Zafehouse Diaries 2 Reviews

Time I got around to reviewing this game. It's a mostly text based procedural generation survival sim with horror elements. Sort of. It's also got a very 'meh' relationship system which just isn't all that interesting and I don't recommend getting the game if you're looking for that. The best parts about the game are it's management, survival, and horror elements. That and the ability to add custom content which is fairly robust. As you can see in the screenshots and whatnot, the game has several objects and characters which you can customize. You can make custom occupations and also set up your survivor crew to be almost anything you like. My biggest lament is that this game didn't bring over the custom locations from the first game which really sucks a lot. Also the mood the game sets is really great! A very smart use of sound files helps to sell incidents and lets you imagine what's happening. Sometimes I just enjoy playing it and putting it on in the background. Part of me wishes there was a demi-afk mode version of Zafehouse mixed with the management elements, but I don't know if that would really make the game more appealing. Regardless, if you're someone who doesn't need a full VISUAL of everything happening, then this game can be great for your imagination. But, lets talk about the bad stuff... The first thing is the relationships. Or should I say the drama. I totally get that in a zombie apocalypse that's lasting a long time you're going to have disagreements with people. But some of these game modes take place over a few short days with your survivors desperately looking for a way out ASAP. In a situation like this, all but the most antagonistic or stupid people are going to fully cooperate with one another. And I don't wanna play a game where I'm helping a buncha idiots survive. Fortunately you can bypass this with custom content and manipulating the systems gently. The next issue is that some of the built in survivor occupations are quite useless. Or almost useless. There are a few that I believe have special events (like the Mayor) which could make up for their uselessness, but kind of don't. In game design, a player will tend toward hedging their bets to win OR go for what is most interesting. That means that unless a weak class/occupation/job or whatever is really interesting to balance out their uselessness, then they're not going to get picked. Well this game doesn't really let you pick. Usually. But you can force custom content which allows you to solve this issue. But it does just kind of feel lame to always resort to 'building a team' rather than 'building a pool of potentially interesting combinations'. I mention these things because somehow I feel like the survivors, the general central focus of the game, regularly don't feel very interesting. Not to say they don't have moments, but... well that leads into something I DO like about the game. The events. Zafehouse diaries has several events that can pop up which will give you some decisions. A lot of the time these are just yes or no binaries with potentially good or bad results. However some of the major events are influenced by how well you are taking care of the map and how well you are barricading and whatnot. These events feel way more interesting to the game than the survivor drama. Quite often they can evoke a sense of mystery that always makes me look forward to them. My favorite one is a reference to a movie/book by Stephen King. And while I hated the ending of that movie, here it's way more interesting and also MAKES a survivor interesting by giving them a debuff that makes your survivor have bad dreams. And sometimes those dreams can cause really bad things to happen. This is definitely more interesting than the drama between survivors and managing their relationships. I wish the game was a little more like Dead Rising, but instead of one guy, it's your small band of people documenting things, saving interesting people, and having unique events and psychopaths. Zafehouse Diaries really doesn't focus enough on it's own world and worries too much about the people that you're going to give a story for anyway. But at the end of the day, the game is ultimately something of a survival managment game and it does it pretty well. It's also pretty damn cheap as of this writing (7$ here). So yeah, I'd recommend it.