A very good tactical action coop game, set in a hardcore world where you won't survive without a leader who knows what he's doing (or if you throw grenades on a nuclear warhead).
The early access already features a lot of content, and they're constantly adding more while balancing the game, plus it will feature a solo campaign.
If you liked maps like Night of the Dead in Warcraft 3, get it !

10.1.2015 Early Access. As a friend of this genre, and a huge fan of NOTD. This is the game, also nice that the devs play with us, its mostly stable. Patches seem to be rolling in atleast once a week. Starting a game takes a bit patience, like 15minutes or so. Extremely challenging even for high rank players. hard difficulty is already totally insane. And there is Nightmare difficulty after that.

Its starter friendly in every way, until you hit Rank8. There is some bugs and undeveloped systems, but not any gamebreakers. Mostly you get used to them and stop noticing them. 80% of the players i have played with are helpful and friendly. Learning not to die, playing as a team, micromanage your every move is the key to victory.

There is two methods you can play and switch any time. Automove (or follow) + autofire, will cause you sometimes miss, reducing total DPS, but your instincts and reactions are sharp as a bot, Then there is manual mode. Swapping primary to secondary weapon you run 25% faster, switching from autofire mode to burstfire will enable you move fast between high damage shots. and Manually aiming your gun completely will give you +40% damage, but its up to your own instincts to react to targets approaching you.

All the classes provide very good variety, if you got bored in one class you will find completely diffirent playstyle from another class. I love the RPG system. There are weapons & class specific skills to unlock for the first 50hours of the game (and its still a very, very long way to maximum rank). Playing a certain class gives statistical bonus to that class via Specialization rank. There is three diffirent maps you can play, and every game you can choose from 7 diffirent game modes ( popular are "Fast Mode" and "Bunker Mode"). I would give 2 recommendations to this game if I could.

Fantastic isometric co-op game, that is anything but a run and gun shooter.
It blends just enough strategy with action, that demands teamwork between your comrads or you will meet certain doom.

Given it's in early access however, this is a review based on the current build of the product.
Content is lacking in some corners, but for it's asking price of $19.99 USD, it makes some other early release titles for the same price pale in comparison in terms of offered content.
The game truly needs some way to tweak a perfect balance of progression and level/player balance within the game, which currently it lacks.
I personally enjoy the ol' "chase the carrot on a stick" progression system, but only when it pairs well with the content in mind, which is certainly tricky.
I'm certain that over time, this game will grow and continue to provide additional content, methods of progression and more, so with that said...if you're a fan of over the top (view) tactical shooters, that provide a deep sense of team work with a slice of lone wolf goodness (as skill does matter) but don't mind the often restrictive nature of "play that class THIS way and none other", then you'll certainly love this game.
It kind of reminds me of the Space Hulk game in a RTS sense (rather than turn base) with a mix of twin stick shooter goodness.

P.S. This game only really works with a keyboard and mouse, a controller really isn't needed for the style of the game (and i'm not sure if it even supports one currently), so keep that in mind if you're thinking you could have twin stick shooter style controls, this is mainly due to the interface.

It takes the old school Starcraft over top play, gives you objectives, makes the monsters spawn in waves, and wraps it in a large map that you have to walk/run across through waves of monsters.

8/10

I like the game, just won't really play it without friends.

+1

Game based on one of the less popular Blizzard RTS mods.

Expect a learning curve on-par with DOTA but with less people to help you figure out the game. With a very basic tutorial system (throws basic mechanics and hot-keys at you. Most of the HUD is still a mystery) and no Single Player implemented, I can't recommend this game to the average player at this stage.

What is there to say about The Red Solstice...
It's an early access, kickstarter game, birthed from Starcraft and Warcraft mods, NOTD or Night Of The Dead. It's a top down, action based, strategy, horror, survival game, where you control a single soldier, in a group of 1-8 players fighting against waves of monstrous AI controlled enemies. It's being built by a small team in Croatia who are working diligently towards their project over the past few years. A month or so ago, the game's “early access” beta release was made public and was met with mixed reviews. The game was extremely buggy, crashing frequently, lacked content and was poorly balanced. Over the past month of playing some of these issues have been fixed, making it a reasonably playable game. That being said, this game is far from perfect and still needs a lot of work.

As of the time of this review, some-to-most of the bugs have been smoothed out. It's been a long and tedious road of waiting out the fixes, but the game seems to crash much less frequently lately. Though the developer was quoted in saying “the net-code is perfect,” disconnects and crashes still happen from time to time, often at teeth grinding moments. These crashes come at a loss of precious experience, which following many 'balancing changes' has become more difficult to accumulate.

The game balancing has been getting tweaked every week to make it increasingly difficult for the average player. Without a solid team, with each player having individually invested over 100+ hours, the chance of survival is very low. The learning curve in the game is already steep, developing 'run away skills' and learning from tactical errors (death), it's hard to not believe that the developers want this game to be as difficult as possible. As of official patch 1.94 the news release title is “Now Dying Has Just Become Even More Fun,” which though it sounds like an oxymoron, describes the way the developers want the game to be played. The difficulty rankings have four stages from an easy mode for new players and the soldier mode for everyone else, to bleeding edge veteran and unplayable hard mode. (The last patch raised the difficulty on soldier, so I can't say just how reasonable the veteran mode is.) Other small tweaks have also been continuously implemented such as making followers too slow to keep up when the heat of battle is on, preventing anyone but leadership characters from using several key items, upgrading health and damage of enemies while decreasing damage output of players, and many others. These tweaks gear the player towards a singular path of gameplay that the development team have in mind, which begins to limit feasible gameplay options.

The amount of content in the game so far is extremely limited, but with a lot of potential. So far there is no single-player mode outside of a Tutorial, so the majority of gameplay is multi-player focused. There are other game options that are not available at this time, like single player and mission mode, but there is little information about them and they are far from being released. This being said, there are only two game modes available right now on two maps: defend the bunker, and survival mode. There are options to add lengthy primary and miniature secondary missions, fast mode that speeds up waves, nightmare mode that brings in bosses every round and others. Each of which change the game mechanics slightly and offer potentially greater rewards per option choice. There are also a hand full of characters including a grunt like assault class, a sniper marksman, medic, demolition and others. They are all unique and have their own perks and uses, though some of the perks are broken, missing, or just completely useless. Many players will kick you out of their game lobbies if they find that your build isn't what they want, or you might find yourself being ridiculed in game for a small mistake made, whether you knew what you were doing was wrong or not. This mentality of “my house, my rules” has created a small player base, and has limited game type availability.

I really do mean the player base is small. Following many patches that made the game more difficult and the amount of frustrating and game-breaking bugs, the majority of the player base have either moved on or decided that they will wait for the game to come closer towards a fully realized project. What is left has been described as an unruly class system of elite veteran players who stuck out the storm and are worn around the edges, and newer players who the elites seem to clash with. This isn't to say that a new player can't find supportive team mates, but there is a lot of discrimination, misinformation, poor sports and 'know-it-all' types that start verbal confrontations on both forums and in-game. It's a mixed bag of chips, but nothing that an experienced game-player wouldn't expect. This being said, because the community is so small at 60-150 players online at a time, be ready to run into the same people over and over again. That obnoxious guy that you fought with in the forums will inevitably end up in one of your games, and he has explosives in his inventory, so be aware!

Though this game lacks much needed fluidity and polish, I personally enjoy the game. I've put in over 200 hours at the time of this review and plan on putting in more. I can't say that I will dedicate as much time though, as the game's content has run dry for me and I find myself at times fearing retribution from the developers from writing a disagreeing statement in the Steam forums and for this sour review. As a new player, online guides are available, and there are helpful players but I wouldn't bother putting in the time if you don't already know all of the frustrations of what an early access game with an disgruntled community is. I would love to recommend this game to my friends and get them engaged. It would be great to bring in new players and breathe some new life into this game. It would be great... but I can't do that. Not at 20 dollars. Not with the community as angry as it is at the questionable changes being made. Not with the lack of content. This game has promise, let's wait and see what happens.

EDIT:

Due to some of the comments left here, RESPECTFULLY, please don't comment here if you intend to start a flame war, slander me, or if you haven't fully read the review and have nothing constructive to say. This is a review from the perspective of myself and the people that I play with. This review was carefully written and I stand by everything I've put in the review. That being said, obviously it doesn't represent the developers or friends of the developers, so please keep that in mind. If you don't agree with what I've said here, that's perfectly fine! I'm glad that you have a differing opinion! Feel free to play the game yourself and write your own review and feel free to state whatever you like! If you don't think what I've said here is accurate and is misleading, feel free to also check the 'unhelpful button,' if it doesn't help you! This review was written because The people I've played with selected me to voice the state of the game.

Please, lets not continue the negative and often pointless banter that has been so prevalent on the forums here.

The playerbase has fallen below the critical level needed to sustain the 8-man game lobbies, and little seems to bring them back.

There's also no single player mode, leaving players nothing to do if they cannot find a lobby.

I can not recommend this game right now.

This game is great, you start out with little to no idea what to do, you die, sometimes you might get saved, sometimes you don't.
You earn EXP and it means something, from new weapons and classes to small increases to damage and movement speed.
You have a lot of fun dying and dying again.

The downfall is for any of this to take place you need to have other people online to play with, And even right after patch, you will be lucky to get 6/8 lobby filled. As it stands I can not recommend picking this game up unless it is on sale or it is fully released, they complete single player, or they add NPC's that do more than follow you, because no one is playing it, and I know this review is kinda self defeating, but it is the truth.

** Early Acess Review as of 12-20-2014**

8 Player Co-OP. If your a fan of the War3 mod or the SC2 where teamwork is key to survive the game then look no futher. The game is fun and addictive but has a moderate learning curve. The grind for skills isn't that bad since most of the major skill a player would use in any classes could be attain in 5-6 games depending on ability to play the game.

*Playing mode* There are as 2 maps playable and a 3rd one in testing. This is all for CO-OP.
There is no single player at this moment but should be added but no time table for it.
To me this game primary focus is the CO-OP aspect to create a growing community and hope for an editor to come out to provide user created content soon!!

You can ask your questions here and I will try to answer them correctly to the best of my ability.

The developers are active and particpate with the community on daily bases and patches come frequent enough with fixes and new content.

The community with is still growing but are open to new people to joining everyday. You will meet people all over the world with one goal in common to kill zombies and spray lead till they stop moving.

*****TLDR*****

Pro-- Good game, Growing community, Responsive Developers, CO-OP fun.

Con-- Growing community, Lack of Single Player for some people atm, Moderate learning curve


*note*
I play this game for about 700hrs so my POV is over the progress from the start of the game till now.

Ask questions if you like.

I found this game by searching for the multi-player co-op tags on steam. If you're looking for that kind of experience, and like challenging games, then this game is for you. They are reportedly working on a single player mode, but cooperative-multiplayer is where the heart of this game is.

The game IS challenging. If you are playing at the correct difficulty for your team, you will lose more often then you will win.

Even though it's early access, the game is very playable. They've had some buggy patches but they tend to fix them pretty quick. The devs are on a fast-release cycle and they listen to the community as to what is and isn't working, what's fun and isn't fun, and they participate in the forums.

Now that the game is more stable, the dev's have been focusing on adding more content (maps, bosses, missions, skills, etc) which is keeping the game fresh and challenging.

If you can get this game on sale, or money isn't a big deal, I'd definitely recommend the early access version. If you are on a tight budget, you may want to wait for release. I have ~500hours on record so far for a $20 game. So I'm very happy with the value I'm getting.

Genre - Co-op Squad based survival
On paper this game sounds great to me. You are part of a squad of marines have to complete missions and protect each other from alien hordes. There are different classes with their own perks and unlocks as you play through the game. However, it doesn't quite work at the moment. The objectives are not clear and a lot of players tend to play bunker, which seems to involve staying in one place and killing endless swarms of aliens. When you do get into fighting the inventory is difficult to navigate and it is not clear what the stuff does. The shooting seems to just involve selecting auto aim and reloading when needed. Really wish I had invested in another early access game as think there is too much that needs changing here to make this game enjoyable, although I could be wrong...please prove me wrong developers!

I want to tell you guys this game is a good one, which it is there's no bugs that I've seen yet. It's challenging and it reminds me of Night of the dead from Warcraft 3 custom games, but I wish it would be more like swat aftermath :( anyway I am writing this review mainly to tell you that its dead there's usually around 3 people online now a days.. so buy at your own risk.

When you're first starting out, the game is really hard even on the easiest difficulty setting. I HIGHLY recommend reading the player guides if you want to get any good at this game. Once you know what you're doing and have a coordinated team, beating the game on easy and normal difficulty is a piece of cake. In that case, you might want to try hard or nightmare difficulty, both of which are extremely brtual.

The community here is quite small. The veterans are quite welcoming if you're willing to learn, follow directions and get teamspeak. You don't have to talk on TS if you don't want to. As long as you can hear everyone else, then it's okay.

This game is epic, and only in early access.

Ignore the really bad voice acting at the start, and jump in. At first you'll be thinking what the hecks going on, not enough ammo, getting swarmed by the creeps and dying fast, but stick with it for a couple of rounds multiplayer, and buddy up to a vet and a whole world will open up to you.

It has good progression after the initial steep learning start, and enough different builds of skills, classes and gear to keep you going.

This game is true co-op, you go it alone you die, you need your team mates, and they need you.

As with all multiplayer games there are a group of jerks out there who aren't worth playing with, but just avoid them and find a good squad to run with.

Mechanics are a sci-fi diablo esq, but with much more options in build and pick-upable equipment, including changing fire modes on rifle (single, burst, full auto)

indeed recommended for all those who enjoy coop survival teamwork games. really hard which makes trying it again and again even better.

*****ALERT! THIS USER IS NOT A ENGLISH SPEAKER! SORRY FOR ANY BAD ENGLISH*****

There is no attribute points or skill points that you can spend if you "level up" in this game. The game is more likely a sci-fri version of LOL (league of legends) with a lot fewer heros. Well, you can spend your "skill points" in every round, but will be reset when round ended.

(THOUGH YOU CAN GET A PERMANENT "RANK UP" WHEN YOU GOT ENOUGH EXP, BUT IT ONLY INCREASE YOUR HP, SPEED,ETC. WHICH ARE FIXED.)

And it doesn't like any rpg which by killing some random npc, you can get some loots. In this game, the statistic, the weapons, the armor, etc are fixed. That means that all player get the same look, same weapon, same stat, etc if they choose the same class in the same level. I was expecting the game was at least similar to the DOW 2. (Warhammer 40k: DAWN OF WAR2)

If you are expecting the game was similar to DIABLO with future weapon or Alien Swarm, just like what I thought, don't buy this game, and you will find it totally different. I come from Hong Kong and I find it is very difficult to find a server. The server room is always empty. If you are lucky, you may find a room, but in most case, I got kicked because my character's level is too low. And my character's level is low because I cannot find a room.......

What is more, if you don't have many friends, like me, don't buy this game yet, save your money.

This game may get better in the future, but I wouldn't recomend to buy it at this stage.
(2014/8/21)

Horribly disappointing. The developers fail to understand what makes these sort of games fun. Instead, they decidided to steer in the elitist direction where the community will most likely remain small and you need to be a serious try-hard, as team work is SO paramount, it becomes more work than fun making public play a ridiculous notion.

Frequent visual errors, bad gameplay with overly complicated controls. Bad pathfinding, multiplayer lag. As it stands now, this is a big do not buy from me.

Really good game. Get a couple of buds together and have a blast. It is difficult though. Ammo becomes scarce.