SAVE

A promising Lovecraftian premise, undone in the execution

SAVE puts players in the boots of a PMC operative contracted by Miskatonic University to investigate the hidden secrets of a derelict 6,000-ton vessel called the SENARA, in a co-op survival horror built explicitly around Lovecraftian dread. It's a distinctive, well-chosen premise for a genre that's grown crowded with generic liminal-space and extraction-shooter clones, and based on the available English-language review sample of 19 reviews — 6 positive, 13 negative, landing at an overall Mostly Negative rating — a meaningful minority of reviewers genuinely see real potential underneath the game's current rough state. "Great visuals for an indie. The ship feels real and immersive... Challenging but fair I enjoyed the permadeath system. It felt rewarding rather than frustrating," one reviewer writes, specifically crediting the atmosphere and difficulty design even while framing their review around the game's current early state.

That said, the overall balance of this review sample tips heavily toward disappointment, and the complaints are specific and mechanically detailed rather than vague dissatisfaction, which matters for judging how seriously to weigh them.

Enemy AI reviewers say a household appliance could outdo

The single most consistently mocked, most specifically repeated criticism concerns how the game's enemies actually behave in practice. "Roombas have better AI than the enemies," one reviewer writes bluntly, and a separate reviewer reaches the identical conclusion in more measured terms: "I wouldn't recommend this game at the moment as the AI for the crawlers isn't the best." A third reviewer confirms the same specific problem independently: "combat is clunky, knife is useless for the 3 common enemies I faced, AI for crawlers is bad, will try again at a later date." When three separate reviewers land on the same specific criticism — weak, unconvincing enemy behavior specifically tied to the game's "crawler" enemy type — using strikingly similar language, that's a strong, corroborated signal of a genuine, verified problem rather than one player's bad luck.

Combat that leaves solo players with nowhere to go

A related, equally consistent complaint concerns the melee combat specifically, and its consequences for players who run out of ammunition. "I wouldn't recommend this game at the moment as... melee combat in the game is not good at all. The game is pretty difficult if you are doing solo as once you run out of ammo you are basically dead as like I mentioned before the melee combat isn't good," one reviewer writes, describing a genuine structural design problem: a survival horror game where the fallback weapon fails to function as a meaningful fallback at all. A separate reviewer offers a specific, itemized breakdown of the same underlying issue: "It needs a bit of balancing for the mobs, killing them requires a lot of bullets and knifing..." while also flagging the door-closing annoyance directly: "Doors auto-closing is annoying, I am standing at the door, and the door closes in my face."

A mission-completion bug that fails players who did everything right

One specific, serious bug deserves direct attention because it strikes at the core loop's basic fairness rather than being a matter of difficulty tuning. "Decent idea, but major game breaking bug in which even if you finish the missions and try to leave it'll say the host failed and boot you back to main menu," one reviewer writes, describing a genuinely severe failure state: successfully completing a mission's objectives and still being told the attempt failed. A separate reviewer confirms an identical experience independently: "Keeps Saying I Failed even tho I get everything. Hold off for now." That's about as clear and corroborated a game-breaking bug as this lane encounters — two reviewers independently reporting the exact same specific failure, describing a mission structure that currently cannot be reliably completed regardless of player performance.

A separate reviewer describes a related environmental bug undermining basic navigation: "got locked out by walls appearing out of nowhere," sarcastically framing the experience as "10/10 Game of the year candidate." Another reviewer offers a blunter overall assessment after being unable to progress: "Genuinely why. It's obtuse and borderline unplayable. Cool premise but just... no."

A minority who see real, improving potential

It's worth including the more optimistic perspective directly, since it represents a genuine, if minority, view within this review sample. "I think this game has quite a lot of potential. There are certainly some aspects that feel a bit lacking, such as the movement of monsters and hit feedback. However, many areas have improved since the last test, and if these aspects are further refined in the future, I believe this game will become quite compelling. And regarding the difficulty: I think Mission 1 has a fairly well-balanced difficulty," one reviewer writes, offering a specific, comparative account of build-to-build improvement that suggests active, ongoing development rather than an abandoned project. Whether that improvement trajectory continues quickly enough to address the mission-failure bug and combat complaints raised elsewhere in this same review sample remains an open question at the time of this review.

SAVE currently has no Steam achievement system, leaving no independent structural marker of the game's actual content scope or intended progression pace beyond what reviewers report directly from their own limited, often bug-interrupted sessions.

Where this leaves it

SAVE has a genuinely distinctive Lovecraftian premise and, by several accounts, real visual and atmospheric craft for an indie project, but its current Early Access state is undermined by specific, independently corroborated problems severe enough to justify real caution: enemy AI reviewers repeatedly describe as barely functional, melee combat too weak to serve as a viable fallback when ammunition runs out, and — most seriously — a mission-completion bug that can fail players who did everything asked of them. A shallow, buggy game earns a harsh score rather than a short review, and while a genuine minority sees real, improving potential worth watching, this isn't currently recommendable at its asking price. Worth revisiting after a substantial update cycle rather than buying into its present state.