This is a survival, strategy, and resource management simulator game. “Mr. Prepper is about being prepared. You know something is wrong. The risk of a nuclear war is in the air and you need to get ready for what’s coming.” While the description may not be the best, I will say this about Mr. Prepper; it’s a game that severely lacks in the replayability aspect.
Meaning: that you’re probably only going to play through this game once and then never again; but I do have to point out that the one play-through will actually take over your life.
How to Download Mr. Prepper
You should know that there is also a free demo of the game on Steam which you can try before you decide to buy the game. Click on the Download button at the end of the review.
The Game Review
Story and Design
The general plot of the game revolves around building an underground fallout shelter with the resources and facilities that your tyrannical government doesn’t want you to have. This leads to you creating some of the coolest stuff in your underground bunker, and eventually a tunnel that leads out of the god-forsaken country. The story is interesting, with tons of tidbits of information being thrown at you without overexposing you to the overarching narratives. It feeds you simply enough to keep you pushing to find more about this world and its characters.
Gameplay and Design
I’ll start out by saying the things that I found problematic with this game. Bugs, lack of content, and performance issues. Luckily, developer Rejected Games is working effortlessly on the bugs, and keeping a steady pace of control on these issues. The performance on the other hand is somewhat broken; the game has constant frame rate drops and way too many load times. Lastly, it suffers from a lack of content problem very drastically.
There’s an achievement in the game for completing a full year (within the game’s world of course) and I have to say, I ran out of things to do by the end of Month 4 in this game until I grinded the hell out of it to get to that point.
Prepper has a pretty enjoyable gameplay loop. It’s actually insane how fast time flies when you’re just running with the game’s base gameplay loop. While grinding does give you a ton of more resources than not grinding, it isn’t really important or an important aspect of the game. The game has a speed-run achievement; you can basically get through the game without having to grind too much and have just enough resources to help you finish the objectives at hand. The grind is just there if you don’t want to leave things too close to the wire, and wish for a slower play-through.
Verdict
I will say this about Mr. Prepper; the game is fun and the game has a unique premise, setting, and a gameplay loop that does not get boring even after you play through it a couple of times. Resource Management games are hard to make enjoyable versions of, but Rejected Games’ deeply underperforming game has actually managed to be super enjoyable for me at least. The game does need a lot of refinement, especially in performance and its lack of content. However, both of these issues are solvable through optimization patches and some free DLC content for the game.
While I did buy the game at the full price of $15, you can get it for $8 on steam currently. I wouldn’t recommend buying it though unless Resource Management video games are something that you enjoy in general, but it’s a great starting point if you do wish to get into them!
