There are many Minecraft clones out there, some close to the original and others which diverge widely. Close comparison is unavoidable in this case: you can break blocks and use them to build a base, you'll find crafting ingredients and turn them into tools or weapons, all while you explore the world freely pursuing your own goals.
But also this game went off in its own direction and found a good niche: there's an RPG system where you choose how to specialize your character, and the world is filled with apartments and clinics and skyscrapers to loot, and there are guns. You are clearly playing as the lone survivor in a world like ours after some kind of zombie apocalypse.
At its worst and best, this has the feel of an abandoned project with potential that couldn't be realized. If Minecraft is a game where you become bored of every world within some number of days, this is a game where you become bored of every world within some number of hours … and maybe someday that won't be true if the game patches in fun new items and enemies and dungeons.
The procedural generation of buildings is good at a macro level, but quickly shows flaws up close with nonsensical room layouts and a minimum of furniture. There's something weirdly disturbing (fitting the urban horror vibes perhaps) about the game's way of loading the world, with building sections rising up out of the ground as they come into distant view.
Your hunger and thirst bars deplete deceptively fast. Food is plentiful but I feel the canned veggies should restore some water too. Water is tough to find and thus the far bigger concern, which does seem accurate to an apocalypse. No farming means you simply loot junk food until there's no more, another sad reality of a post-apocalypse life.
Ranged weapons lacks the realistic kick of recoil, but do offer a number of good pistols, rifles, fun multi-hit shotguns, machine guns and more. There's even a neat reloading microgame where hitting a button at the right time makes it faster. On the other hand, melee combat feels light without any signs of a successful impact beyond the damage numbers. Movement is slightly slippery and jumping is kind of floaty, but also everything seems forgiving; I was able to jump accurately and my falling mistakes were caused by me.
Crafting feels odd; you can create modern guns and bullets out of scrap metal and gunpowder without any tools, but there's no way to craft the glass or furniture in the world, so you smash the latter to take them. Everything has the same durability, from your first club weapon to the best hammerfork, and everything breaks the same, from glass windows to brick walls. Many of the best tools require you to be max level before you can craft them, which might be a necessary compromise but feels bad.
Some tools and weapons can be disassembled for components, which is great because you find a lot of them while looting. But strangely, some can't be disassembled and must be used or dropped. Your inventory and placeable storage crates all auto-fill towards the top, so you can't place items in specific spots within, and you can't manually sort them other than to take items out and return them in the order you want.
The main menu allows you to customize the look of your avatar. Clothing style options are very limited but you can choose from every color. The male body type has up to three choices per category, while the female body has only one option for face and hair.
I also strongly, STRONGLY dislike the placement and wording of the “Commit S**cide” option in the pause menu, though I understand the gameplay purpose.
But if you can overlook these indie game quirks and give this experience a shot, there's plenty of tense fun to be had exploring and looting these procedural cities. There are hard to find crafting items in specific places, ammo filled rooms that feel like finding treasure, and that ever-present sense that something great could be made from this.
To make the best of this game as is, try all of the game modes. There's a classic Minecraft-style survival mode where you respawn infinitely from your spawn or a bed, a hardcore mode where you don't respawn, the usual creative mode where you're free to build whatever you want without worry and which you can turn into a survival world after setting up the map, and a base defense mode where at night the zombies hunt you down in waves.
Defense mode has several more important options, such as allowing you to delay the first attack by up to 7 days, and getting 1 to 4 real-time minutes between waves. Each wave was pretty small when I tried on Normal, but if you're inside a building with multiple routes for them to reach you, things can get hectic fast, and the zombies can both claw through walls and reach high places.
World difficulty adjusts the power of the zombies and changes what you drop when you die; for example, Normal difficulty allows you to keep your belt but drops your inventory. If you want easy fun, try the option with infinite ammo where you gain weapons for leveling up. If you crave challenge, you can adjust how much stronger the zombies become every morning, up to 100%. Making your world as difficult as possible and surviving is a solid achievement.
There are three types of starting terrain: normal with lights still working, Dark with no active lights, and Apocalypse where bombshell craters litter the landscape, which is a striking visual but does create some odd caves below. Dark terrain becomes extremely dark at night, which makes creating a safe base a necessity, and I wish you could actually sleep in the beds.
The RPG system covers some good ground. Killing zombies and finding stuff gives you experience, with which you can reach level 30. Most levelups give you 1 stat point and 1 attribute point, reduced to 1 stat point every other level beyond 20. So a max level character has 24 stat points and 29 attribute points, and all stats and attributes cap at 10.
Stats include Strength to boost melee damage and item durability, Intelligence for critical hit damage and experience gain, Perception for ranged damage and drop rate, and lastly Stamina for health and how much you get from food. The one stat I rarely used was Strength because melee combat isn't as fun, but there are some potential builds in that direction. Attributes do things like making you better at melee combat, crafting, fighting at night, running and jumping.
In summary, I'm glad I got this game cheap and I also feel like I got my money's worth. This feels like the kind of game I might come back to every once in a while. If you like Minecraft and don't like modding in guns and RPG elements, try this for some zombie-shooting fun.
