Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~

[b]Did you ever want to flirt with a zombie? Yes? — Then look no further, Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~ is right here![/b] In all seriousness, this game is such a wonderful mix of a dungeon crawler with visual novel elements which made it hard for me to not enjoy it. You see, I was always a fan of dungeon crawlers and the majority of games I play are visual novels, so I knew right away that Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~ is right up my ally especially considering the cute zombie girls I can interact with. [h2]Meet The… Half-Dead Girls![/h2] Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~ opens with the protagonist Reginald (also called "Reggie") who happens to wake up one day in a strange world. The first thing that he notices is that his childhood friend, Pearl, looks quite different than usual. Less… Lively. Anyway, it turns out that while he was sleeping, a virus outbreak took place and infected almost everyone, turning them into zombies. Unfortunately, the same happened to Pearl as well, however, she managed to cling to her human conscience and besides the weird appearance, she is still the same childhood friend Reggie remembers. Thus, she is still somewhat human but undead nonetheless. The important thing here is that Reggie's father is a scientist who left a small amount of the cure to the virus to Reggie, however, he already left with Pearl's father. Determined to find his father and reach a safe place where they can produce more of the cure, their journey starts. [h2]A Visual Novel Or Dungeon Crawler?[/h2] Well, both! When starting Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~ for the very first time, it was evident that this game is going to be quite text-heavy. Before the player can even start the dungeon crawling, they get properly introduced to the world with the help of the visual novel elements. I found the text witty and had a lot of joy going through that part of the game as I found the characters utterly cute and couldn't wait to get to know them better. While there are getting more and more girls introduced when progressing with the story, I found each of them precious and if I had to choose my favorite one, that would be tough. Of course, the dungeon crawling itself takes up a big part of Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~ as well. However, I found both genres balanced just fine, although that means that this game is probably only enjoyable to those who enjoy text-heavy games as well as, well… dungeon crawlers. Lucky for me, I love both genres so it wasn't a problem for me at all. [h2]Flirt With The Zombies![/h2] There are different ends available as well that depend on the relationship of Reggie with each undead girl. During the dialogue, there are occasionally choices popping up that might increase the affection with a specific girl while other choices might not affect at all. Luckily, there is an indicator available that shows when the player made the right decision, however, as saving is not possible during a cutscene it's not that simple to quit and reload the save file like for regular visual novels. Nonetheless, I appreciate the approach of a dating sim in Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~. In addition to that, there are so-called sub-events available throughout the dungeons itself. When reaching one, a short cutscene gets played. Although they are not mandatory for the main story at all, it's still a useful optional feature that allows the player to get to know the girls better, and improve their relationship. Something that I noticed is that it's only possible to enter the event when having the necessary girls in the party during the investigation. This makes sense as each event revolves around specific girls, although the game doesn't tell the player which girl they're missing. But luckily, it's easy to revisit the scene later on in the game with the help of a map. [h2]Dungeon Crawling[/h2] I'll keep this short as I'm positive anyone knows how a dungeon crawler works. Anyway, the player can discover bits and pieces of each floor and has to reach a specific place to continue with the main story. In that regard, Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~ works like a typical dungeon crawler. However, there are special things I noticed during investigating the dungeons such as the party getting back a small amount of health and SP when picking up an item. After completing a sub-event, the whole party gets fully recharged with max health and SP. Sometimes, when I was running low of health I just looked for items to collect rather than for the items itself. Luckily, items get reset when leaving a floor so when reinvestigating the same floor, the player knows where the items are with the help of the map. However, it's entirely random what item the player will get which can vary from weapons or items to heal a party member. Something that I found slightly annoying is that the inventory only has ten spaces available at the start of the game, although it's easily possible to upgrade it. Outside of a dungeon, the player has a storage where they can put their found items. The weapons are having a certain amount of durability as well and will break when the number reaches zero. The amount of durability is easily visible next to the pictures of each girl during the dungeon, as well as during the fight with each turn. Although it's possible to extend the durability, I always made sure to have enough weapons available in the inventory. Minor complaints I have here are, first of all, that the mini-map is way too small for a dungeon crawler. Luckily, there is a bigger map available that covers almost the whole screen but that wasn't a satisfying solution either as I could not see the beautiful environment anymore. In addition to that, the game gets difficult after the first dungeon and although there are different difficulty settings available, they only reduce the damage the party receives which makes the easiest setting "Visual Novel" still too tough. [h2]Graphics, English Voice-Acting, and The Immersion[/h2] Graphics-wise, Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~ is beautiful. The visual novel parts implement sprites with multiple facial expressions and stunning CGs. But that's not all, the dungeons look pretty as well and I loved the environment, if only it wasn't hid by the big map. Anyway, the sprites of each girl are showing up in the lower half of the screen when going through a dungeon and I liked the small detail of the backs of the girls being visible when going into a battle which makes sense as they're facing the enemies. In addition to that, the English voice-acting is high-quality and was a joy to listen to. A minor issue I had is that the default setting of the music is quite high compared to the voice over so it was sometimes hard to understand what the characters were saying. Luckily, this can be tweaked in the options, although it should have been adjusted beforehand by default nonetheless. Anyway, only the main story is fully voiced, excluding the main character, whilst sub-events do no contain any voiced lines at all. [h2]So, what do we have in the end?[/h2] Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~ turned out to be such a lovely game with stunning graphics and adorable undead girls I couldn't help but utterly adore. The gameplay and visual novel elements are well-balanced and, in addition to that, the writing is charming and I ended up loving each character, although all of them are so different from each other. That being said, if you enjoy visual novels and dungeon crawlers, Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~ is the game you have been looking for. [quote]𝐅𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐦𝐲 [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34470115/]𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐏𝐚𝐠𝐞[/url] 𝐚𝐧𝐝 [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/5413792/]𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐬[/url] 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰𝐬!

Everything of this game is a pain in the arse. From battle mechanics to map settings to gameplays, none I can enjoy casually. On top of that, completion rewards you with little to no satisfaction. Give or take, about 70% of the dialogues are not even voiced. Covers the lack of content by using dumb dungeon mechanics to stall progress. On average to complete the later dungeons you'll probably waste 3-4 hours of your life along with 50+ pitfall drops. Doesn't show controls, doesn't allow change of keys. doesn't show anything that indicates your affection with girls. I completed the game yet still have no idea how to retrieve stashed items. I was 10 hours in when I realize you can press "tab" to show floor map. Unless there's at least an 80% discount, don't even bother getting it. Only people who give positive reviews are those who either never completed the game or received the product for free.

Ask yourself this: Can a game with a good story and lots of comedy make up for mediocre gameplay in your book? Your answer to that question is your general answer to whether Undead Darlings is for you. It's basically already a genre staple for RPGs to have significant story sections between the dungeon-crawling gameplay, although some are more story-intensive than others, so the "blend of Visual Novel and RPG" is more of degree than actual blending of genres. To start with the positive, the game is a comedy that, by the metric of whether it makes me laugh, is successful... a majority of the time. It varies between genre savvy characters (Jordan in particular is a horror flick buff) making pop culture references to one another to Deadpool-style main character arguing with the narrator. All the items also contribute to the humor, with you finding armor like "Ironic T-shirt" in the mall stage, and a description that it has the image of a television show that went off the air before the wearer was born. Your weapons are similarly modern toys more than actual weapons, including an obvious reference to the Nerf bow and arrow as an early-game weapon. It occasionally dips into that bad "satire" style of saying that a tired cliche is stupid and only lazy hacks use it before going ahead and using the same tired cliche, anyway, but thinking it's funny because they pointed it out as well, but the bigger problem with the comedy can be that the game has inconsistent tone. When the main character tells off the narrator for lying to the reader and the other characters standing by the main character don't react to his seemingly talking to thin air, it starts to make you confused about what layer of the meta any given line is supposed to be referring to. The game also leans heavily on its characters, which are a high point in the game, but can also compound the tone issues because each character has a different level of seriousness and realism. Jordan is sarcastic and drops references to cult classic movies constantly, and outbursts of stereotypical tsundere behavior aside, generally behaves like a normal person in the non-combat segments, if one who seemed largely unconcerned with the having to fight zombies part of her day. (But hey, I guess already being dead takes the fear of death out of you?) The more obvious comic relief characters (in a game that's already a comedy) like Buck and Cici, however, are too cartoonish to avoid distorting any scene they take place in. Cici in particular can be disconcerting, as she's treated as infantile to the point of needing characters to babysit her because she literally will get lost chasing a bird into the woods if not supervised... and she's also the big-breasted blonde who constantly flaunts her sexuality. You can't take her seriously as an adult (which is a big problem in a game that tries to be a romance in and of itself), but the story then demands you listen to descriptions of feeling up her breasts. A much bigger problem I have is that the game tends to focus for too long on one segment of the game or the other. You'll hit points where, after about 5 minutes of text, you get offered a menu of the next seven story vignettes you are going to have to read through, and a save point between each of them. The text portion between dungeons can easily stretch over half an hour long. Inversely, the dungeons also tend to drag on. This is in large part because there are so many mechanics that force backtracking. You need to get colored keys or hit switches to open colored doors like a 90's FPS. You need to replace broken weapons from random treasure drops that do respawn every time you leave the dungeon... but you need to leave and re-enter the dungeon repeatedly (and getting through more fights that drain durability) to acquire what you need. There are no shops, there are only random loot drops, so savescum until your eyes bleed because 90% of treasure will be useless garbage like flashlights that have no mechanical effect. You can come across character events that break up dungeon crawling with dialogue... but only if you have a specific combination of characters, so you need to go back to base and come back with a different party. It really starts to add up to you wishing that whatever part of the game you're not in would come back to break up the part you're in. A major contributor to the feeling that dungeons drag on is that combat tends to last at least a half-dozen rounds, but there are rarely any skills you can use better than just mashing attack over and over. Spells exist, but not only do they take up about 1/10th of your SP per cast, they're actually [i]weaker[/i] than your basic attacks. You have physical skills, but those break your weapons three to five times faster, forcing you into grinding treasure drops several times as much, so it wastes more time. You have combos, but the interface for the macro system is absolutely terrible and doesn't let you pick what monster you use it on. Ultimately, the best choice is always just spamming basic attacks and spending SP on healing unless you're going up against a boss or mini-boss hard enough to justify burning resources. That said, the story parts are certainly interesting enough to have kept me interested in playing the game more. I've certainly been less interested in dungeon crawlers with better actual gameplay than this, so, again, buy it if a good story is enough to get you past mediocre gameplay.

The game had a lot of promise; cute girls, interesting turn-based combat and witty, if not very slightly cliche at time, dialogue. Unfortunately, the constant turning to explore during the dungeon crawling made me motion sick... I'd recommend the game to people from the short bit I played, but people with motion sickness should be wary of it. Still a little disappointed I won't get to meet all the girls, but I don't want to get nauseous while playing

An anime-girl zombie apocalypse story VN built around a dungeon crawling turn-based RPG. A fantastic match up of undead romance and world-saving plots with a super cute and slightly dark art style! https://youtu.be/aBYALzV5cz0

I love this game a lot, but it's very hard to recommend at full price. The story is not anything special but it is fun, and I really like the conversations between the girls and the main guy, but there's too many weird design decisions that drags the combat down (which is what you're going to do the most considering the dungeons are really long), which is why I can't just say this game is good and leave it at that. It's very fun, but it's very clunky, and if you don't have the patience for it, it's just gonna annoy the hell out of you. Common enemies have way too much health, most of the encounters take way too long and you're going to do them a lot because the random encounter rate is very high. Weapons have durability and break too fast, and repairing them is very annoying. I do like the Exponential Exploitation system in battles. You have a multiplier that starts at 1.0 at the beginning of a fight, and the multiplier goes up if you hit enemies' weaknesses. This means you can go up to 5 times your damage, as long as you keep hitting enemies' weaknesses. Not much to say about the music - just that I like it a lot. Very catchy. The one thing I like the most however are the interactions you have with your... zombie harem, I guess? The girls are really cute and the most of the conversations are fun. Another thing is that this game is not just comedy, or wacky adventures with wacky characters - it has a lot of serious, personal moments, which makes the whole thing a joy to read. So I do recommend this game, just with a warning that it's kinda expensive for what it is, and that it's plagued with confusing design ideas. Why can weapons break? Seriously, why?

okay indie game for those who want dungeon crawl with anime girls, but expect to face several inconvenience if you want to try this. On plus side, it is unique in that there are many unique and funnily designed enemies, something rare in anime dungeon crawlers since they usually come from Japan. Different culture tropes rather than usual animal tropes(though this game also contains lots of it) can be found here, which sets this apart from translated Japanese games. Also, English VA is also more appreciable since it doesn't have translation problem as well. However, the game system for player's convenience is somewhat lacking. You can't change equipment in base camp(you have to go to dungeon for that), and weapon type(sword/bow/spear/etc) isn't clearly explained in description(this is an especially issue for me since I'm not native English speaker), and you can't even get basic item(potion/escape rope/flashlight/etc) easily since there is no shop. Also, whole weapon durability system, while it catches some post-apocalyptic feeling, seem to make me biased toward magic users since getting scraps is limited compared to scrap cost for repair or bag upgrade. Still, the game has some charms as above, and if you are willing to bear inconvenience stated above, I think this game is worth trying. Oh, and if you're willing to try this, don't mind adjusting difficulty to your taste, the default difficulty was somewhat hard for beginners, especially since whole scrap system isn't easy for first time player to adapt.

Ever thought to yourself, "I'd really like to take a group of adorable zombie girls through a dungeon crawl and fight off hoards of odd monsters?" Well, you're in luck. Undead Darlings is a fantastic little dungeon crawler with just that. It's a great mix of memorable characters with each one having their own distinct personality and branching conversations. There were times I honestly laughed out loud at the banter between the characters and the voice acting is top notch and flows very organically. Each voice fitting the characters perfectly. This has been a very enjoyable game and I look forward to continuing. I was in on the Kickstarter and donated through a good chunk of the Patreon as Mr. Tired was finishing the game, so I can't say I got this game for free. I have been extremely happy with the product that has been delivered and have experienced zero bugs or glitches. The battle system is solid and you'll find yourself in some tough battles. I was playing on normal and had times where two of my group went down when they were hammered with a vulnerability. Of course, there are harder difficulties you can put it on. Before the official release and game update, I put about 25 hours into the game and this is what my review is based off of. If this is the type of game we are to expect from Mr. Tired Media, then I look forward to anything new. Happy Gaming folks.

I have been thoroughly enjoying this game so far. The story is absurd in the best possible way, and the writing matches that tone perfectly. Combat is mostly as you would expect of a turn based RPG, but with a few minor twists. The game feels very carefully balanced, even down to the weapon durability system. Undead Darlings is every bit as fun as all the great classic RPGs it pays homage to.

Zombie waifus and dungeon crawling what more can a man need. Overall its a pretty fun little game that is quite girthy if you try for all the ends. Characters are fun and gameplay is fun most of the times with a few minor inconveniences. Overall id say its worth it.