An engaging, action-packed zombie shooter to pass the time | Review - Survivors Of The Zombie World
33585685
✨Overview
Survivors Of The Zombie World is a top down zombie survival shooter made for mobile (Android and iOS), and is officially available on TapTap. With its recent release a few days ago, the game plunges players into a post apocalyptic blocky Minecraft-ish world teeming with the undead. And yeah, don’t mind the typo 'Surivor', it’s actually there in-game.
🟩Pros
+Simple visuals but really good lighting system that affects gameplay
+Shooting zombies feels and sounds good
+Diverse gameplay modes (missions, survival, and tower defense)
+Local Multiplayer mode (Wi-fi and hotspot)
+Free-to-play friendly
🟥Cons
-Control quirks and targeting issues
-Game breaking bugs
⭐️Score: 8/10
📖Story and Premise
The game is set in a post apocalyptic zombie infested world, and that’s about it for the premise. Despite the presence of a "Story" mode there’s no actual story or plot in this game, it primarily serves as a framework for a linear series of missions with diverse objectives. This game mostly focus on gameplay rather than providing an actual story for players to engage with.
🎨Visuals and Art
Survivors of the Zombie World features a distinctive blocky, simple Minecraft-inspired visual style, complemented by a impressive lighting system that significantly influences gameplay. The lighting system plays a crucial role, especially during the night when visibility can plunge into pitch darkness. Overall the art style is nothing we've seen before, but it's decent enough for what it tries to do. The soundtrack is pretty decent, some eerie ambient sound for the zombie apocalypse vibe, as well as brutal sounding gunshots and explosions.
🎮Gameplay
Survivors of the Zombie World is basically a top down shooter at its core. Although, playing it, it gave me a bit of a classic Resident Evil vibe with how the footsteps sounds and the movement/shooting works. Fortunately, the controls are more of a twin-stick shooter type rather than Tank-type controls. Left stick to move, and right stick to fire. Some weapons like pistols automatically aim, some weapons like shotguns will need manual aiming. The controls aren’t perfect and the auto-aiming feels clunky and does not hit low target very well at point blank range. There are cases where I wished I could toggle manual aim.
The lighting system plays a crucial role, especially with the day/night cycle. At night, players must navigate the challenging nighttime terrain using flashlights, requiring a strategic use of limited battery resources. The gunshot sound are very immersive and I love how you could spam the pistol with a very high fire rate that makes me feel like I’m John Wick killing hordes of zombie while playing.
Players can sprint, use grenades, activate flashlights, and consume items such for healing, stamina, and food as the player can also go hungry over time and sprinting consumes stamina which takes long regenerate. There is a lot of element here in a bite sized form factor, and they all form a nice core gameplay of the game across three distinct but similar game modes. There are many zombie variants with their own unique characteristics, some move very fast, some spit webs that block your view temporarily, some explode upon death, some slows movement down.
📜Game Modes
Survivors of the Zombie World offers multiple modes, including a story mode, survival mode, defense mode, and wifi/hotspot multiplayer mode for cooperative play (survival and defense mode only). The primary objective is to endure the post-apocalyptic setting by scavenging for supplies and resisting waves of zombies. The game also supports offline play, perfect for playing the game on-the-go in bite sized sessions, with or without internet.
Story mode is a linear set of missions that you'd have to complete with varying objectives from eliminating zombies, surviving for a period of time, getting from one point to another, to recovering supply crates. As said earlier, it’s not really a story mode. They get increasingly harder in general, but there are random easy or hard difficulty spikes as you progress further into the missions.
Survival Mode basically unlocks the whole map-type (biome) and spawns the player in an open world-type of unending survival. Survive as long as you can, roam around the map and pick up random supply drops to keep surviving. Manage your resources, and reap the rewards.
Defense mode is also a never ending mode but the focus is defending your base where enemies come in waves. Here we have tower defense elements because you have three electric towers that you’d need to manage and repair. It’s not very deep and ultimately it all boils down to surviving, managing resources, and collecting supplies inside your base once again.
⏫Progression
Aside from advancing in the Story mode, further progression lies in unlocking new characters and weapons by way of Gold (rewarded from play) or Diamond (Premium Currency but also rewarded from playing). Players can also upgrade weapons too, increasing their stats and capacity. You can also purchase consumables on vending machines while on missions is possible, but at a very costly rate. There are characters/weapons that can be unlocked with Gold only, and others with Diamond. Some are unlocked via quests and challenges, such as killing a specific type of zombie 50 times.
The game is pretty much free-to-play friendly, as there isn’t anything limiting you really from playing Survival and Defense mode endlessly, but there are benefits to spending money as well. If you want to push further — More missions to complete, longer days and enemy waves to survive; then you’d have to either farm for Gold or spend cash. The game, being this bite-sized, can only take you so far before it becomes repetitive, although I wouldn’t go as far as say that this game is outright repetitive.
📊Technical Performance
The game ran fine on my device (Snapdragon 888 phone), I’ve had no bugs and issues aside from the aforementioned target and combat quirks; and the performance has been generally good without any frame rate drops or stutters. However some players have reported to have been experiencing issues, mainly the widespread ‘floating gun’ bug, I do hope the developers can fix this issue for these players.
⚖️Conclusion
Survivors of the Zombie World is a good looking, bite-sized zombie shooter suitable for on-the-go sessions, both online and offline. Despite the control quirks, the game succeeds in delivering an engaging, action-packed experience to pass the time, perhaps doing it very well that it's not quite as 'bite-sized' anymore at times. There are current issues for some players, or maybe most players, and I do hope it gets fixed ASAP.
Mentioned games
Comments
Latest
No more comments. Why not add one?
