Age of Undead is a weird game.
Skip for the TL;DR if you so desire.
The game sells itself as being a fresh, unique take on the RTS genre, and while it features a lot of uniqueness it could be described broadly as a zombie apocalypse total war game, kinda.
The catch being that it was made by a single developer, meaning the fact this got made at all is impressive.
AoU is a RTS with FPS/Turn based strategy elements, the game can be played in a campaign with a strategic map and with a special gamemode where you act as a gunner for certain support powers, but its meat and bones is its RTS mode.
The RTS mode reminds me a tad bit of Total Annihilation, your main focus is more about having a better economy than your enemies and figuring out a force composition that defeats their force composition, you can of course micro your units and deploy support powers (off map artillery, AC-130s, groups of units). But it's mostly a macro game.
This happens because all resources in the game are generated by buildings you yourself make, there are no worker units (besides a builder) and no strategic resource points on the map, your limitation is that buildings that produce the same resource cannot be close together. So basically your only limitation is unit cap and attention span.
This means fights are usually two columns of units smashing into each other, which doenst sound very interesting but is a lot of fun, a lot of it can be credited to the unexpectedly good effects, while the game’s graphics can be as “simple” in the best of times, the sound design and weapon effects are a lot better than i expected, particularity for the planes.
There is some depth here, but the game feels more like a sandbox of cool things happening than a game per se, which might be good or bad depending on who you ask.
The 3 factions of the zombie apocalypse are the military, survivors and zombies.
The Military are the government forces tasked with restoring order, they get a full roster of modern military equipment (Infantry of all kinds, Humvees, BMPs, IFVs, MBTs, Helicopters, artillery, planes, etc) at the cost of having the most resources to manage of all factions, Fuel in particular is a massive bottleneck.
Zombies are the hordes of the undead, but those aren't your run of the mil zombies, while they have shamblers, fast zombies and others they also have monsters capable of destroying a tank by punching it, acid spitters, and even zombie artillery, meaning you can't just circle around them until they die.
Survivors feel more like a bonus faction since they don't get a whole lot of stuff, but they are in my opinion the most interesting one.
Think less of a community of civilians surviving the apocalypse and more like mad max, you can literally build asylums and send crazy people to stab zombies, refitting WW2 aircraft to bomb zombies with, turn trucks into catapults and tie a 17th century sail ship to a Zeppelin and firing its black powder cannons at the zombies. Their units also tend to be faster meaning they can avoid artillery attacks (Sometimes).
This is all tied together in a tongue and cheek tone, the game doesn't take itself too seriously and most of the loading tips are jokes, although a feel might not land due to english not being the dev’s first language. Nothing is incomprehensible tho;
The game features a bunch of fun little things like alternative game modes (FPS mode with support powers, air support mode where you only control planes), a day night cycle with buildable illumination buildings for night fighting, weather events and some special powers exclusive to the strategic part of the game and a pretty high population cap (1200 shared across all players as the default).
One of the most unique things about this game is that while it is SP only you are expected to work alongside friendly AIs during most battles, they do fine in RTS mode but can be a bit annoying on strategic mode (blocking your path, etc)
While all of this means the game has a lot of soul, it's still a very complex game made by a single dude and it shows, there’s alot of jank, a decent number of bugs (nothing game breaking tho) and random slowdowns in performance (usually at night, but sometimes at random, you can turn the day night cycle if it gives you too much trouble) the game is also not particularity well balanced and artillery seems a bit too strong right now
I got the game 25% off so that might explain why I am not particularly bothered by its issues, so keep that in mind.
If you like RTS games and want to try something a bit different made by someone obviously passionate about it, and are willing to stand up to jank and bugs, this might be the game for you.
TL:DR:
AoU is a very cool game full of interesting ideas and passion that is ultimately held back by the fact it's a single man project, there is a lot of fun to be had in it if you can put up with jank, bugs, simple graphics and weird balance. Surprising amount of content as well.
With some extra polish it can easily be a 9/10 in my books.
