Pequi Studios’ hand-drawn survival game makes decorating a survival stat.
GOIÂNIA, BRAZIL, November 2, 2026. Mayday: The Survival Island strands players on a hand-drawn archipelago after a crash, with nothing but what washes up and 24 islands to explore. The open-world survival game from three-person Brazilian studio Pequi Studios is out now on Steam for USD $13.99 with a limited-time 20% launch discount.
The first week is the usual scramble for players trying to survive on a mysterious island after crash landing. Hunt, fish, gather what the shore provides, and build a place to call home. From there, Mayday opens out into the full spread a survival player expects and a few things they will not. Crops go in the ground, and animals go in pens, with sheep to raise and herd and buffalo that can be walked back from across the island. Cooking turns a catch into something worth eating. Crafting stations unlock in sequence, each one opening tools and recipes, including potions brewed from what grows wild that players forage. Combat is there for those who are brave enough to learn more about this mysterious island.
Where Mayday parts company with the genre is what happens once the house is finished. Most survival games treat creating a shelter as the point where building stops mattering. Mayday takes it further with its Comfort system. Right-clicking with the hammer opens a full build menu of walls, doors, floors, tables, chairs, rugs, and vases, and every piece a player sets down raises their Comfort level. Comfort pays out in survival terms by giving bonuses to players. The more comfortable your home, the more health a player carries, or the slower their energy drains. Furnishing a room is not a reward for surviving. It is one of the ways players get better at it.
A home like that has to be supplied, and the archipelago is not evenly stocked. Pequi drew all 24 islands by hand rather than generating them, so each one holds what it holds, and the resource a player needs is usually on an island they have not reached yet. Sailing out under-equipped may mean sailing back. Misty swamps, bleached beaches, old cemeteries and forgotten ruins, each stocked differently and each worth the trip for something, all with their own story and mystery to solve.
None of the world is gated behind objectives either, allowing players to explore at their leisure. Players can head straight out in search of answers or widen their homestead first, and the island waits either way. Carved symbols repeat across sites that should have nothing to do with each other. Magical totems reward players who work out what they respond to. Ancient ruins sit in front of things somebody closed off deliberately. What starts as a fight to survive turns into a question about who was here first and what happened to them.
Pequi Studios is made up of three people in Goiânia, Brazil, and supporting the arts where they live matters to them. The studio ran playtests with students enrolled in game development classes at a local school, working the sessions alongside them so future developers could see a commercial game being built and tested firsthand. The same care shows up in the art, which hides things for players paying attention: nods to the pop culture the team grew up on, and a few characters even modeled on the developers themselves.
Mayday: The Survival Island is out now on Steam for $13.99, with Steam Achievements, Steam Cloud, and full controller support. The game supports ten languages: English, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Simplified Chinese, and is available on the indie.io store.
ABOUT PEQUI STUDIOS
Pequi Studios is a three-person independent game studio based in Goiânia, Brazil. Founded in 2017, the studio began with small solo projects and gradually gained experience developing increasingly ambitious games, leading to Mayday: The Survival Island. The studio focuses on creating original and creative games with a strong sense of identity
ABOUT INDIE.IO
indie.io is a games publisher dedicated to bringing exceptional independent games to players worldwide. With a portfolio spanning a wide range of genres, indie.io partners with developers to provide the support, resources, and expertise needed to bring creative visions to life. Developers self-publishing their own games can also use the indie.io Tools Storefront, with marketing and development tools. For more information, visit indie.io.
