Will you be left on the “Edge of Sanity”

One of your camp members has just died. It’s unsurprising, and the Alaskan wilderness is just as unforgiving as the monsters you’re running from. The choice pops up. Do we bury the body or salvage what we can for food? Sure camp morale will take a massive hit but people’s bellies will be full and morality doesn’t feed people.

This was just one of the choices I found myself pondering while playing Vixa Games’ Edge of Sanity, a 2D survival game set in Alaska with a Lovecraftian twist.

You play as Carter, a middle-aged employee of the mysterious organisation PRISM, when a site-wide alarm goes off. Strange mutated wildlife and former employees become wide-eyed and homicidal. So, you and your site partner decide to get out of dodge with whatever supplies you can find.

Edge Of Sanity is a game of two halves. One half is camp management, the other half is exploring locations to find resources and fighting off enemies. In camp, you can talk to survivors, assign them workstations, make sure they’ve got enough food and water for the day and craft upgrades or supplies. Out in the field, you explore in a 2D environment navigating platforms, scavenging supplies and fighting off the twisted monstrosities or just sneaking past them.

At the end of every day, you get a progress screen showing how everyone is doing in camp. If they don’t have enough food and water, they will lose a point in health/morale. If that drops too far, they will be in danger of death and, if you lose all your camp, it’s game over. Things can be going super well, and then you could suddenly get attacked by a random event at the end of the day report.

Days can progress by either going out on a scavenging run or by resting in camp and you want to make the most of each day. Unfortunately, resting is one of the ways to heal yourself and your sanity without burning through precious resources, so you weigh up the risks of using a day’s worth of food and water. Losing too much sanity will add to your trauma, which is a dual perk and debuff. Gain too many traumas, however, and again it’s game over.

Edge of Sanity becomes about resource management and risk reward. Can we afford a day to scout a location? Can this person go without food and help heal this other one?

Scavenging is just as equally stressful. You have a limited inventory, so you don’t want to bring too much with you. Equally, you’re going to need to defend yourself, and you’re definitely going to want to bring your lantern.

Luckily, if you’re after a specific resource, the Edge of Sanity will tell you where to go. Need wood? Head to the forest. Scrap metal? Check out the mines. Food and water? PRISM buildings are your best bet.

I didn’t come across repeat levels either, so they are either randomly generated or have a very large pool to pull from. Each level will also display the amount of items left in a level so you know when you’ve cleared an area out. It is possible to die out in the field, but this isn’t game over, you just lose the day, any items you collected and your progression with that particular level before restarting back in camp.

The combat is extremely clunky, but it’s designed to be. Stealth is the best play here. Sneaking around enemies is a viable strategy and will save you the most resources, but for areas where that is not viable, sneaking is still more often than not the quickest solution. Sneaking behind can provide a one-hit kill, for example.

Turning on your light is also a matter of risk/reward as well. It requires fuel, so you will need to replace that. The light can reveal your location faster, but on the flip side light can burn some enemies, or in one case remove them from reality.

My default quickly became sneaking in the dark, taking each step one at a time and moving the camera to the limits every time I heard anything. I actually found holding the weapon wheel lit the area up temporarily, so, Scruff hack ftw.

Most tools have a dual purpose in the field as well. The axe is a great weapon but it has limited durability and you might need it to hack down a fence. Flares are a great temperature and light source, but can also be thrown to trigger traps or distract enemies.

Edge of Sanity is split into four major areas usually with a crafting or resource requirement to progress. Area one, for example, had me stockpiling so much food that we could hike to the next location. Upgrading workstations in camp not only provided more of the resources it produced but also unlocked more inventory space or a new weapon crafting recipe.

There is a narrative running throughout this as well. Occasionally a new location will pop up on the map which can be a new survivor or a critical story mission. This helps keep the story going as you unravel the mystery of why you don’t remember two weeks; or why you keep dreaming of the giant melty man; and why everyone is looking at you funny. Or WhY yOU KeEp HeArINg tHe vOIce in YouR HeAd!

Edge of Sanity is fully voice-acted and has a great soundtrack. The enemies all make distinctive noises which help get the tension going in levels, so much so, that you will breathe a sigh of relief every successful run only to remember: you gotta do it again!!

The art is beautiful as well. The backgrounds feel cold and oppressive, otherworldly sanity effects can make you feel unsettled and all the hand-drawn sprites look fantastic and give me a Darkest Dungeon feel. There were even little flourishes like my camp survivors starting to look thin and malnourished or Carter looking haggard as he gained more trauma.

Edge of Sanity was stressful but it wasn’t unforgiving. The levels were fairly paced, death could have had a harsher punishment and you do get plenty of notice if a camp survivor is in danger of death. I played in “Ironman mode” which meant I had one save and my choices were permanent and still managed to beat the game.

Speaking of choices though, there were moments where dialogue boxes popped up and I was given a choice to be rational or give in to “The Voice”. I assumed that there would be some morality meter defining the ending, but according to my research, alas, no that does not appear to be the case. At the end you get a choice whether to go to “A” or “B” and that determines the ending. Luckily the game saves you before this, so once you get one you can get the other, but again, unfortunately, the end game challenge is exactly the same, just a reskin.

Did I enjoy Edge of Sanity though? Yes, I did. I played on Steam Deck and found it perfect for that pick-up-and-go playstyle as the levels were short little bursts of horror and serotonin. I thoroughly enjoyed the ten hours I spent on the game.