Zombasite Reviews

I love this game and would laugh at the negative reviews concerning difficulty when I'm 50+ and holding my own. But I'm not laughing as the game deserves critique not downrating because people don't know how to play or what to expect. It's not for everyone though. [h1]This game may be for you if you like: [/h1] [--] Challenge: (that is scalable, from fairly easy to nightmare hard) (You can even remove clans and zombies entirely and select starting level of enemies) [--] RPG with your Hack-n-Slash [--] Randomness and Replayability [--] Unpredictable Events [--] 3 Ways to Win - Diplomacy, Adventure (Quests) or Military [--] Sense of building something: a dynamic clan that hunts, guards, fights with you, grows as you learn how to balance food and happiness. [--] Dynamic NPCs that have their own mini quests, give player gifts, have personalities/quirks, craft useful items, some may start fights or engage in crimes, get married, have feelings, possess insanity levels, guard the homefront etc. [--] Like lots of loot that you can auto distribute or carefully outfit your clan. [--] Like a simple but useful crafting and upgrade system. [--] Enjoy a roguelite experience (characters and loot are saved from game to game). [--] Mods for quality of life stuff - easy to add. [--] No sense of overpowered characters unless you play on easy. [--] Know that each game could be your last (just backup your savefile if you don't like that) [--] Enjoy a good bestiary that tracks your kills/deaths. [--] Hundreds of character build combinations! [h1]Don't Play the Game If: [/h1] [--] You don't like to ever lose. [--] You require modern graphics. Definitely old school here. [--] You don't like a one-save system. (again you can back it up) [--] You don't like being limited on the loot you can keep. (Add a mod for that) [--] Can't live with difficulty spikes - they happen, as with many hack-n-slash games. [--] Want a game with a predictable outcome or enemies. [--] Need a perfectly running game. (See below, the major complaint) [--] Want a different game. Play the demo to get a feel for it. The only real gripe I have is that since I added the Orc DLC the game crashes now and then. I've not had it ruin a save and their is a simple fix should that ever happen. If I restart, I rarely lose much progress. So it's a minor annoyance, all things considered. >>>The developer offers to look at game saves personally! I highly encourage **playing the demo first ** but you'll rarely find a game of this caliber of this caliber and replayability options for $9.99 (US). I paid full price and would do so again. If you need tips on how to play just ask. :)

I can't recommend Zombasite. There are a few fatal game mechanics that just really hurt this game tremendously. The first is the actual Zombasite infections which are absurdly difficult to cure, and prevent you from attacking. Secondly, people management in your town has no instructions, and is remarkably challenging for no apparent game pleasing benefit. On our third run we did manage to keep our people reasonably stable. But it involves routinely punting people out of your town. Even then, they can occasionally fight each other. Four player co-op gave each player their own town, instead of just one town, one faction, which was more in line with what we were hoping for. Creature scaling. As level 13 players, we were routinely subjected to level 20+ raids from enemy factions, which was just madness; we attempted to do a quest victory only to find the final dungeon had spawned *dozens* of elite monsters at the entrance. 20-30 deaths was not enough to get us through. Additionally, leveling was painfully slow and skill progression was glacial and limited. After 14 levels, I had 2 skills I could use in combat... Pet pathing was also, at best, random. This is a "Neat idea" but terribly executed, I would not reccomend.

This game reminds me of a mesh of some of my favorite games of all time. Part ARPG (Din's Curse in this instance), but has a similar feel and depth that old-school games like Seven Kingdoms, Majesty, Civ, Dwarf Fortress and various roguelike style of games. Let me first get to the Graphics and Sound, and also let me clear up why this isn't quite like a regular "Zombie" based game, if you can even call it one.. If you want to skip to the gameplay review, skip down to where the review says "Finally, on to the game...." Let me first get to the graphics and sound, they are not a sole reason you look to play something innovative like this for, but for me, being an old-school type of gamer as you can tell from the games I mentioned... they are waaaay more than passable. And if you are here currently reading this, you wouldn't be suprised to know this isn't a big dev game, so in that case I think you'll probably be satisfied with it visually. If you're ok enough to ever play a game with the graphics of some currently released games nowadays, say like the "The Escapists" or something else visually on a similar level, then you should have absolutely no room to nitpick here. Visuals are moderately sharp and have a good enough amount of variance for any given generated world. Music is pretty good to me, it comes on and off in certain moments. Not an epic soundtrack, but then again, it's not overly dramatic like some can be. Sound is varied enough from the somewhat various amount of different monsters, skills, and traps that are in the game, but some sound effects can still sound a bit too loud, so I would recommend lowering the sound volume in the options. This issue has been improved upon patch by patch. The Dev has been updating this game with major patches weekly, since it's existence. Secondly, this is not a ZOMBIE based game in the general sense, not as much as you would think for something with Zombie and Parasite in the name.. Most of it comes from the fact that there are zombie based versions of monsters, and this also causes a lot of in-fighting between monsters. But even regular monsters can declare war on each other, yeah it's pretty crazy! Though, there is a Zombie threat bar on the bottom, that will go up over time and make more zombie based monsters exist in the world causing havoc, which you can slow it's rate of raising by doing certain quests. And you and your clan members can be infected, and this can be taken care of in various ways. Now it's basically a single dev game for the most part, so I know it can't be easy, but in my opinion I think he could have done better job coming up with the name of this game, marketing wise. I think it should be changed to something like "Perils of Survival", to give a better feel for the actual game. Though that name would be similar to "Depths of Peril", a previous game by this company. ---------------------- Finally, on to the game.... You create a character that levels up and gains skills, that you can keep playing through each game (generated world) you play, win or lose, and each game takes usually takes a few hours or more (this may vary by the world generation settings you set). It does have hardcore and semi-hardcore options. So what is it generally like? It is beyond just another ARPG/Diablo clone, and like just like a lot of roguelikes, everything you do in game (for this game, doing quests/defending/raiding/diplomacy/clan member management), feels like it's for an important purpose or actual incentive to your clan or the game world.. The world moves even without any user intervention, as monsters level up and form factions to group up with another. And they even plot to raid your town or cause some form of trouble for you or other clans. A certain type of monster, say Imps or Orcs for instance, could actually go to war with you if you kill too many at once (think they will just let you just keep farming them, hey why shouldn't they fight back??) You are considered a "clan" leader basically, with a home town (just one town inside walls, that doesn't ever expand in area) that has to win a generated world via one of these victory conditions, that are basically: Last clan alive victory, an Alliance victory, a gather enough food supply victory, or a do all quests victory.... all against actual other competing AI clans just like you (for the most part..). Most quests are generated on the fly as you play, such as to collect such and such to fix a clan's poisioned water supply, or a town's curse. You can pay for rumors for somewhat accurate locations of these quests. Also quests like "to kill a certain powerful enemy(s) threatening to eventually cause trouble for a clan" (and he/she will, they are not BS'ing!). Escort, rescue, stop a zombie uprising, and many more types of quests that have been added since early access has been moving forward. You can turn in quests that other AI clans give out, quests that they don't end up finishing yet themselves (and you may even do some quests via chance without knowing, before you even meet these clans for the first time... and after you finally meet them, you can turn them in and get rewarded with XP/gold and improved relations) Doing quests for them is a great way to improve relations You also have clan members that interact with each other, and have personality traits. You have to manage this a bit and it can be fun, interesting, and at times frustrating, like when people go insane. But that's part the challenge and variance this game has that I enjoy. You have to make sure to only recruit people that will probably tolerate each other enough, and you also migh need to help them tolerate each other. And you have to make sure they get fed, and don't hiring way too many clan members if you don't have enough extra food, as this can cause a domino effect of happiness and insanity issues. To sum it up, to me It feels weird, in a very GOOD way, playing an action RPG type game... where you feel an actual pressure and importance to acquiring more XP, Gold, and also manage just enough other various things, to improve your chances of not losing and failing a given world/game. It's not super intense like a MOBA or most FPS games, it's more so a similar feeling to some older unique games of the past, and a lot of rougelike type games I've played before, have given me. I also need to mention, there are SO many things that can be modified in the game with notepad via the Assets4 file, for you to tinker with if you'd like. There are mods already if you search the official game forums. Say for example, if you are bothered by lack of inventory space in early levels in ARPG games like this, and would like more in the earlier levels. I urge people to give it a shot with the demo, and I recommend at first trying low stress mode at first. It can probably use just a bit more feedback before it officially releases in the coming months, but don't get me wrong, it's great just the way it is, even if released now. I don't think there is any game quite like this that exists.

Wish I played this sooner. A complex Diablo-like aRPG with followers, 4X-style systems, Roguelike traditions, and a living world that is constantly evolving. Zombasite took a little time to adjust to as it is certainly a game of dozens of spinning plates. My first few hours were filled with frustration as I could barely keep up everything the game was throwing at the player's attention. It is worth persevering, letting the failures roll over you, and sticking with it. Take some time, dig through all of the menus, intuit the many overlapping systems, lose some 'worlds', and keep pushing on. There was a moment where all of the layered systems clicked for me and I found my stride and started making hard-earned progress. My first 'world' win (think levels) was a raw moment of celebration and achievement! Really started loving the game after that. The presentation doesn't quite match modern standards and sometimes the emotional impact of events is lost in quickly scrolling text updates/notifications. If one can look past that, then you have a true gem to get acquainted with and learn. As of this review I put in 17 hours and that is just in one class (Thief/Assassin) and that character is still progressing through world-states and building up a nice group of followers. I cannot wait to see how far I can take my Thief and then start all over with all the myriad of other available classes. Really happy with what Soldak Entertainment designed here; looking forward to trying more from this tiny but mighty developer. What a refreshing game/concept contrasted against the live-service, big-budget dreck.

So far.. I'm not convinced. Graphics have never been a feature of Soldak games but its about time they advanced. The whole quests / rep system / npc system was way ahead of the pack but again I dont see that it had advanced. I bought into this on the strength of the last games - I expected more than what appears to be the same character classes from Dins Curse with the same skills / limitations . Perhaps a lack of imagination on my part but I would have liked to seen more modern character classes. I suppose if it isnt broke don't fix it but at the moment I'm disappointed. On the recommendation...if you are really into the crafting / survival element of a game then perhaps choose this over Dins' Curse / Demon War - but otherwise I'd pick up the latter. Hopefully I'll change my mind as the game matures and I play more.

With heavy heart I can't recommend this game. I love Soldak games but this didn't do it for me. I really expected more than just 1 new class over din's curse but thats it. I appreciate the drox operative quest system being ported over and such but this really doesn't feel like a fresh step up for Soldak. Very minor reasons to get this over Din's curse or Drox operative and for someone whos played both to death this didn't add anything substantial to get me playing again. For me the zombie theme fell flat and came across as very out of place. The new death knight class is cool though. I hate that the rating system on here is so binary but would recommend Din's curse or Drox operative over this to anyone that asked and as such I wouldn't therefore recommend it to anyone at all.

Enter the game with one of the worst titles in the history of gaming at a time when people are inundated with zombie titles. A crying shame because Zombasite is far more than it would appear to be at first glance. Soldak have been creating mechanically deep arpgs for quite some time now, you may know them from Depths of Peril, Din’s Curse, or Drox Operative. Let me put it this way: back when Torchlight 1 came out, Din’s Curse also emerged. I spent, at most, 8 hours with Torchlight and several hundred with Din’s Curse. It was that compelling. So why is my playtime of this so low? The thing is that every time I come back to review this, I’m reminded why. Let me simply say this: When most developers tell you they’re giving you a living open world game, they are lying to you. They don’t have the bollocks. Soldak have those bollocks. At its heart Zombasite isn’t really a Zombie survival game, it’s a Soldak action RPG with some zombie mechanics worked into it. What you’ve got here is the management of Din’s Curse with the faction wars of Depths of Peril, and the undead add a bit of chaotic flavour into the mix. It’s a concept with a lot of potential. All the mechanics you’d expect from previous titles, with some new mechanics and an expanded world. The art assets really need some work. The texture and shaders seem to be continually updated, good but they still look dated and low res, regardless. The decals for things like patches of fire, poison, and ice just about worked in 2007, why they’re still here in 2017 I don’t know. A lot of the functional combat information is still relayed by scrolling bits of text that spout from the character’s head. The animations need some serious work. Again, I think the animations from Depths of Peril haven’t changed or particularly added to. As a result we still don’t have basic things like a proper set of weapon specific animations – your character more or less still uses a knife they same way they use a claymore. There’s no option for dual wielding, I assume it’s something to do with this. This very aesthetic, so to something more substantial: The animations don’t really sync up with what’s on the screen. Several hits can land in the space of a single attack, there’s no syncing for blocking, dodging, or parrying. The various status affects don’t have adequate visual communication or feedback for the player. If you’re slowed, the animations will simply slow to a crawl. If stunned, your character simply freezes in place. That’s not just a nice visual addition at this point: It’s more or less crucial to conveying what’s going on because there’s so much happening now. Scrolling text popups work in a turn based RPG. They do not work in real time. The lack of audio-visual feedback causes the game to feel extremely clunky and unresponsive. The ancient 8-axis movement, the fact that the animations don’t flow or blend together at all, all compound this feeling. Level generation becomes a problem. Running away from enemies, trying to find new areas, you wonder why you can’t just run through that patch of undergrowth or why that waist-high wall buried in a hedge isn’t more clearly defined, or why you can’t simply hop over it. The flat two-dimensional space could really benefit from some verticality. The over abundance of obvious square sections could use a few curves, artificial walls of tree assets feel more at home in the 90s than they do almost two decades into the 21st century. The worlds Soldak puts you in are very much alive. At this point it seems like they should fully take the brakes off the simulation working behind the scenes. It’s where their games really shine. You know how Bethesda always tell you that the radiant AI is going to do some crazy emergent stuff but then they bottle it, pussy out, and just give you a set of dumbed-down decontextualized encounters to break up the monotony between cave #1 and cave #15? You know how you get quest after quest of some urgent magnitude that tell you all this stuff is happening, but it never does and you wander off into a field and pick flowers for six months without a care? Doesn’t happen in Zombasite. If Bob the Lich wants to build an earthquake machine, then Bob the Lich builds the earthquake machine. In the process he allies with Alice the Fishmonger who is at war with Ted the Snakeman. So while you’re searching for Bob’s earthquake machine, you’ll find wars going on between fishmonger’s and Snakemen. They don’t care about you, they’ve got their own things going on. In Zombasite, if Bob the Lich decides he doesn’t like your village, he will attack your village. He’s not going to conveniently wait for you to show up in his cave hideout. More RPGs and more open world games need to be taking their cues from Soldak. Because they’re doing immersion right. It’s not about thousands of static points of interest. It’s not about laboured cliché end-of-the-world plotlines that we’ve all seen a thousand times before. It’s about layers of interacting mechanics being allowed to run the unpredictable results of those interactions when they happen. So why haven’t I put more hours into this? Because Soldak got the balance wrong on this one and they didn’t’ develop enough of the smaller bits of the UI and presentation and game-flow to match the breadth and depth of the mechanics that they’d created. The balance is completely broken. On the basic gameplay front, there is a huge discrepancy between how fast you die and how fast enemies die. The basic mobs soak hits like you’re attacking them with tissue paper. They are incredibly spongy. They will also kill you in a couple of hits. This would be ok if the combat were more skill-based, but it’s not and the aforementioned clunky feeling makes it even more abrasive. The result is that progression become a protracted unfulfilling grind. The exploration goes out the window because the game relies on you being able to tag warp gates to be able to easily access new areas. You can’t get to those areas without running through hordes of enemies that aren’t worth fighting. Repeat ad nauseum. High mortality only works if the enemies also have high mortality. If you can’t kill them roughly as easily as they can kill you, then you just create frustration. And then we’ve got the XP debt mechanic. This mechanic doesn’t work in this game because of all the balance problems levelling is a tedious nightmare. Your XP gain is halved when you’re in XP debt. Through no real fault of my own, I ended up with twenty-thousand points of xp debt just trying to play. At which point I hung up the character and wondered why I wasn’t hanging up the whole game. Zombasite is a loanshark. Zombie games should feel hopeless. Zombasite feels hopeless for all the wrong reasons. With all of that said, I’d recommend Zombasite despite it drawbacks, because it is a shining beacon of what ARPGs could be. It has the bollocks to do what other developers in the genre are flat out scared to do: Let go of the reigns. There are some serious sweeping changes to the balance and underlying numbers that need to be made. It seems like Soldak’s next game is going to have to be a significant step forward from this one. The developers really do put some great mechanical depth into their games, with all the politics and survival and exploration and factions, and AI interactions going on. They are doing something that the games industry should have been taking note of decades ago. Get it on sale. I think Soldak have the idea that they’re still making old-school arpgs with some twists. They’re not. They’re way ahead of the curve. If you want a glimpse of the way out of the mire of drab swill that open world games and rpgs are comfortable in these days, then play this for a few hours.

The name sucks, and the graphics are not great. I don't care. Zombasite is one of my favorite games of 2015/2016, just like Drox Operative (Soldak's previous game) was one of my favorite games of 2012. I like how there are so many factions that can be fighting or allying with each other. I like how party members have personality traits that affect their interaction with other party members or clan members. I like how elite monsters start sending out scouts and raiding as they get stronger (they level up, too). Basically, Zombasite has the kind of dynamic environment I enjoy experiencing. One example: I got six NPCs to join one of my clans. Two of them started flirting and married each other, and then one of them got killed during a hunting trip (you can send out NPCs on independent missions to collect food or other resources, but you can escort them if you wish) by an elite monster. The spouse went insane and went berserk, and the surviving party members had to put her down. Her husband became a ghost and attacked the party, and we ended up running away. The survivors became unhappy, one started secretly poisoning the others, and he eventually let in a raid party of monsters that killed the remaining clan members. That was pretty sad... but also pretty cool! Character creation can be fun to experiment with. You can select from one of several classes, or you can create a hybrid character with fewer (but more specialized) skills. I do wish the 'intelligent zombie virus' was more of a threat. I'd like to see coordinated attacks by infected monsters and NPCs. I'd like to see zombies overrun a weak clan so they can zombify the population and eventually overwhelm stronger clans. I'd also like to see zombie squads surround and flank clan parties so they become outnumbered, rather than just trickle individually into their weapons and spells. (reviewed version: 0.913)

You know it is a great game when six hours fly by and you want so much more and there is so much more. The more I play the more I like, my clan is starting to grow in power and I am starting to explore more and getting to know the game. This game seems to take the best parts of Dins Curse, Depths of Peril, and Drox Operative and mash it all up into one fantastic game. I love the character progression so much, you can mix it up anyway you want. I will be playing this much much more. It is in Beta but very playable and target finish date is three months.

I would recommend against purchasing this game. I am a long time player of Soldak games. I put a LOT of hours into Din's Curse and Depths of Peril. While my review is being posted with less than 20 hours in Zombasite, if you were to add up my hours in Din's Curse and Depths of Peril, games from which Zombasite evolved so clearly that a lot of the classes and skills are virtually identical, it would be in the hundreds. Then I lost track of Soldak for a while. When I checked up on them I found Zombasite, and purchased it in hopes that it would be what it said it would be- Din's Curse, but with more classes and some cool new features and bells and whistles. And it is! But... it's also Din's Curse with more balance problems. And with a lot of those bells and whistles not... really... working. So the core of a Soldak game is as follows- remember the procedural plot generation from Shadow of Mordor, where the results of your encounters with various boss orcs change the political structure of the world in which you live? Soldak does that, longer, and better, in an action RPG context. Monsters have agendas, which they begin to carry out against your town. How you fight back- whether you try to assassinate them, beat up their lieutenants and scouts, break their machines, etc, determines how much they succeed. Left alone, a monster can steamroll into an incredible threat that you truly hate, and feel quite happy when you finally kill. And Soldak provides an incredible wealth of character classes, and customization within those classes. Basically, each "class" is actually three specializations, each of which can function as a class all on its own. You can either take three of them selected for you by the designer, or make a custom character with any two at all. Since each is robust enough to make a whole character, this leaves you with a LOT of options. And Soldak uses the best system available for determining ability score costs- dynamic pricing. The cost of one level in a skill goes up by one each time you invest in it. This encourages you to diversify instead of just putting every point you have into Fire Bolt or something and ignoring the rest of a given specialization skill tree. And Zombasite adds more. Now you have other factions, like in Depths of Peril, AND you have monster agendas. And more classes. And your character can adventure with two companions. And instead of your town being a relatively passive area that you arrive in and try to rescue, its a permanent clan of people you carry with you as you travel from region to region, and you can upgrade and nurture them into something that assists you as an adventurer. For example, maybe you recruit someone named Lei, because she's an alchemist and occasionally produces extremely useful elixirs. When a given monster rival curses her and turns her to stone, preventing her from working, sending her happiness stat into the basement, and generally mucking up your colony, you'll be more motivated to save her because she's someone you actually interact with, albeit in maybe a small way. So... why don't I recommend this? Balance and gameplay issues. The game regularly drops enemies on you that are essentially just unfair. Presumably you're supposed to run from them. But the game features a stamina meter that only penalizes movement in combat, and seems to exist entirely to stop you from running. The game features no mobility skills. Running really means crawling away from an enemy who has no stamina penalty while chasing, drinking potion after potion and hoping you can crawl... slowly... to a teleportation point... before... you die. If you complete a quest and accidentally cause an avatar of an evil god to spawn, an avatar that can kill you in one, maybe two hits, you're... kind of screwed. There's no counterplay. If you want to adventure in a level 12 area but the game has spawned a team of five level 17 named monsters, you're... kind of screwed. I guess you just don't go there anymore. Except maybe you have to. If an enemy clan raids yours with a strike team of a dozen enemies five levels higher than you and the average level of your clan mates, you're... kind of screwed. You can't fight them. NPC hit points scale about three times faster than yours. They move as a group, and outnumber you. One of them probably has the Regeneration skill, and regens at about your DPS. Your clan mates don't move as a group so they'll be picked apart and slaughtered. About the only thing you can do is immediately sue for peace, and pay the raiders to leave. The unfairness in Din's Curse was annoying. Sometimes you'd use a cool spell underground, and rocks would fall on your head, instantly killing you. But the only penalty was XP loss, and you could grind back. In Zombasite you can lose your allies when things go randomly bad. And they don't respawn. If the game gave you methods of counterplay so that a skilled player could avoid these issues, it might be better. But it doesn't. No mobility skills, few skills to help your allies, your allies have few skills to buff or help you. The addition of teammates should have led to a redesign of the character classes to ensure that everyone had some team skills, but it did not. The two most powerful classes, according to many but not all players, are healer and conjurer. Healer to save your allies from dying, because it sucks watching them die and being able to do nothing but throw potions at them. And conjurer because then a lot of the unfairness happens to your monster summons, who are replaceable. Its not a good sign that the most popular classes are popular because of the way they let you bypass the game's flaws. There are a variety of other issues. Item prerequisites are very punishing, and the typical new player will screw up his ability score investment and have to grind level after level using poor gear to fix it, or else create a new character. There's a TON of town data you can work with to optimize your town, but ultimately its very hard to make use of it. You probably don't have time to figure out exactly why Carlos is miserable, and chances are that even if you figure it out you can't do much about it except heap money on him until he's happy again. Your villagers have personality traits and you can try not to recruit people with bad ones, but you aren't in charge of half your recruiting anyways- it comes from rescue quests. Perhaps worst of all, the dynamic quest system is overloaded. In Din's Curse, you usually had about 3 to 8 problems at once. In Zombasite, each clan on the map usually has about 3 to 8. If there's eight clans on the map, that's... kind of an issue. What this means is that instead of looking up what quests you have, going to the relevant place, and searching out the monster you have to kill, person you have to save, or whatever, you probably just look at the map, see that there are fifteen quests in a given place, go there, and kill monsters for a while until a bunch of quests just finish on your own. You end up ignoring the very dynamism and interactivity that should make the game special. I genuinely believe that there is fun in Zombasite, but I think its covered up by way too much that isn't fun. Its ok if a game occasionally throws unbeatable enemies at you... if it also gives you counterplay, like an interesting way to escape those enemies. It's ok if losing your allies is really sad... if it also gives you meaningful counterplay to help you protect those allies. You get the idea. I don't feel that Zombasite does enough of this. I think you spend way too much time chewing through insane monster or NPC hit point pools, or rage quitting