A brutal, single-player twist on Escape From Tarkov, Road to Vostok has finally launched

For as much as I love Escape From Tarkov in theory, the risk of other players with far more hours than me halting an entire night's progress in its tracks can be off-putting. I've therefore been watching Road to Vostok with great interest, admiring the ways it condenses that knife-edge fight for survival into a single-player FPS game. Gathering loot and planning your way through its realistic day-night cycle, everything builds to the climactic moment where you take your steps into the eponymous restricted zone, risking everything you've earned for the most valuable prizes.

Road to Vostok comes primarily from one Finnish developer, Antti Leinonen, who has put his military background into building this intense experience. Nearly four years on from the arrival of its first demo on Steam, the game's Early Access journey has now begun in earnest, and it's expected to be a long one. The developer says a feature rollout "implemented in multiple phases" is essential to remaining independent, and Vostok's track record speaks for itself: 15 demo updates across four major demo builds, reaching 800,000 players and being supported by 35 developer video blogs.

The events of Vostok take place in a post-apocalyptic region between Finland and Russia. Your tale starts in Area 05, an evacuated zone in south-east Finland. While bandit raids routinely threaten the peace, you'll find slightly more comfort among its shelters and trading hubs, allowing you to get your footing. Road to Vostok uses a full day-night cycle including moon phases, weather, and even shifting seasons as the time progresses. While you can sleep to push time ahead, you'll need to be prepared to stay alive when darkness falls and the cold starts to roll in.

Loot is never in consistent spots across the world, so you'll need to scavenge thoroughly to ensure you've got the arms, armor, and supplies to survive. Once you've established your equipment in Area 05, you'll head to the Border Zone proper, with each map presenting different challenges - one might be protected by mines, while another requires navigating a waterway via boat. All of them will task you with dispatching hostile border guards, however, and they'll call on anything - including air support - to keep you out.

Your ultimate goal is Vostok itself. Pushing into Russian territory, you'll enter the most "high-risk, high reward zone" that plays home to the most valuable loot. The caveat? It's home to a heavily armed military force that will resist you at every turn, and each map you challenge in Vostok is full permadeath. Should you die in either Area 05 or a Border Zone region, you'll only lose the gear you're carrying. If you fall in Vostok, you lose everything.

It's a punishing climax worthy of the experience, but Leionen stresses that it doesn't have to be the be-all, end-all of your time in the world. "Road to Vostok is a hardcore survival game," he explains, "but it doesn't force you into specific playstyles." If you don't want to push into the permadeath parts of the map, you don't have to. "In some playthroughs, you can be a combat-oriented character with military gear, and in the next you can be a lonely fisherman, playing the harmonica on a remote island."

Road to Vostok is out now on Steam in Early Access, with a 25% launch discount if you buy it by Tuesday April 25, meaning you'll pay $14.99 / £12.56. Take a closer look here. It's expected to remain in Early Access for approximately two to four years, and Leinonen says he is intending to "gradually raise the price as we deliver new builds, content, and features towards the full release."

With a close focus on community, Road to Vostok is likely to be in the oven for a while. Depending on your willingness to accept some of the caveats of Early Access, it may be one to wishlist rather than purchase right away if you're not ready to jump in quite yet. But the experience it promises scratches an extremely particular itch that can be hard to satisfy, and I'm very eager to watch its journey unfold.