[Updating my review as of 2024/04/10]

After following the development of this game years before it's actual release, I have to say this is probably the most disappointing zombie game I have ever genuinely followed. And this doesn't follow the theme of "it's not what I expected because I bought into the hype like an idiot" - this game is spread too thin and is incredibly lacking in depth beyond a required time investment.

Point at my hour count through some contrarian cope to justify why you think I should like it - you are getting the perspective from somebody who has played through many revisions.

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Yes, this first topic should be the least important part to a reader who just cares about gameplay, but this is a required read to understand the pump-dump that occurred. This goes far beyond simple issues with how the development went; many issues with the game are a result.

Why The Release Was Lazy:


It's one thing to have a great idea, concept and writer.

It is also another thing to wittingly cut your development roadmap short with what you once called "placeholders" now becoming the final product, failing to deliver.

I wanted this game to turn out as amazing as the portrait painted for it. I really did. I hyped this game to a lot of people. The developers received plenty of constructive feedback, and for the most part, seemed hopeful in fixing these issues as they promised to eventually do over time. I played and re-played the game throughout it's early access on steam. I gave it a positive review, noting the strong groundwork for a serious indie title.

It had so much potential, and so much of that was wasted by developers who wanted to drop it.

I thought it was a mistake when I looked at the store page and saw that it was out of early access, but apparently, it wasn't.

You see, the game was nowhere near the true "final release" stage when they started announcing it. Neither the much-needed polish or balance/bug fixes had happened at that point. There was a long laundry list of stuff that was yet to be fixed or added. However, we just ate up every statement that more was to come with some kind of huge update they were going to put out with the full game.

Then, the game released. The "massive update" was really just some UI features, small content, and terribly minor bug fixes. A lot was very, very wrong with the game.

Pathfinding (clicking on a tile and walking to it, or enemy pathing) has been a "rough draft" and glitched since long before the official release. It is a complete disaster, and the simplistic system gets overloaded quickly. Multiple enemies eventually clog the same tile, and you waste AP moving around obstacles that aren't there.

There are noteable spelling and grammar mistakes in the UI and dialogue that are still there to this date, and almost all of them were reported years ago.

Notice how the NPCs at home are kind of there and don't seem to be doing anything other than walking around their token job area? Animations for emoting and interaction were in the works - but dropped. There are also issues with the player talking to an NPC where they stood 20 seconds ago instead of their current position.

If that wasn't bad enough, certain developers and staff couldn't take the criticism and decided to flag a few negative reviews they felt weren't "honest" and then threw fits on social media for the backlash.

The Lost Ending:

They removed an ending [Spoiler: The Cure] entirely on the grounds of "It would have been too much work to get it going," despite having the characters involved hype the idea to you as an achievable goal already in the game. And then they never bothered to redo the NPCs involved in the ending quest, so you can accidentally dedicate way too much to this super-disappointing questline for no actual reward.

While we are at it - they also took 'balance' as a reason to write it off, which doesn't make sense since it was originally endgame content. That objective was widely regarded as an ending well before it was scrapped. Using "it was never intended to be an ending" as an excuse was disingenuous. I wouldn't have bothered including this as part of the review had you just fessed up to not wanting to dedicate time to it, or had a change in heart for the story lore.

And what did the game do to off it in release? They replaced some text. Throw in an apology from one of the NPCs for getting hopes up. You don't learn anything. It gets resolved in roughly a paragraph. You can have several qualified scientists and medical lab professionals who show interest in the subject of a cure, who all basically tell you it was outlandish to begin with. They could have easily tacked this on to the escape endings as a new hope for the US with the gathered data, but the writing team was apparently gone by that point.

I digress; it's not my game and the developers don't owe me anything for playing it, but it just shows how you gave up on something important to shove this out.

As A "Finished" Game:

"Unpolished" is an insult to the exploitable bugs that have been left behind. It plays and feels like an unfinished game. Very little is animated. Unique NPCs share over-used models, not even palette-shifted. Some early-development areas have fleshed out stories with minor characters. The vast majority of other late-development NPCs you interact with don't even have names, and are stuck with "Looter" and "Survivor" in the middle of copy-pasted buildings and environments.

When you see early screens of the game, you see people sitting in stools in the lab, tinkering with machines, while a character flings her arms up in the air while raging about somebody being a problem. You see characters moving their arms as they talk, showing a competent plan for an immersive atmosphere. You see life. You see a game where you can show what's happening to a friend and they will understand what is going on in the scene without you explaining it.

That's not the game now at all. Nothing evolves or changes over the course of the game. Everything relating to emotion and circumstance was reduced to text and labels. Even in the small "live-action" parts outside the turn based game, it's just moving the party from A to B. The map enemies don't even move of their own volition.

Pros, Cons, And More Cons:

I'm going to summarise this.

Obvious pros and cons:
+Good writing.
+Good story.
+Awesome, in-depth characters.
-turn-based gameplay is incompatible with simulated movement
-Horrible bugs and crashes
-Broken story events that don't recognise previous decisions
-Inconsistent levels of depth for the cast of playable characters (Jodie Hopkins as an example of somebody who has next to nothing despite a foreboding introduction)
-Vast, empty midgame before the endgame

Borderline points:
=Long storyline without the content creep to match the hours
=Mediocre amount of weapons and interactables to experiment with
=questlines can have a lot of detail and options, but most don't

There is such a heaviness to your home group characters ingame - every quest, everything you build and do is instigated by your recruits. There is no generic "filler"; every survivor in your camp is unique and written individually, and all contribute something different. I hate that less than half of them have more than 1 or 2 story events involving them, because the ones that are actually fleshed out can contribute so much to the story while others add so little. It was necessary to spread this out due to the calendar length of the game.

This game is the poster child for products that spread themselves too thin. I understand that exit-stage early access titles are almost never as good as they are hyped, but this is well beyond "just scrapped ideas". While I found the characters and choices entertaining, literally everything else felt extremely under-developed and nowhere near completion.


That's my blunt review for now.