- Drop Point is a survival game by Tiny Indie Studios that blends story, PvP, and survival mechanics in a world shaped by player choice and harsh conditions.
- Spawn with almost nothing, scavenge and craft to survive, then raid and defend your base for high-stakes progression.
- Drop Point features a unique cash economy, strategic base building, and community-focused development with frequent content updates.
As someone who’s spent hundreds of hours roaming the worlds of DayZ, Rust, and even more recently, Once Human, I’ve always had a soft spot for survival games that reward creativity, resilience, and a little chaos. It’s a genre where stories often write themselves out of chance encounters, desperate raids, or hard-earned victories. That’s why I was more than ready to dive in when Tiny Indie Studios, a small team based in New Zealand, reached out about their upcoming game Drop Point. Huge thanks to Michael Kanara and Piripi Hohaia from the Tiny Indie Studios team for taking the time to answer my questions and share a deeper look at what they’re building.
What I discovered is a project that dares to push boundaries, despite not having a massive AAA budget. Drop Point feels like it’s aiming to be more than just another survival game—it’s shaping up to be a fresh, meaningful entry into a genre that’s still hungry for innovation.
The Core Gameplay Loop: Survive, Thrive, and Discover the Truth
At its heart, Drop Point follows a clear yet punishing loop: Spawn – Survive – Thrive. Your journey in Drop Point begins at the beach with just an apple, a bandage, and a chipped stone knife. It is the basic progression from there, like any other survival game. However, the world becomes unforgiving with multiple undead threats, especially in an environment where you can explore land, water, and sea. Yes, that’s relatively new for me, given that most games in this genre rarely explore all three.
In Drop Point, crafting goes beyond the basics. You’ll build tools and weapons on your character early on as needed. As you progress, you can unlock and build crafting benches for better gear, and eventually fight over machine crafting stations in contested parts of the map, the high-risk, high-reward zones that keep players on edge.
It’s little touches like this that make the world feel alive. One of the major letdowns I experienced recently was with the game Once Human. While the world was intriguing, the PvP eventually fell flat—raiding felt dull, and PvP lacked real stakes.
Drop Point seems to be tackling that head-on. Raiding in this game isn’t just a feature—it’s a core part of the late-game loop. You can raid other bases, defend your own, and if you die? You lose your loot (similar to Escape From Tarkov). No hand-holding here.
The Story of Drop Point Is Worth The Expedition
Unlike many survival games that either drop the story entirely or bury it under vague environmental clues, Drop Point is making an effort to deliver something more deliberate. There’s a mystery to be uncovered on the island where AquaNova has taken over. The world isn’t just about surviving—it’s about piecing together what went wrong. This makes the experience worth uncovering.
The game slowly reveals its deeper narrative through missions, clues scattered across the world, and dynamic world events like helicopter crash sites or surprise air drops. In simple words, being a survivor is not your only task; you’re part of a larger conflict, trying to make sense of a broken world.
The team explained that they want Drop Point to feel more than just reactive. You’re not just surviving the elements. Beyond the reactive survival, you’re resolving something. The roadmap points to a full storyline and endgame content in the 2026 full release, complete with missions, expanded maps, and new factions like mercenaries and zombies.
That slow unraveling of the mystery adds a layer of progression often missing from sandbox survival titles. It gives meaning to your exploration and raises the stakes beyond “build, raid, repeat.”
Why Drop Point Might Be Indie Gaming’s Next Breakout Hit
Tiny Indie Studios knows they’re not making Rust. They said it themselves: “We might not have the budget of AAA studios like Rust, but we want to create a unique experience.” And honestly? That mindset might be exactly what gives them the edge.
Dynamic Weather and Real Consequences
The environment isn’t just there for show, either. The weather plays a key role in how you survive. During my chat with the devs, they mentioned,
“The weather will affect players and the environment. Staying in the snow for longer will give sickness and slow movement. Moreover, when the sun comes up, the snow will slowly melt away.”
Dynamic weather in an open-world survival game like Drop Point adds tension and realism. It forces players to adapt to situations; rain can mess with visibility, and storms can change your whole approach to a fight.
In PvP, it gives clever players an edge; using fog or lightning to mask movement or ambush enemies feels satisfying. It’s those unpredictable moments that make survival feel real and every encounter more intense. That is one of the reasons I feel dynamic weather should be a must in all upcoming open-world games.
A Crisp Shop System
There’s a cash economy system built into the game. Loot has value. Players can trade, buy access to better gear, and even spend cash to trigger world events. It adds another layer of strategy—do you risk it all on a loot run to earn money, or save up and go big later?
Then there’s base building, which is impressively flexible. You can create everything from a simple stash spot to massive, well-furnished compounds. Building isn’t just cosmetic like many other games, here, it serves a purpose. You’ll need shelter, storage, and tools to survive long-term, and the better your base, the better your odds.
Multiplayer and Community Feedback
Multiplayer is also on the horizon. Starting with solo and private servers, the game plans to launch with online play in 2025. That’s when things should really get interesting—base raids, team strategies, and social dynamics will come into full play.
And if I’m honest, the concept of raid makes me the most excited in a game where you can create strategies around the dynamic weather or ambush enemies from land, sea, or air.
The team also wants to keep the development community-focused. Yes, this is one of the key requirements in 2025 to build a game for gamers. And being a “gamers building games” studio, Tiny Indie Studio wants to prioritize it. They’ve built in room for player feedback and plan to roll out monthly updates with new features, themes, and content drops based on what the community wants to see.
Drop Point Can Be a Promising Survival Game
After spending time talking with the devs of Drop Point and learning more about the game, I’m genuinely excited to see where the game goes. It’s the kind of indie project that deserves attention, not because it’s perfect or massive, but because it’s aiming high with clear intention. Especially in a space where only a few games can get a break. While talking about the game, Piripi said,
“We’re making a game that is very ambitious. We only see this come from large studios with big budget overseas.”
Despite a small budget and a team, the project seems exciting, and it gives me hope for some solid survival experience. Moreover, the devs are keeping a price of $29 for the game with regional pricing. This makes the deal even more exciting.
Where other survival open-world games eventually lost me due to weak PvP and repetitive mechanics, Drop Point looks like it’s building its systems around meaningful conflict, player-driven goals, and a world that feels alive. The raid mechanics, the cash economy, and the mystery baked into the world all promise a different kind of survival game—one that’s not just about living longer, but about discovering more.
If you’re a fan of the genre like I am, Drop Point should absolutely be on your radar. Tiny Indie Studios might be small, but they’ve got big ideas—and the passion to back it up.
