Garry Newman From Gmod Releases Rust, A DayZ Meets Minecraft Game

Warning: The following game is an alpha release and is subject to user rage, griefing, ego-rape and loss of progress due to bugs, glitches, errors and incomplete game code. With that disclaimer out of the way, I invite you to explore Garry Newman's (of Gmod fame) latest creation, Rust.

Essentially it's another first-person emergent survival game....and at the same time, it's also kind of not. Like Garry's Mod, it's hard to trap the genre and scope of Rust within the little white boxes we usually attribute to video game genres – this new title fits into the bracket of new titles that are almost indescribable.

So what do you do and how is it played? Well, it's setup a lot like Minecraft where you start off with simple supplies and must use your trusty ax to gather wood, craft supplies, eat food and survive. Sounds simple right? Well, it would be simple if it weren't for so many pesky players also trying to survive and killing almost any and everything in sight in order to do so. That's not to mention there is a good meter, a health meter and a day and night cycle where utilizing stealth and avoiding becoming zombie bait, bandit bait or lag bait is an adventure all its own.

The game is being designed with the Unity Engine and Garry and team at Facepunch seem to be going for a mix of Don't Starve and DayZ but with far less of the scare factors of the latter or the artistic novelty of the former.

My little play-session with the game wasn't bad and only resulted in being killed once. I may or may not have also killed someone else but due to the lag it was generally difficult to tell whether my hits were counting or not. Also, since the game is free there's nothing much to lose in checking it out.

As of right now there is a lot of griefing going on and noob napping given that it's the cool thing to do and a lot of players have no idea what the heck they're doing or how to do it. On a Reddit thread they point to a forum thread where you can learn a little bit about how to play the game and so on and so forth.

If you want to give the game a test run, feel free to do so over on the official Play Rust website. Since the game is in such rough shape it's not likely it will be competing head-to-head with the standalone of DayZ or State of Decay any time soon. Still, it's a nice little alternative for those of you waiting for “Rocket” and the crew at Bohemia Interactive to get that public alpha out and about to gamers this summer.