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And now we're at day four of Steam Next Fest. Another round of game demos to share my impression of!
win10
"Oh, another zombie game," I sent to chat when my friend told me what she was playing.
"You control the zombies in this one."
What? 👀
I tried it on Steam Deck but it wouldn't take. Probably should've went into Desktop mode and fiddled with the resolution option I could launch with. Maybe. So I decided to try on my PC instead.
Well, the intro was something! I won't describe it, it's more fun to watch it for yourselves, however you choose to do that. The game is pretty clear it doesn't intend to take itself seriously.
On top of zombies, you also get zombots. You make them out of the "wild" zombies. I actually like that discovering new gear is a matter of collecting enough copies of them. A little bit like discovering new blueprints in Subnautica! Any other copies gained afterwards convert to scrap. Which is great because you need about five scraps and a broken "hacking helmet" to make a functional one. The hacking helmet is how the living controls the undead! Yeah, it's really weird and I'm here for it.
I'm not sure if I'm only limited to one Zombot this early in the game, but I haven't been able to capture another one since I got this one. But so far, if the zombie dies and I have another helmet, I can just bring back another. I have delved into necromancy...via tech and science! Yay!
It's funny to watch, but the Zombot(s) gather for you if none of you are in combat. They shamble pretty quick, so that's nice! This one I have now tried to give me a piece of wood. For wahtever reason, it fell out. It picked it up and tried again. How sweet 🥰
They Zombots are kind of cute, in that disgusting rotting flesh sort of way.
(Okay, so it turns out the wood didn't fall out of my hands or something. It just happened to spawn where I was standing!)
So...I have a zombie saddle and now I'm riding my lone Zombot like it's a horse. Cool. I promise to take good care of it!
That said, there's actually a skill that I can rank three times, it improves attack speed and I take less damage! Awww, Zombot so nice.
...then I tried to fend off a group of zombies. Only one rank still makes the Zombot pretty slow and we took a bunch of damage together. Good thing it can regenerate its health. I need to use bandages.
Finally got me a ranged weapon. Apparently, that means my Zombot gets it too! One thing I didn't mention is how scattered throughout the map so far, there are these dossier that the local tech guy left around. They seem to be Zombot builds. I actually appreciate the game tries to give us existing templates to work with. It's one way of teaching us how to use the Zombot config screen without a bunch of popups everywhere and dry text telling me what this and this and this is for.
The dossiers are presented as little cutscenes and they are fun to watch.
It's on my wishlist now. I love the silly irreverence it has to the post-apocalypse + zombie trope. They've been over-marketed back in the 2010's, so I've been tired of them for a long while. To see such a whacky take on it, and the way it makes light of the zombie by giving us players the means to control them like lemmings is great.
While I had fun with the demo, I'm not certain it's worth the current price tag. The art felt more akin to a bunch of store-bought assets thrown together rather than a conscious design decision. Melee combat can use another pass. I hope they're releasing this into early access, because it has potential but it still need more work. There are certain things they can better communicate as well, like whether or not we get to have an actual hoard of zombots with us or we only get more in the base we build.
win10
I finally tried this on PC. I think maybe if I had adjusted the controls settings like the response curve and whatnot (via Steam), it would've been a nicer experience on the Deck. I wanted to say that the game performed better on PC but really, it didn't seem that much of a difference. There should've been. I have games that plays at a higher framerate than the Deck does. I also frame rate limit my Steam Deck to 40 to avoid draining the battery. It's okay though, it's just a demo and I would hope that given enough time, optimization will happen. Steam Deck is too big these days for developers to ignore for very long.
Anyway, that said, the game is much more fun on PC. Being able to just tap for a little bit of impulse makes the truck-ship feel less crazy and more weighty. I know it's just my experience, or lack of experience. Plus the laziness of not adjusting my controller, but hey, at least this works!
This time, I was able to get to the cargo to pick up for a new job and then delivered it. Unfortunately, I hit something on my way out of the station where I just picked up the job. This is before I was at the drop zone where the cargo was waiting for me to be picked up. Client still dinged me for that. I didn't even damage the cargo, I probably only dinged my own truck-ship and maybe the station too. I already got a fine, they didn't have to dock 2/3 of my pay 😢
That's my biggest gripe with the game. If not for that, this has been the most fun I've had with something as frustrating as operating this heavy-AF ship. It even handles like one. This is like playing Elite: Dangerous in only a Type-9. No weapons. Just cargo hauling! And all the highway signs were ripped out from Earth and scattered through this side of the Milky Way. Except you can't hit anything. Don't even think about bumping into things or enjoy the $200 traffic offence fine you just netted yourself!
At some point, all you can do is laugh at the absurdity of it all and just...enjoy the ride 🙂
I just hope by the time it's released, it'll be more playable on the Steam Deck.
Full disclosure, I'm finding myself yearning to go back to the games I was playing before Next Fest. However, as I'm scrolling through the demos, I do find some that intrigues me so there's a chance there will be more reviews to come. However, it's likely it'll slow down to just one review per day and it won't be published the same day I played them.
Well then, until tomorrow! Hope you guys are checking out some of these games for yourselves too. No matter how many reviews you might read up on these games, nothing beats the personal experience.
--- Metadata: ___ First published on 2024 February 09. Last modified on 2024 February 09.
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