1 Bit Survivor
Review

1 Bit Survivor (2022) is an adventure survival game about driving your car across a country in the aftermath of an unstoppable virus. It stands out for its limited colours and simple-to-play hard-to-master playstyle. But really this is a game that's great because of the knife-edge decisions and sense of stress that the game manages to create with such limited interactions (and palette).

An unstoppable virus has destroyed humanity. Many turned into mutants. The rest fight for their life. Drive your car across the country to reach the underground bunker and survive. Can you survive 28 days and make it to your destination?

Play is turn-based. At each level, you must search for fuel for your car and (hopefully) ammunition and other resources. Each turn you choose a direction or attack. This means as the difficulty increases you need to carefully choose your actions and how to spend your limited resources. Once you run out of health your run is over and you start again with nothing.

As you progress you can unlock three different types of characters with their own abilities. You'll also face increasingly challenging enemies that come in nine different forms. When you die, which you will often, you start again and the world is generated afresh.

The result is a game that is surprisingly atmospheric. The combination of top-down visuals and overlaid first-person animations lend proceedings an uneasy edge-of-the-seat feel. Every move matters and the game tracks all of them, offering a detailed rundown of your performance when you die.

Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked 1 Bit Survivor 10 months ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 9 months ago.