Although I'm fairly interested in trying out ARK: Survival Evolved on the Nintendo Switch in the Fall, I have to admit that ARK has always been a disappointment for me when I try to play.
Something about the game is too complex, too involved, too daunting, too intensive on my PC, and too... just aggravating for me.
Maybe that'll be different with this version of ARK...
It's called PixARK, and it looks like a Minecraft version of ARK.
More...
Before everyone starting to cry foul and say how dare they make such an aggregious clone, I did a little Googling around and found that Snail Games technically owns Wildcard, the studio which makes ARK. That means this is technically (or more than technically) legit.
You can play right now on Steam.
I didn't even know this was a thing until today, and now I'm sorta wishing this was the version coming out on Nintendo Switch.
Here's another official video about taming.
I will totally get a server for us to play on if anyone in the community is interested. You guys know me; this is totally my thing.
Update: Apparently PixARK -IS- coming to Nintendo Switch "later in 2018!"
My comments as someone who has played a lot of Ark to say the least, and an hour of PixARK earlier today:
– The game was clearly developed by forking the codebase of ark, then completely reskinning and tweaking the values for all the entities of the world. All the little UI elements like the inventory management screen, tame interaction dial, etc. reveal how this is not just copying the idea of Ark but is obviously made with the exact same underlying engine and code architecture. That’s probably a good thing, to be clear. Ark is a mess, technically, but it took many years to develop for a reason and I would instantly assume this game had nowhere near the depth of Ark proper if it were “starting from scratch”.
– Clearly aimed at a more casual audience– at least in the early levels which are all I played you gather resources and tame dinos about ten times faster than you do in vanilla Ark. That said, lots of people, me included, only play Ark with those rates turned up practically as high as PixARK effectively has them, so I can say it’s not really fundamentally changing the game, just letting people who have 9-5’s actually play it and progress which is not really possible in vanilla Ark.
– They reworked the engrams (Ark’s name for the research tree unlocks) from Ark. There actually seem to be a lot more than there were in Ark, and they added a ton of fantasy-ish sounding ones like dragon saddles and magic academy foundations/walls. Looking forward to playing and seeing what it’s all like.
– Definitely doesn’t seem to be as deadly as Ark, at least in the nooby spawn zones. I did not have to fear for my life the whole time I played in PixARK, and in the same time of my first hour of real Ark I would have died 10+ times, no exaggeration. If it continues to not be dangerous in other zones I fear it will make the game effectively dead compared to real Ark.
Will probably have more comments when I’ve have time to really sink my teeth into it which I plan to tomorrow.
Thank you for the comments! You’ve convinced me that it’s worthpicking up to give it a try. 🙂
This sounds like the version of Ark I always wanted. Something more akin to Minecraft with dinosaurs and stuff. I was actually a bit turned off by the original because of how clunky it was with how good the game was looking/trying to look. Plus it was a little too grindy/hardcore for me.
But I loved the concept, so this looks perfect.