Cepheus Protocol

I bought this game cause originally it was pitched as an attempt to forge a realistic zombie outbreak mil sim strategy game (outbreak has happened now its down to your branch to contain it and its realistic spread across the island or city) Which in an of itself is a novel and awesome concept, do I burn my way through neighbouring sectors stopping the zombies "food" and resource, or do I try save as many as possible but risk contamination or not catching everyone that's infected. This is what the game set out to be, unfortunately they completely pivoted away from this and its now just a glorified tower defence game with little to no originality, evacuating civies is now just a side thought and primary way of earning money, the infected are not modelled even slightly realistically as an actual infectious threat. and instead hours into the playthrough they can somehow clump enough bio mass to supposedly evolve creatures that are literally stories tall, so much for a realistic containment game. That and supposedly the up to 3000 infected people within a matter of hours at the start of the game are all "invisible" cause if you do find the "source" of the infection early on and attempt to land a small recon or containment squad there are 0 infected around to quash, so I have no idea how the game works there to be 3000 infected when 0 are apparent, at their so called source you would think the streets would be chaos with civies and infected alike... not absolutely barren. Combine this with horrendous bugs: zombies consistently disappear into thin air and then reappear behind your carefully laid defences, sometimes literally teleporting in line of sight. I have had numerous CTD's even on supposedly "safe maps" and soldiers that have clear line of sight and well within range of infected mobs simply refused to shoot despite having full ammo and ROE clearing them to open fire on infected. The game should be a slow methodical tactics, evacuation, and infection simulator. starting out finding what areas are infected, trying to purge small infected groups to limit the initial outbreak with what little resource you start with, and then slowly growing into a formidable and effective containment solution as the infection becomes a scarier prospect and you are given access to stronger and more drastic containment solutions (bombing runs, tanks etc) if you want a outbreak containment / military RTS, do not buy this game, if you are looking for a massive horde tower defence with some alternate mechanics and a 3d game world, just go play "they are billions" much more fleshed out version of what this game has for some reason pivoted too.

The game used to be an interesting blend of RTS, investigation, and resource management where u would send a small team into a bustling city in search of a budding zombie outbreak. You would have to pay attention to news snippets, and monitor ground traffic for any anomalies as you build up your forces. Carefully narrowing your search until you could trace it back to a source. The better and faster you where at investigating, the faster you could set up a perimeter and hopefully prevent the infection from spreading, before sending in your soldiers to clear out the infected area, block by block, and building by building. It really was a completely unique game unlike any other ive played, but now? Its indistinguishable from any other base building RTS on the market. you put down ur production buildings while racing the bot as it places its own buildings. There's no slow and steady trickle of infected that you have to trace back to a source, but instead a massive wave of zombies that spreads out of a random spot on the map and sweeps over whatever few people u managed to land in the short seconds it took for the zombie wave to spawn. I get that this is still EA, but the game worked perfectly fine until the devs decided to overhaul the entire thing from the roots up. Thats the kind of work that should really be saved for a Cepheus Protocol 2, after you've proven you can make a playable first game, ala Hell divers 1

This game was so much fun and I understand why the devs felt the need to start from scratch. However this game is just unplayable now without nerfing the infected in the settings. Infected swarm any camps before you can even get defenses set up and you can't just set up far away from their initial point because then they will spread to other zones and that snowballs into a loss. The original map was so good, you always had an easy containment to set up and hold while you build your forces and eventually start making incursions into the infected zone. Now you just have to hope the infected spawn point is not right in the middle of the city where it will spread in less than 10 minutes. If the devs make the initial start more like it was before where you can easily set up zones for containment then I will happily recommend this game, but right now it's just too much of a hassle to even play the game.

It's slowly taking shape. Playing in coop offers the most fun, just don't forget to turn the "birds" off, or at least tune it down or suffer the 1-5 fps slide show. (As of now winning with default settings is infeasible.)

1,000 Hours on this game and I have to say, it's overall a very entertaining game made by a very small part-time DEV team that works on this alongside real-world jobs and commitments.... The game is currently going through a massive rebuild and the Civilian Evacuation System that was a core of the original game has been added recently with many, many improvements and additions, the game is very much coming along nicely and is taking great shape, the addition of Co-Op modes and improvements to the 3rd Person Operators is a great way to have fun with friends or find new CERC Operators to fight the spread of the Infection... As a big enjoyer of RTS games and the Prototype Series, the ability to combat an Infectious Biological Outbreak, while managing Military Combat Operations and Civilian Protection and Evacuation Operation is what I really like about this game. I recommend this game for anybody who likes the above style of games if you head over to the discord, the DEVs are very active and the community as a whole are really helpful and welcoming. (On a sidenote - many of the Screenshots on the Storepage are actual ingame images, taken by ME, during some of many hours in the game, more can be found on the Discord for Player Screenshots here - https://discord.com/channels/469412014427602944/1430256470812786848

the game desperately needs a proper tutorial the idea is fantastic the game itself looks good but just dumping you onto a map and leaving you to figure it out is a big ask for me it made it unplayable so i refunded it as soon as they get a tutorial sorted ill rebuy it in an instant and change this review it just right now its very difficult to get into and kind of unplayable

When this first came out I loved it. As time has gone along I cant even play it without it crashing in the first 10 minutes of play.

Huge Mess

I cant really recommend it - its fun but its not a good RTS they have too much in depth infantry tactics and menus to make it a good RTS of like actively fighting the enemy. like you need to command a chopper to land, then command infantry to load to the chopper then command the chopper to take off. in a normal RTS, pick infantry, click on chopper, chopper lands infantry get in and chopper takes off on its own. the chopper should default being up in the air - not landed, landed means dead or loading, the UI is TINY TINY TINY, i dont even see what im building and all the buildings have very specific needs, you HAVE to have a generator near the thing requiring power, or no power, why am i being an electrician? i wanna shoot zombies. very cool idea but not executed well ok to answer the dev in more depth- i have played a LOT of RTS games since i was like 7, what i have found is that if you have in depth infantry and unit stuff you should have very basic buildings like company of heros 1-3 or dawn of war 1 and 3 (they produce things, or are designated upgrade buildings or you need building A to build building B to get building C) OR you go very basic infantry with complex buildings like star wars, 8 bit army, age of empires (you throw tons of infantry, tanks and aircraft at each other and nothing has any value besides your base) or the third type which is a mix of both like starcraft and all the command and conquers (buildings make stuff like infantry or tanks, only 2 or 3 buildings produce said units, the rest provides a small purpose on its own like power or more money but easily replaced if lost) again i like the concept of the game ( id like more proper tanks like abrams for late game stuff or play as the zombies so you can understand the tactics and strategy better) but ill never forget the tutorial i had to watch from a youtuber where he said "you dont win you just contain" so to me its an oversight of not really an RTS its more like a wave defense with too much stuff in the background of weapon loadouts for my soldiers where i can have 4 squads of dudes ALL WITH DIFFERENT WEAPONS and theyre all dots down on the ground and im not gonna tell who is who at a glance unless i open a new menu to see who has what. instead of this squad i trained only has machine guns, cant shoot rockets and this other squad is all rockets no machine guns so i know rocket guys cant do hordes but handle big tanky enemies but machine gun guys are the opposite - good crowd control but minimal damage to large enemies. KISS keep it simple S

The game is heavily based on reputation. As soon as something bothers the survivors, their reputation drops, and the “overpopulation” starts killing their own soldiers one by one, making the game unplayable. Now I have tons of vehicles just sitting around. :D