Zombasite Review

A few months ago, I reviewed an ambitious early-access game known as Zombasite. I was quite impressed with it back then, a title with staggering depth and a very low learning curve, where you could participate however you liked. It had an interesting mechanic with warring clans and an impending zombie apocalypse, and it was a lot of fun. It also had a lot of problems, some serious UI issues, and a definite problem with being overwhelmingly huge. It also couldn't quite make up its mind as to what kind of game it wanted to be, instead deciding to be all of them at once. 

I am proud to report that some of these problems have been fixed. While the game itself has changed very little from the beginning to the final project, and some parts are just ridiculous (the huge game world size, for example, even on tiny), Zombasite is pretty much the same as it was back then, but with some major fixes. 

For those who didn't read the earlier review, however, allow me to explain a little about the game. Zombasite is a hybrid 4X, real-time, Action, and Roleplaying game. You lead your clan into battle against other clans on an isometric Diablo-style map, attempt diplomacy, and hope to rid the world of zombies by developing a cure or eradicating the parasite causing the dead to rise. You also have to balance relations between clan members, manage your clan's food supply, and build stronger defenses as you go. 

Further heightening the tension is the constantly ticking clock. There's always a chance that your archnemesis will open a portal to Hell, or that your clan members may inexplicably burn your settlement to the ground, or that the people you're trying to rescue so they join your clan will end up instead getting killed by wild animals, leaving you high and dry. 

I initially said that the game was too large, but for my first release playthrough, I instead decided to set the world to "tiny." While "tiny" is apparently still massive enough to contain tens of factions and subfactions and zombies, I found the reduced map a lot more manageable now that I didn't have to make the trek from Mount Doom and back every time I wanted to complete a quest. Also helping things, quests can now be completed from your questlog, also reducing backtracking.

However, some things are still glaring flaws. The help system will quickly swamp you with notifications, and since there is no tutorial, you are dependent solely on them to figure out exactly what in God's name is going on. The subsystems other than that are kind of byzantine, with no real concrete way to figure out how to advance your clan, war on other clans, or any of that. Durability and repairs are similarly arcane, requiring you to travel all over the place. And further complicating matters, finding a gate back before your clanmates kill each other kind of makes things unnecessarily complicated.

But in the end, Zombasite is a good game. One that will probably lost on most, one that's most fun when you're not trying to make sense of a bunch of things and instead go off to whack a bunch of zombies on the head, figure out how to make health potions cure infections, and recruit a blacksmith or two, but a good game nonetheless. It's weird in a very charming fashion. If you are patient with it, then it's one of the most rewarding titles (and definitely among the most rewarding indie titles) you will play this year. 

4/5

Reviewer received a free copy of this game in exchange for a review. 

Zombasite Preview

Zombasite, currently in beta from Soldak Entertainment, is the most fun you will have not knowing what it is you're doing. 

And before that sounds too much like faint praise, allow me to explain, it is a lot of fun. 

Zombasite is an isometric action RPG similar to Soldak's earlier game, Depths of Peril. In it, you control a clan in a small settlement. You and other clans are fighting for control of a world on the brink of total collapse, thanks to a twisted necrotic parasite known as the "Zombasite." While you attempt to keep control of your clan and stop the various members from killing each other whenever they get bored or angry enough, a bar at the bottom slowly rises, showing the growth and infection rate of the parasites.

And so, a desperate struggle emerges between you and the various forces. While clans will try to raid you and your enemies below and above ground will send gruesome monsters to attack you, you also have to protect your clan from zombies and research ways to slow down or stop the parasite. You will find yourself focusing on a billion different systems and subsystems in an attempt to keep your clan from collapsing. Even at the lower difficulty levels, I can tell you it is going to be an uphill battle to keep that from happening. I have put several hours into the game, and trying to do everything at once is going to leave you wandering the wasteland and wondering just how your illustrious clan wound up being two people in a fort with no doors. 

But that isn't to say the barrier of entry is all that high. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Zombasite provides its players with many more ways to win than to lose: simply killing all the opposing clans (military victory), having an alliance with the remaining clans left on the map (diplomacy), to completing all the quests on the map. The game also tracks your knowledge and lore about the parasite, making the zombies and infection more manageable as you discover more things about the world. Most enemies are fairly easy to kill early on provided you know what you're doing, while giving you a game experience with a very slow difficulty curve, to its benefit. 

The world is also dynamic and persistent. You can start a new game in an already-generated world, with all that would entail, and as you go along, the world will change. Sometimes people will kill your targets before you can get to them. Clans are constantly shifting in alliance and loyalty between each other, and will go out on raids. Your own clanmates have specific weapon and armor preferences, all of which impact how well they'll be able to fend off invasion and join you on raids. Clans may leave you alone, or they might rush full-on towards you, or spawn demon gates, or any number of things. When  you pop someone into a new instance of the world, they take up a new region, but use the same lore and other features of the older space.

But while the game is in good form currently, it still has a long way to go before it's out of early access. The systems are a little obtuse, and while the help system is helpful, it's also a row of icons along the bottom of the screen that are easy to miss and don't always contain the most useful of information. The sound design also sometimes borders on oppressive, especially in larger battles. When coupled with a skill system that's obtuse even at the best of times, this can make things incredibly frustrating as enemies skill upward. 

Overall, though, I'm looking forward to seeing what Zombasite gets with a full version. It's original, unique, and very complex in spite of its basic trappings, and with a few kinks worked out, should be a new classic. 

The Reviewer was given a copy of the game in exchange for this review. The game is still in early access and is subject to change.