Lab 7: Cold Nights

Interesting 2d Action Defense game, tough learning curve. Had fun, would recommend it, if you like demanding games. About the gameplay: When you wake up for the first time (ingame) you should definitely follow the tutorial carefully and study the provided aid (in the game menu). Otherwise you will, like myself, have a hard time to figure out what to do and how. Especially the power management system is hard to understand. In-game help or community hub can help here. Once you've overcome this obstacle, the actual gameplay begins. You start to research the floors of the lab, equip yourself with weapons, turrets, keycards, and so on to reach out for the upper floors. In the elevator there are several floors hidden behind a switchable button (unfortunately easy to miss). You have to fight through each of these to unlock the next one and to fight your way to the outside. Additional monsters storm into the laboratory every day or when you fail your powermanagement. So you have to take care of your time management to avoid being overrun. If you die you have to start all over again. Luckily the tutorial is skipable. There are some puzzles to solve and things to try and learn. Trying, dying and restarting is therefore part of the game concept and desired. It's nice that you improve your weapon knowledge from run to run and keep your knowledge. It is unusual that you don't have to aim by yourself. But RNGsus is quite gracious if you have mastered your weapon. You can choose between controller or mouse & keyboard. Controls are close to the controller when using mouse and keyboard, but you can reassign it to what ever you want. Graphics are atmospheric, while the rooms come with nice details, some turrets are kept very simple. All in all quite ok. However, the navigation is a little confusing. Unfortunately, the game only remembers part of the game settings. While the language (german and english available) can be defined in the main menu, the resolution and sound volume have to be set again each try. The important "game help" is also hidden in the menu after a run has been started. It explains the power management and the most important basics that result from it. This should be more easily accessible to the player. To emphasize positively: The developer is on the forums with advice and action and is currently providing the game with patches very quickly. Have not seen the end yet, will update when i finish my first run.

Lab 7: Cold Nights is a refreshing addition to the zombie shooter genre. It has some strategy elements to it that make it far more interesting and rewarding to play than just a straight up shooter with zombies in it. It feels more like a survival horror with secrets and upgrades to discover. The strategy elements are mixed with plenty of action and some mystery in discovering items that will help make the game more enjoyable. The game starts with a limited power generator. The available power acts as a credit system for 3 things: Light, Security and the Elevator. Your general goal here is to increase the power generated to these 3 things so that you can interact more with the environment. Power can be increased by adding coins to each power terminal. Coins are earned by killing zombies. A certain amount of power is subtracted from the applicable power bar when you open a door or use the elevator. You get numbered and graphic feedback, so if you go below zero, an alarm goes off and attracts zombies. You already have zombies that enter the lab once every night, so you want to keep the power managed and not make the mistake of triggering additional zombies at any time. It's a waste of time and ammo, both of which are precious. Added depth to this system is that there are items like keycards and upgrades scattered around the different floors and rooms, but you need the light to reach a certain level to be able to identify them and then pick them up. Before you have enough light, you are able to see a small question mark when you walk by something that's usable. This clues you in that you should come back to that location later when you might have enough light. Further depth involves in deciding where it's more important to add coins to because focusing the power on only one thing may leave a power deficit in an area you might need to progress. Time lapses pretty fast in this game and since the zombies are guaranteed to enter the top floor at least once every midnight, you need to do everything efficiently, Fortunately, there is a floor that has unlimited ammunition, but it costs coins and it is the only place that you can get ammo. The ultimate goal of the game is to progress to floor zero through the elevator. You are underground, so the high you go in the elevator, the lower the number of the floor is. The first button of the elevator shows at level 15, but you can select the upper floors by pressing up while that button is highlighted. The challenge is that each upper floor can only be accessed after the fuse box is fixed/activated from the previous floor. For example, if you want to be able to get to floor 14, you'll first have to clear floor 15 of zombies and fix the fuse box, and so on. You can only carry so much ammo, so in the beginning you'll be only be able to clear 1 or 2 floors before you need to go back to the ammo room. As you go through the upper floors you'll also discover turrets and barricades that can be placed to help you kill off the ever increasing zombie hordes. As you go back to the main floor areas, you'll have the opportunity to kill more zombies, restock ammo or explore other rooms as you slowly increase the power bars for each terminal. A basic power strategy is to avoid using the elevator when its power is low and let it recharge while exploring the main areas because your security power bar is higher. Besides the ability to add more coins to the power terminals, you'll very soon discover that there is an armoury on the ammo floor. It is here that you can upgrade your guns, turrets, barricades and even buy more guns. You'll need to do this as there are always more zombies in each nightly horde and in each upper floor. Fortunately, the game is made so that efficient and clever planning will lead to you having firepower and ammo to spare. You'll also find that close up shots can often kill zombies, making the game more fun and saving you ammo. On top of this, the gun turrets and barricades add some real time strategy to the zombie attacks, whether you're in the main area or trying to clear the upper floors. While the turrets seem useless during the first 7 days, they have infinite bullets and can be placed or replaced wherever you want. Once you have at least 3 or 4 and begin to start upgrading them they begin to come in really handy. At higher levels with more turrets, you can prevent zombies from backing you up to a dead end, or the elevator door you came in from. there is also more than one strategy you can use with them. For example, you can set up 4 or more in a row and try to leapfrog them ahead every time you have a little bit of space. Or, you can set up a barricade or two in front of all your turrets giving them more time to shoot the zombies at close range before the barricades are destroyed. Note: If your barricade is destroyed it's not gone forever. Also, turrets cannot be destroyed. Topping off the game are a couple of secrets to find and the fact that you don't need every single item, gun, or upgrade to be able to complete the game. This makes the game fun to replay so you can try to upgrade the guns more and do things more efficiently. I wasn't able to figure out every secret or buy every upgrade in my first playthrough, so it was fun to redo. Besides being able to upgrade guns in the upgrade room, guns also upgrade as you use them. They have a star ranking beside them. This is separate from the bought upgrades, but keeps them fun as they get more effective from use. The music is great. There are a variety of tracks and they help set the mood. The sounds are what you'd expect. Gun shots are satisfying enough and even when shooting zombies offscreen, (a nice benefit of the Karabiner) you'll hear a more satisfying sound when you get a lethal hit. If you looked at the screen shots you know what you're getting. I think the lighting looks good and the overall graphic design is consistent with the style. My only gripe is that things are quite small, but that just seems to be the developer's style. I would have liked to see more unique zombie models, but the ones we see are pretty good. Heads can get blown off partially or fully, sometimes just the face can get blown off leaving a red bloody hole. Regardless, this game is made by one guy, so I can't fault him for not having 3000 different zombie styles. Do we want the zombie fashion show or do we want a game? Well I would have liked both, but you can't have everything. I highly recommend this game. It's not just a mindless shooter. If it was only a sidescrolling shooter with gun upgrades it might not have kept my interest. It's how the game had various elements of discovery and strategy in progressing and upgrading that kept me playing. I love zombie type games. That's what first caught my interest. Zombies can get tiring, so devs need to do interesting things to keep this genre relevant. This game does that in its own unique way. I'm not the type of gamer that likes speedruns, difficult games or games that want to be replayable, but this game breaks my mould for that. It is quite challenging, which I kind of hated at first, but the beauty is in learning how to do things efficiently so that you can make the game easy for yourself. The learning curve isn't easy, but the payoff is satisfying. This isn't a one and done game for me. Whatever this developer is doing next I want it to be a sequel to this game or a new game in the same genre. Count me in.

Can't say i'm a fan. The game is extremely grindy and repetitive, with the later "levels" just throwing so many Bullet sponge enemies your way you go through your whole ammunition to get to a Fuse box. Idle animations while you aim are a pain in the ass. They dont "actually" take your aim off the zombies, but it always throws me off when my character starts aiming at random directions in the middle of a fight. Hit boxes are f@cked up, with shots not connecting with some zombies if they are too close. Then you got the Kick that is awkward to use since you pass through Zombies if you don't time it right. And on top of that you have Zombies hitting you through barricades. And since once you're hit you get stun locked, If there's ever a group at a barricade that hits you through you're as good as dead. Add to that the awkward controls, whereas you don't seem to have a quick way to swap weapons ( mouse wheel up and down would be amazing, or the Q key / Tab key )

Update: This has been fixed, I didn't know developers actually fixed things anymore! It's actually just suspenseful and not frustrating now. Prior Complaint: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The fact that the character randomly waves the flashlight around makes this game unplayable, I don't know why they thought that was a good idea in a game when light is so important. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[9/10/22] A lot has changed from when I first played this game upon release. Now you've got a faster start, a clearly stated goal, though I liked the mystery of the original; and an inventory that tells you how many goodies there are! There's also been a drastic decrease in character stretching and he seems to talk more often of your objectives [spoiler] It would seem there were a vocal minority of newbies that complained they couldn't figure out what to do and cave caved to them...[/spoiler] Still a good quick game and I hope the creator still loves his creation. Original, now dated, review: Fresh off a normal run, [spoiler] burning through all the elevator levels without using the battery pack or solving the security subplot,[/spoiler] I found Lab 7 to be a "rogue lite" style game with an addictive gameplay loop that keeps me coming back after each failure. Certainly look forward to Dave's continued support for this game and what else would/will be added or will release next.

I will write a longer review later, this one is for the algorithm gods. Flawed but very enjoyable. WARNING: HARD!

Lab 7 es un juego divertido, la idea es muy simple, despiertas en un laboratorio y tienes que subir piso a piso para escapar, la base se encuentra en los pisos inferiores donde tienes que usar los diferentes tipos de energia para poder progresar en diferentes cosas. El combate es mas propio de un rpg que un juego de accion, puedes influenciar tus disaparos con el nivel del arma, la luz y demas pero finalmente el daño lo decide algunos nuumeros que no puedes ver. En general la conbinacion entre el manejo de la energia, el combate y difentes cosas que pueden influenciar tu partida dan para un juego de supervivencia muy intenso. dicho esto el juego peca de ser muy muy obtuso mecanicas importantes son muy dificiles de aprenderlas por tu cuenta hay movimientos como la patada que tuve que preguntar en un foro para poder realizarlo, el sistema de energia tienes para entenderlo es casi nesesario ver el tutorial que hace el desarrollador. En general un buen juego, mas a un para haberse desarrollado por una sola persona, si lo que aparece en los trailers y la expliacion que te di te atraen y estas dispuesto a perdonar su obtusidad es un buen juego, ademas es barato C;

I was looking for a game with Kingdom roots but with a twist. This is exactly that kind of game. The only thing that keeps me from praising it fully is the absence of co-op. There is a VS mode, but no co-op. A co-op mode would be more logic to me as this is a survival game. But I still recommend the game.

Fun little game, good concept. Would love to see it expanded upon in terms of size.

A Delightful Zombie Shooter with Base Building/Exploration built in! While the game can seem a little daunting at first, once players have gotten used to how the facility they're trapped in operates, they'll quickly see the fun in blasting wave after wave of zombies as they gradually fight their way out of the base they're trapped deep within! The combat is solidly strategic, but the real joy to be found in the game is gradually unlocking each new area of the Lab and finding all of the secrets hidden within. This could have been little more than a standard base defense game, but the addition of a detailed complex full of unlockable room to hunt through massively improves the experience- One tip - so long as your computer can handle it, be sure to switch zombie deaths from 'Animation' to 'Ragdoll' - it's useful to be able to tell the exact moment a zombie dies.