Exploring the mythical world of a Greek-inspired survival craft.
Dawn of Defiance is a Greek myth-inspired survival craft. The game was released into early access and was developed and published by Traega Entertainment. The studio was founded in 2015 and is based in Nashville, Tennessee. Traega Entertainment previously released another game, Aegis Descent, which is action-rouguelike.
Survival games have been around, practically, since the beginning of the gaming industry. Survival crafts only popped up in 1992 when Sami Maaranen created UnReal World. The goal of UnReal World was to survive as long as possible in the harsh conditions of Iron Age Finland. More modern examples of survival craft games include 7 Days to Die, Valheim, and Sons of the Forest.
Despite being an early access release, Dawn of Defiance has an incredibly solid foundation, both mechanic and story-wise. You are dropped off on the Isle of Arrival, a relatively small island near the Forgotten Crossroads. On the starter island, you’ll unlock a few powers that become incredibly helpful, although a lot of them hinge on your stamina and stamina recovery.
For example, the Glide and Dash abilities use stamina to work; Dash only uses a certain portion of stamina, and Glide is a constant drain. All your skills level up as you use them, including glide and athleticism. While you can edit stamina and health in world rulesets, you can also increase them in a few different ways compared to the original difficulty. Cooking food is a great way to temporarily increase Health, Stamina, and life regen.
Different types of meat can affect your Health and Stamina bars differently. Your normal game meat gives an even yet somewhat small boost to both Health and stamina, while Boar Ribs will massively increase your Health and Life regen. After following the starter part of the main questline on the Isle of Arrival, you’ll head over to the main island of the Forgotten Crossroads.
Tier-based progression is common in open-world survival games, but Dawn of Defiance takes the concept to a new level by depicting it as a journey to build a hero from the ground up. This approach adds depth and context to your progression, making it seem more meaningful than just progressing to unlock the next expensive piece of tech.
Tiers not only increase your durability and your buildings but also unlock additional features, especially when building your base. You start with thatch, then use wood and stone to unlock better building tools as the game progresses.
Thatch gives you simple walls, floors, and roofs, but once you reach the wood level, you can incorporate Greek columns, ceramic pottery, some plants, and open pergola roofing into your designs. Stone unlocks more intricate statues and sculptures. When you reach the second tier of crafting, you can easily change the color of the structures using a paintbrush.
Unlike other survival crafts, you don’t really need to craft the paint needed to use the paintbrush in Dawn of Defiance. It’s an incredibly satisfying and motivating progression system that will hook you and make you want to keep playing for just one more hour, even if the rest of the game seems a bit sparse as of the current early access build.
Building a base is a satisfying process that allows you to create any structure you want. There’s an option to automatically attach the pieces to a grid placement, but you can also place the pieces freely, especially if you’re building on a sloping hill. It was a little difficult to keep the foundations from hovering off the sloping ground, so I just placed some foundation pieces underneath them to make them look aesthetically pleasing.
However, you have a good amount of control over the placement and angles of the pieces. There aren’t many decorations in the form of furniture pieces or wall hangings, and very few at the beginning of a new game in Dawn of Defiance as of the current release, but once you’ve unlocked all the crafting recipes and gathered enough resources, you’ll be able to build a masterpiece.
Another area where Dawn of Defiance excels is crafting. The resources you gather aren’t just for building; you can also use them to forge your weapons and armor. Your arsenal wouldn’t be complete without some God-tier equipment you can get from defiling shrines during the main quest. While that only comes later, your arsenal is extensive without them and includes everything from armor to different weapons and shields. You can customize the look no matter what materials you use to create them.
A large map is both good and bad, although this can be seen as a good thing so far. This landscape has terrible beauty as it consists of intricately designed sacred temples, altars, ponds, and derelict statues, making the plain look like more than just brush and trees without an end. Moreover, there are also stunning vistas, including dark forests, soaring mesas, and a mountain dominating the center, thus breaking up the flat skyline and adding depth to the game.
However, this comes with a slight disadvantage as long travel times between the many points of interest due to the sheer size of the map. In Dawn of Defiance, the average travel time between major locations is roughly around 5 minutes of running and making liberal use of Glide and Dash.
However, placing portals in both the desert and the dark forest, located on opposite sides of the map, will halve the time as the main portals are somewhat at the center of the map, so it’s important to build a base in a central location. The huge map can be considered a drawback, but this may improve as more content is added during Dawn of Defiance’s Early Access phase.
Combat in Dawn of Defiance is very challenging, with melee and ranged attack options allowing for a variety of playstyles. However, it does feel incredibly clunky at times and takes a little getting used to it. The game has a great atmosphere, especially when it gets dark, and you can hear the howling of wolves or being chased by a wolf that slowly sneaks up on you and attacks you.
The sound design, while great, does get a little tedious in terms of the soundtrack. The sound effects and background noise are more than the makeup for it. Although it can be a little too loud sometimes, the general noises of the environment add to the immersion. The little voice acting there was incredibly well done.
Dawn of Defiance’s sounds of combat are great, with the clatter of shield blocks and the whistling of spears ringing past your ears. Enemy soldier units are amazingly accurate with throwing spears. However, the spears track the player’s movements, which can be a bit annoying, more so with the golems that seem to be able to hit you with a boulder even if you’re behind them or dodge.
The Graphics of Dawn of Defiance is both fantastic and a little disappointing. While the environment and the weapon and armor designs are amazing and breathtaking, the character design was both a hit and miss. While the model looked great, the face could have used a little work as he seemed to almost have a thousand-yard stare. Although you don’t see his face unless you open your inventory, it was a little disappointing compared to the breathtaking environmental designs.
What makes Dawn of Defiance different from the countless other early-access open-world survival sandbox games that have come out since 2020 in droves? First and foremost, Dawn of Defiance features a unique yet stylized aesthetic that sets it apart, especially as it really encompasses the ancient Greek feel the game was going for.
The game beautifully blends elements of high fantasy with ancient Greek design and even incorporates black and gold Art Deco pinstripes into the UI. While the audio design isn’t perfect, there’s plenty of room for improvement in areas like balance, combat, and content density.
Overall, Dawn of Defiance, despite being another early-access survival craft, has incredible potential. The foundations are all there, and most of it is incredibly solid. While there are aspects that can be worked on, such as the combat AI’s impeccable aim, it is truly a game worth playing.
