. This is where the player comes in as the player allocates people to daily tasks. At first, this is simple. The intelligent girl who absorbs information as a sponge is logiaclly the one to do research, the silent but strong guy is put on fouraging, the two handy guys are put on construction and that balance sees everything tie in together nicely. But it doesn't last and soon the player is keeping up a lot of balls in the air as they're confronted with hunger, sickness, wounding, fear, depression and loss of hope added to the mix. Forced to allocate other than suited people to important tasks, the party seems to be set up to desintegrate, doomed to fail before rescue reaches them.

This is where the beauty of Dead in Bermuda comes to the fore. The painted white tourguide is of course the natural leader of the group, but once he falters, other survivors will step up to the plate and take responsibility and each playthrough different people will become important. While the game largely plays out as expected each time, many times the player might be confronted with a less than obvious survivor to play a pivotal role in keeping the group together and cohesive.

CCCP kindly provides a demo to Dead in Bermuda on their Steampage and I can highly recommend that you give the demo a look over. The game is a little gem in the eastern european sea of putting a price on assetflips and worthy of any indie-scene follower's interest.