Deadline Savior Preview: You Say Tomato…
Focus for a bit and read this article before you put on that cuirass.
The irony! While my paladin is keeping up appearances in Wolfbone Town, I’m writing up my thoughts on Deadline Savior once more and potentially encouraging a series of GIFs being sent via Cointinue Game’s communication platforms with motivational memes, cat pics and, ‘We did it!’ variations. Job well done, and we’re only in Early Access stage.
Admitedly, I didn’t get this the first time around when I was lucky enough to have a peek at an early demo. That doesn’t mean I completely get it now either, but I do get it. Now there’s a bit of a story, a thorough tutorial that explains so much (and also confuses with its timeline arcs and terminology), and there’s a lot of work in progress that makes this an in-depth RPG.
There are many things I like bout Deadline Savior, and in no particular order, the first is how it represents a large number of subgenres, without actually being locked in, and not being predictable with it. There are elements of this being an idler, a desktop companion, a productivity tool, an RPG, and so much more, but it isn’t just one of these. Even if it was, it’s not the novelty that many titles in this pool tend to be.
A lot of these games are great, but have no longevity. You might see all the features in one go, find it too monotonous to … cointinue, or probably more appropriate – forget to put it on. Besides, you can’t play a Steam game and have a desktop companion running, right? And why would you when you actually want to play this/have it running? I only have one complaint at this point, and that’s a personal one. I’ll come back to it.
In the demo, I played an archer, but this time around I was rinsing the paladin. Building upon that first look, the process is very similar in that you set yourself realistic goals, S.M.A.R.T. ones if you like, set a focus time and appropriate rest time, then get on with whatever it was you were planning on doing.
Deadline Savior has the potential to encourage the procrastination it wants you to tackle by watching it like a lava lamp. Yet, here I am typing (admittedly with the window to my left of the paladin looking for trouble, and it’s not remotely distracting). The opposite, in fact. One of those other aspects I really love is how competitive it makes me.
A couple of days ago, I decided to mess around with my website. It’s been a while. I added this to my to-do list and then put the game on in the background. According to this, I was on it for over 6 hours! Despite the earlier comments, I did find the sounds distracting, so turned them down. There’s a good deal of customisation, so you can have just enough to let you know when your hero was completed. After all, the pomodoro technique is about setting time-managed goals.
What happened was a large bout of hyper focus only broken up by the Steam notification that my guy was complete. I’d have a look at what they’d earned, take an actual break from the screen, then came back to fight a boss. Combat is like a simple RPG autobattler when you can equip new gear, develop new skills and consume some potions and throw shurikens. That sort of thing. It’s basic, but quite intoxicating.
Expecting to do this intermittently and checking in every now and then, I was hooked. Between runs there’s now a village to buy and sell gear, stock up on food and much more. For clarity, I haven’t finished the storyline in Early Access as genuinely using Deadline Savior as a way to motivate me. There are new modes now such as patrolling to build up stats, foraging for food (every hero needs to eat), and exploration which is the main path. A few other things are on the roadmap such as fishing and gear upgrades.
As for the current iteration, I found myself getting consumed with time. Setting my focus to 50 minutes a pop, I sometimes would feel a little impatient and want to level my character up, or thinking that it would be ages until the next rest. This is where Deadline Savior shines as I’ve sped up this article while looking at the clock. No, it’s not making me rush and become sloppy, speling mistaiks asyde, it’s making me efficient.
Now, that one complaint I have. I use both PC and Mac, mostly using the latter for writing up my articles, but the game doesn’t run on OS. Equally, I can’t install this on my work laptop as 1) I wouldn’t be able to get it through I.T. and 2) having another publisher’s game on my machine might raise an eyebrow or two. Alas, it doesn’t run on my current obsession, the AYN Thor either, so I ended up writing on my gaming laptop to make the most of it. As you can conclude, this is my problem alone, and no reflection on the actual game. Well, if you only have a Mac, then perhaps this is a problem.
In summary, of this rather long write-up for an Early Access title that’s about productivity, I have to say it’s one of the best, no – best desktop companion (for PC). And, to prove my point, at the time of this sentence, my paladin is just about to get to rest mode. Just enough time to grab some images and point you to the store page.
