From Zenless Zone Zero to The First Descendant, we seem to be experiencing an explosion of free-to-play. Desperation, you time-strapped adults, for your carefully engineered lack of pocket money offers no protection against the onslaught of games that want a slice of your evening or weekend. Today’s big release, Once Human, at least features a giant school bus on monstrous legs, along with a less exciting but customizable van that only has wheels. In this open world survival shooter, you are a “Meta-Human” traversing a landscape corrupted by Stardust that has warped the scenery and is slowly driving you insane.
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You’ll be able to cut down trees, build bases, and craft/obtain weapons of color-coded rarities. It’s a familiar mix, but I was drawn to the Control and Ghostwire-esque monster touches adjacent to the monster and level design in the trailers. I’ll try the game tonight. I’m hoping it’ll be a bit like The Division 2’s Dark Zones, but New Weird. Therefore, the Starry Studio developers have made a FAQ to launch in advance of the likely inevitable bugs on release day.
Let me wrap this up for you: you only get one character per account at launch. Once Human is cross-platform, but not yet on Steam accounts, “due to their inherent limitations”; the developers recommend using NetEase’s Loading Bay launcher instead, which I don’t have much experience with. The game is also currently not officially running on Steam Deck. Even more embarrassing is that it doesn’t even support drivers yet. “Our development team is actively working on changes to bring driver support as soon as possible,” promises the FAQ. “We expect to complete it by August.
Once Human will receive seasonal updates with new scenarios offering different rules and environments, with players able to transfer resources between seasons via their “personal domain” in Eternaland, which sounds like a web3 Second Life scam name, but is apparently just a customizable base. At launch there will be separate PvE and PvP servers with a small amount of PvE stuff exclusive to the PvE server.
Now, what about some system requirements! Below is apparently what you’ll need to run Once Human in 1080p.
Minimal:
OS: Windows 10 (64-bit)
CPU: Intel Core i5-4460
RAM: 8 GB RAM
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti, 4 GB or AMD Radeon R9 270
DirectX: Version 11
Available storage space: 60 GB
Recommended:
OS: Windows 10 (64-bit)
CPU: Intel Core i7-7700
RAM: 16 GB RAM
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060, 6GB or AMD Radeon RX 580
DirectX: Version 11
Available storage space: 70 GB SSD
For 60 fps performance:
OS: Windows 10 (64-bit)
CPU: Intel Core i5-12400F
RAM: 16 GB RAM
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 3060 or AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT
DirectX: Version 11
Available storage space: 70 GB SSD
Sound a bit demanding? The developers are aware. “Once Human offers a high-quality audiovisual experience,” explains the FAQ. “This requires a large amount of storage space for HD images, textures, sound effects and map files. Also, as an MMO survival game, we try to render long viewing distances so that players can see structures in the world as far as possible.” We are constantly working to optimize the game for the best possible experience.”
Similarly, Once Human does not yet support DLSS “due to ongoing optimization and integration of certain features”. It supports DirectX 12, but this may cause a “slight frame drop” compared to DirectX 11.
Starry Studio has also put together some basic tips to improve performance – notably lowering resolution, lowering texture and special effects quality, and lowering rendering quality. The developers further note that if you try to connect a controller — including “pedal and gear controls for game controls or joysticks for flying games” — compatibility errors may occur that lead to crashes.
If you’re reading this in the distant future hours after Once Human goes live, I hope you found this advice helpful. Past experience with free-to-play launches suggests that there will be a lot of gremlins to exorcise. And besides, who knows? Once Human was the most popular demo during Steam Next Fest 2024. Again, there’s no shortage of competition in the spoils of the F2P realm right now, but it might just be another breakout hit this year.