Cuz until now I never heard of it.

What is this?

Let's ask Wikipedia.
"Notrium is a freeware video game for Microsoft Windows. It is currently at version 1.345 and developed by independent Finnish programmer Ville Mönkkönen. It is the seventh game by Mönkkönen, but only the fifth to be released fully in English. Released in 2003, it won second place in the "Adventure Game of the Year" contest on GameTunnel"

Wow, thanks you wikipedia. You are fucking boring.

Essentially Notrium is a top-down shooter game crossed with some of the coolest survival and scavenge mechanics this side of the Mississippi. You start out with literally nothing but a crashed escape pod and some debris lying all over the place and from there you have to build and adapt and fortify and survive. Eventually you will take the military grade laser rifle you won from desperately beating a soldier to death and your shotgun made from scrap metal, duct tape, and prayer, and go do batshit insane stuff such as
-Lay siege to a heavy weapons installation in the hopes of regaining tech to save yourself from the night (The crushing, everpresent night)
-Storm bases filled with soldiers and camouflaged pack-hunting alien fiends.
-Drag your heavy escape ship through a lava/invisible ninja alien infested temple while fending off ancient tech and robots.
The reason it's so good is that it nails the feeling of loneliness and fear, as well as the gradual gathering of materials and eventual transformation into a badass, that these sorts of games need. It was made in 2003 and the guy's still supporting it. He just released a bugfix like a month ago. PLUS you can play as one of four different races (three stupid reject fucks and a human) with fairly radically different playing styles.

The point is this game is frustrating, scary, occasionally very confusing, and it is also great and you owe it to yourself to try it out.
It's free.

>>3801
Interesting. I shall try it out. Though with the new DF, and Warband, the games I desire to play are quickly outpacing my time in which to play them.

Holy shit I remember this from six years ago. This game was totally awesome and had me hooked for about a week, then I discovered a few mods that kept me going for another week.

Definitely look up the Werevar Mod, it adds lots of content, has a few bugfixes, and adds a new race with storyline attached. Very good addition to Notrium itself.

>>3805
Listen to this man, he's got da clue.

Played Notrium since like monkkonen released the first test version and liked it lots. I actually miss some mechanics from then (originally, to combine items you had to solve a little minigame).

A pity the Werevar mod was never finished. It added a lot of stuff and I especially liked the new skills and abilities of the different races.

Also, note that the game has like a dozen different endings, depending on what you play as and how.

This game was actually part of the inspiration for my quest Connection Lost last year. I really need to see more games in this vein.

>>3801
Your use of "prayer" as a building material intrigues me.

I should try this out, then.

The one thing that always bugged me about this game is how unlike most survival games, it's not about gathering raw resources and making things for yourself.

It's about wandering around premade, slightly-random areas searching for high tech items.

The whole game is just wandering around looking for electronics to pick up.

>>3817
Aren't they lovely electronics though

...I seem to be having trouble.

I start off as human, have no weapons except for my fists... and have to run away from absolutely everything while frantically eating practically every mushroom I come across. The easiest way to get a weapon is to find a Laser Diode and make a Laser Pistol. Then I die of heat stroke, yay!

Seriously why does heat stroke kill you so fast? If you don't hit any missiles you get an enviro suit at the start but if you put that on in the desert, good luck shooting the laser pistol more than like 5 times before running out of energy!

I played this game when they were still alpha-testing it. The reason I dislike it as opposed to, say, Stranded 2 or Minecraft, is that there's very little resource management. Instead of harvesting raw materials and then making items, the entire game is basically just a scavenger hunt for pre-made items you can sometimes slap together.

As a human you will spend 90% of your time just randomly roaming around searching for finite, dropped items you can't make yourself. It's kind of a joke.