Release Date: 23/08/2017
Played On: Win
Available On: iOS / NS / PS4 / Win / XBO
Time Played: 13h 5m
Progress: Completed
Developer: Cheerdealers
Publisher: Alawar
I've said it before and I'll probably say it again, but the older I get, the less interested I am in multiplayer games. The very idea of sharing my time with a bunch of abusive teenagers screaming slurs at me through bad headset microphones doesn't seem like much of a good time. Since the introduction of voice chat in multiplayer games, you couldn't even pay me to take part in the absolute shit show that is contemporary online multiplayer gaming.
It kind of sucks, because I used to love playing a whole bunch of great online games before the introduction of voice chat. I hate to think of how many hundreds of hours I sunk into games like Tribes, Quake III, and Counter-Strike; while quickly bouncing from their modern equivalents. Couple this with the fact that most of my friends are not gamers, so I was always entering these spaces as a solo adventurer, left to tackle the random gathering of angry children yelling across the internet.
Of course, I know that not every online community is like this, and there are plenty of nice spaces with friendly people just looking to have a fun time. In fact, I still enjoy playing the occasional MMORPG, as I've always managed to find helpful and fun people to play with, despite having to still sift through the obnoxious kids to find them.
With all of that in mind, it feels a little strange for me to look back on the last few years, and note that there has been a significant portion of multiplayer gaming to go along with my usual single player routine. The simple fact of the matter is that these days I have met enough decent people online who are down for playing some games and who actually manage to be civil to each other and have a fun time. Thus, I have played through a number of cooperative games that I would have never even considered in the past, but opportunity appears to be everything, and I'm so thankful for the opportunity to play some games and have a few laughs with some good people who I am now happy to think of as friends.
This all brings me to the topic of this post, which was one of the first games a couple of friends and I played together during various stages of COVID lockdowns only a couple of years ago. Despite having played it some time ago, I still remember every moment I spent in Distrust with friends, as it was an excellent game to have fun with others, while simultaneously requiring some proper cooperation in order to reach the end.
Distrust is essentially an isometric survival games that can be played single player or with up to three players in cooperative multiplayer. The game tasks you with getting through a handful of increasingly difficult maps, and working together to stave off insanity and reach the final location. It's your typical loop of finding resources in order to survive, while constantly moving forward and away from relative safety. In a way, the main systems share a lot with other survival games, except this one still manages to set itself apart with interesting lore and unique enemies.
Before we get to that though, let's pick apart the survival aspects, as this is definitely a game focused on survival, and not just one that pays lip service to it with an easily ignored hunger meter. The entire game is set within an arctic location where snow covers the ground and staying outside for too long will eventually freeze you to death. Temperature is perhaps one of the most pervasive mechanics in the game, as you are constantly tasked with staying warm, or suffering the effects of extreme cold.
At first surviving seems easy. There's a load of wood in every building, along with working furnaces that can be lit to keep the cold at bay. Stoves allow you to cook the food you found, and different scraps and other items can be used to fix generators for power. Although, things quickly become desperate as you move on to other maps and further into the arctic wastes, where resources and working machinery become more and more scarce.
What's more, fending off the cold becomes nearly impossible in later levels, as there are no more working furnaces, and repairing them takes more resources than you can spare. Meanwhile each building is locked up tight, and breaking down the door to get in means that you can't heat the place anyway on account of all that cold air rushing in. Without heat it becomes harder to accomplish anything, as even sleeping in an old bed you found in an empty building covered in frost needs a bit of heat to make it possible.
This is when the most interesting systems of Distrust begin to surface, as the lack of sleep, extreme cold, and the desperate search for resources makes everyone lose their mind. It's a gradual process that can be avoided by sleeping, eating, and staying warm, but you're probably going to go a little insane at some point, which is where the game really stands on its own feet. Random conditions can suddenly manifest on your character, causing them to constantly sing out loud, or hear whispers in their head while exploring the snowy tundras. There are a heap of different conditions that can randomly hit your character, keeping you on your toes and changing up how you play the game. There are even certain conditions that will prevent you from being able to perform certain actions, or maybe you decide that you only want rotten food from now on, leading to illness and eventually death.
Meanwhile, the less you sleep and the further your mind distinguishes itself from reality, the more malevolent creatures you will conjure. These manifestations appear in the world and doggedly hunt you down to mess with your efforts in a number of different ways. Some will flat out harm you, while others will come and destroy that precious fire you had burning in the next room while you got a few seconds of sleep. Considering the main way to get rid of these enemies is to have a good nap and regain some comfort and sanity, their effects can sometimes snowball and create an agonising feedback loop of insomnia and constant manifestations.
Thankfully, there are ways to deal with these annoying figments of your imagination, the most obvious being to use found weapons against them and stop them in their tracks. Although, this is easier said than done, as weapons are few and far between, while these persistent bastards will continue to chase you down until they are snuffed out. In fact, this is the main reason you want to stay all warm and well-fed in the first place, as it keeps everyone sane and wards off those horrible bad guys who are waiting to get down to business and mess up your whole day.
With all of this going on, Distrust still feels like the kind of game that is super easy to get the hang of, but can be quite challenging to master, and eventually beat. When I played with a couple of friends, we took about a dozen or so attempts before we started hitting our stride and finding the end in our sights. The more we experimented and worked together, the further we got and the more obstacles we were able to overcome. This isn't the kind of game where you are just playing alongside other people; this is the kind of game where playing together is essential to everyone's success.
Herein lies the real reason I enjoyed myself with Distrust, as my friends and I really had to start thinking together and helping each other out in order to make it to the end zone. We found a rhythm of splitting up to find resources and load up our inventories, while communicating what we discovered and constantly sharing items to support each other. By the time we eventually beat the game, we had brought each other back from the brink of destruction so many times that finally succeeding brought that much needed catharsis of accomplishing something that was seemingly impossible when we first began.
This kind of cooperation is what I really enjoy about these kinds of games, as there is a real need to communicate and help each other out. Without a proper bit of teamwork, you're certainly doomed to fail, and there's something incredibly satisfying about overcoming a challenge with friends when you've had to get all serious and really concentrate on what you're doing.
Although, there's also plenty of room to mess about and have a laugh, as we would eventually find out. Sharing is caring, but hoarding everything and running on ahead of everyone else can be pretty amusing when you're among friends. There were times when one or two of us would be going completely insane, starving for food and warmth, and unable to break the cycle. All while someone else was on easy street as they'd kept all the good stuff for themselves and moved on without any regrets. Thankfully, the game won't last very long if you choose to muck around, so it never felt like a waste of time when we had a laugh at each other's betrayals, as we were able to get back into it and try again pretty soon.
On top of all that, each player has to choose a specific character that you're able to unlock as you play through the game. Each character has strengths and weaknesses that will change the way you play, such as one that never gets cold, or one that comes with a gun from the very beginning. I really enjoyed how these characters would shift our group dynamic depending on who we picked. If someone was the girl who got double the amount of food from cooking up rations, then that player became the team's cook and every effort was made to get all the food to them. One of our favourite characters to play was a guy who could break down any door with a swift kick, granting access to every building, but breaking the doors in the process. Considering that you are unable to warm a room that has a broken door, there would often be shouts of "No! Don't kick this one!" on Discord, as one of us went ahead and broke the last functional door on the map. It's these kinds of dynamics that really make a multiplayer game fun, and thankfully there were many moments of insanity and laughter that really kept me hooked.
Distrust may not be the biggest blockbuster in the library, but the way that it enables enjoyable and interesting multiplayer entertainment is why I really had a lot of fun playing it with friends. The premise is simple enough that everyone knows what's going on, but there's also enough wiggle room to mess with people and decide to not always do the right thing. It's this kind of flexibility that makes this game something special, and a cooperative experience that I will continue to remember for quite some time.
As something of an aside; you are able to play the whole game solo, which I did try out and found way too easy and simplistic to be truly enjoyable. This is definitely a game that benefits from playing cooperatively with friends, as the single player version changes things up to make everything that much easier. The biggest difference is that all three characters have a shared inventory, completely negating the need to sprint through the snowy cold in a last ditch effort to bring some food to a dying friend. It just messes with the pace of it all, and reveals that the most enjoyable part of surviving in Distrust, is the need to rely on your friends if you want to keep breathing.
Although, all things must come to an end, and after beating the game a few times and seeing some different endings, we hung up our cooperative hats and called it a day. By that time we had unlocked most of the available characters, even though we'd settled on our favourites pretty quickly and kept to our strategy. Unfortunately as well, once you're done with Distrust, there really isn't anything else to see or do than just another repeat of the same loop. This isn't a problem, as it's actually nice to complete something and know that it's finished, but I imagine some people could expect a lot more from a game that (almost) requires you to play with friends at all times.
Ultimately though, this was the game that convinced me to take more of a chance on multiplayer gaming, especially when it involved friends and in a cooperative setting. Since playing Distrust I've tried a whole bunch of different multiplayer games, and I've even enjoyed some of them a lot, but nothing has really captured that initial spark that showed me how much fun there is to be had online.
This wasn't the first time I had fun with a game online with friends, but it really made me realise that not every online experience has to be marked by children yelling slurs at me from start to finish. I'm probably sounding completely naïve when I say that there are a bunch of awesome games out there to be played with friends, but now I actually have the chance to find out for myself, and I'm totally loving it.