Near Death indulges in the captivating myth of the lone survivor
No medium is better equipped to facilitate survivor fantasies than video games. As modern life moves further away from primitivism towards automation and global dependency, the cultural niche of self-sufficient survival stories has ballooned into a borderline obsession. From books (The Martian (Andy Weir, 2012)), to movies (Castaway (Robert Zemeckis, 2000)), to reality tv (Naked & Afraid (Discovery, 2013)), we are obsessed with the question of “could we survive in the wild?”
Video games have seen this question explode into an entire genre - the open-world survival game - which encompasses everything from Rust (Facepunch Studios, 2013) and Subnautica (Unknown Worlds Entertainment, 2014) to Minecraft (Mojang, 2011). The connecting tissue between all these disparate games is the repurposing of materials for basic survival. Building shelter from sticks, scavenging for food, and warding off the dangers of the night be they creatures, the elements, or other survivors.
These games also tend to be extremely “crunchy,” operating numerous meters and variables at any given time in attempts to simulate a body under duress (hunger, thirst, stamina). What these games rarely directly engage with is the mythos of survival - the stories that come after, harrowing escapes, miraculous saves, and the many moments where death was at the door. These stories can still emerge organically during play - and much of the interest in these games is the emergent storytelling they afford - but this is often articulated from the binary mechanics of the games themselves.
Near Death (Orthogonal Games, 2016) leans heavily towards survival as narrative and away from survival as a collection of systems. There are no meters to track, weight limits to observe, or procedural generation to explore. Near Death is finite and focused, telling a particular story with extreme restraint that is revelatory for what Orthogonal Games chooses not to include as much as what they do.
After a crash landing on their way to a research station in the Antarctic, our researcher must scramble to insulate themselves from the cold. The station is deserted and in disrepair, immediately telegraphing that long-term survival is off the table. With search and rescue days away, our researcher must forge their path to safety using whatever materials they can find before freezing to death in the dark.
Author Beth Lewis writes of survival narratives that, “opening these books, seeing these movies, binge-watching Discovery Channel, pulls back the concrete, clears the exhaust fumes, and removes the Instagram filters. It takes us away from comfort and into isolation and danger where life and death are squarely on our own shoulders.” The fantasy of survival is as much the allure of danger as the possibility of overcoming it. We are attracted to self-sustainability as it represents an overcoming of nature, of death, of our need for other people.
As its title implies, Near Death positions the player constantly on the brink of physical collapse. The only danger is the cold, but the cold is everywhere. Play is an exercise in energy conservation: only use the fuel needed to warm yourself; only keep the flashlight on when it’s pitch black. There is rarely much danger of running out of resources, at least on the default difficulty, but survival always feels precarious.
Because it is impossible to truly overcome the elements the way other survival games allow, priorities shift to escape. Not unlike The Martian, Near Death is a story of fabricating and repurposing scientific equipment for the sake of lasting just long enough to make it out alive. Also like Andy Weir’s novel, each impossible MacGuffin is somehow on hand - albeit somewhere extremely inconvenient. Obstacles exist but they can be overcome. Nature is permanent, but humans are clever and persistent.
Near Death achieves something other survival games often lack through its specificity and just-in-time plotting. Each win feels monumental because it should be impossible. I might have only carried a water tank back to the garage, but what this means for my survival cannot be overstated. I never felt as if I was conquering Antarctica, but I was living out a different kind of fiction wherein I survived through skill and stubbornness. But the raw tangibility of these stories is also their greatest weakness.
Responding to Hollywood’s string of big-budget survival flicks, Oxford doctorate candidate Catherine Redford writes that “the message of these films [is] ultimately one of hope: of rescue, of return, of revenge, and of potential new beginnings. No matter how bleak the conditions or how slim the odds, we cannot help but cling to the prospect of survival.” The lone survivalist is so compelling because it is at once unbelievable yet appears achievable. We all believe ourselves capable, while it is so much harder to rely on others.
But as climate change, disease, and social unrest continue to ravage the planet, individualist narratives are more and more portraying a form of survival that is out of touch with actual calamities. We might be able to ensure our survival for a time, but ultimately the forces foretelling our doom are far greater than anything any one person can overcome. Even as climate change represents an existential threat, we still cling to the myth of bending nature to our will. These stories are rarely dangerous on their own, but collectively they outline a delusion in our precocity.
Near Death consistently hits the highs of the best survivalist fiction, so engrossing as to cause me to turn up the heat in my own home out of fear. But it is a story we have heard before. There is little to take away from Near Death that has not been played out in other works, and it made me long for the stories of survival that position life as not an individual pursuit but a collective triumph.