This Action-RPG is really good. It is kinda like Diablo but with a lot of new and fresh ideas to keep you entertained!

I'm not terribly deep into the game yet, but so far it feels like "Best of Soldak" aka "Depths of Din's Operative" where it takes the best parts of earlier Soldak titles, remixes them and takes them further (not too far, though).
With a little more polish and balancing (and a good expansion like they did for Din and Drox) this could be their definite game. For fans of Soldak or loot-driven Diablo-likes in general I can only recommend this game.
Or maybe try the demo at least, it's fun!

I do recommend this game with some reservations. It is heavily inspired by Soldak's last game, Drox Operative, and moves the setting to a generic fantasy type setting with the added wrinkle of a zombie apocalypse going on. You must take your main hero and optionally a couple of companions and do ARPG type things - slaughter endless hordes of zombies and other monsters, do quests, manage relations with other factions and keep members of your own clan reasonably happy, fed and sane. Then when you are done you will move on to the next world with tougher things tto fight and better loot to find.

There are quite a few classes to choose from and you can also take two trees of your choice to make your own, The game may seem deceptively simple at first but it actually quite complex and deep with a lot to juggle. There's an almost Sims like element to keeping your clan members happy and it isn't very well explained. I finally found out from the net that you need to assign your new clan members to a finished house and should put them on "rest and relaxation mode" or they get unhappy fast which causes many problems. This is not explained well in the game at all and even with doing these things, some NPCs seem to get unhappy quickly for seemingly random reasons which is kind of a pain to deal with. The game is also not very well ballanced with some NPC and PC abilities being very powerful and some being too weak to justify using them. This is also a problem with monsters as you will run into some monsters that are just nigh unkillable with the build you are using (although it is cool that the monsters level up through the course of the game and gain more abilities just like players do). Of course the game is in a beta state righrt now so hopefully at least some of this stuff will be better on final release.


Obviously the graphics here are about a decade behind the state of the art. I don't know why anyone would be looking for great graphics in a game like this anyway but expect fairly generic low res fantasy art. To me it doesn't really detract from the gameplay though and the core game experience here is very fun even if it does need some polish.

TL;DR: If you have never played a Soldak game before go and try the demo - what the game lacks in the graphics department is easily compensated by its excellent dynamic world and character class system. If you played both Din's Curse and Depths of Peril on the other hand you may find too little new content or gameplay to consider Zombasite an evolution of the genre, much less a revolution of the genre.

After playing Zombasite for about 15 hours the foremost question in my mind is probably "Should one rate a game based on its own merits, or should previous games in the same series be taken into account when rating a new game?".

Zombasite is by no means a bad game, quite the contrary actually. The game is best described a mix of all previous Soldak games as it cherry picks the best aspects from each previous game and mashes them into a new game. It incorporates the concept of warring factions that was present in Depths of Peril. This system is in turn mixed with Din's Curse's character creation system where one could mix two character classes and turn them into a hybrid, which made for some very interesting character builds. To top it off there is the ever present dynamic evolving quest and world system that is present in all games in the series, and it is as good as ever. On its own, Zombasite is a very well executed game. If this had been the first game from Soldak - or at least the first one i played - I'd be singing its praise all throughout this review.

However, this isn't the first Soldak game i played. Excluding Kivi's Underworld i bought every game and expansion pack trough the developers website, and played them rather extensively. Each game had its own merits and added something new to the formula:

- Depths of Peril: The first game. Interesting take on RPG gaming with multiple factions warring for dominance on the same map. Very basic character design, but the party system and dynamic quests make it an interesting, if somewhat unusual game.
- Din's Curse: The second game. No more warring factions, and essentially the same game world to play in. However, the game has a vast array of new character classes which could be mixed and allowed for some rather interesting character builds. The dynamic quest system was still present but felt more fleshed out, so there was enough fun to go around. All in all a very good improvement over the first one.
- Drox Operative: The third game and my absolute favorite. The previous games were set on the same game world, which we now exchange for a space based game. The character classes are swapped out for a spaceship which could be evolved and customized trough components. The clan system from Depths of Peril was reintroduced, yet a very interesting twist of being essentially an outsider to the warring factions. The dynamic quest system worked wonders here as you were essentially trying to make a race or other races ("clans") win the game.

The fourth game, Zombasite, drops us back in the same world as Depths of Peril and Din's Curse. It has the same enemies as the first two games, the same terrain and most damning, pretty much the exactly the same character creation system that was present in Din's Curse. Due to the last remark i have pretty much been playing the exact same characters i played earlier in Din's Curse. Not because the class system doesn't allow for variety, but because i loved experimenting in Din's and have now been given virtually the same toolset to play with. The game is not entirely without new additions to play with - mostly the town system and the survivors - but it is by comparison just a minor new feature. Its a shame really - a redesign of the character classes (perhaps some mixture of "modern" characters mixed with the games "fantasy" classes would already have bought the game a lot of extra longevity in my eyes.

If you never played a Soldak game i recommend to give one of them a go. If you like fantasy RPG titles go for Zombasite, otherwise go Drox Operative if you like space based games. If you played Din's Curse or Depths of Peril you may be in for a letdown in case you expected anything new and fresh like the previous games offered.

If you haven't played a Soldak game and want to know why this deserves your attention—I mean, it pretty much just looks like an ugly indie Diablo ripoff, right?—then imagine if someone dropped Diablo inside of a real time 4x strategy game. Imagine if in Diablo the monsters could actually raid the town and take it over and win. Or imagine if some anonymous goblin out in some far flung corner of the map could actually go up in levels on its own, acquire gear, and eventually become a boss and attract its own followers? Basically, it's a game where the developer has created a lot of interesting, independently minded elements and then trusted those pieces enough to drop them all in a large box with you and just walk away. You know the mechanics work when you can point out dozens of rough edges and care not a bit about them.

That being said, because this is so much more than a hack and slash action rpg, it's going to be very overwhelming the first couple of times you play it. It's going to take about 5-6 hours before your brain rewires itself to effectively juggle the action rpg aspect with the overarching strategy/clan management aspect. Once that slides into place, the elements no longer fight each other. You'll wonder how you could ever go back to a simpler kind of rpg. Fight through it, prepare your body, and let it happen.

If you *have* played any other Soldak games, you know what you're in for. Whether or not the whole zombie mechanic ends up enhancing the game experience remains to be seen, but at the moment it still feels a bit grafted on. It's not a bad addition to the Soldak game structure, and I think there are some interesting ideas behind it, but it still feels like more of an afterthought than a mechanic so essential he named the game after it. You can even turn it off. That tells me there's still some design work to be done.

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.

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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.

What really sets this ARPG apart is the fact you are a faction leader, and have to recruit, equip and take care of faction members. You can set up the amount of factions, and these NPC's will play kinda like a player, going out adventuring, making quests and warring. The diplomacy works nice, you make allies and enemies (or just one of them), help them when invaded or invading other factions. All this works pretty much the same singleplayer or multiplayer! No "multiplayer exclusive" gamemodes to trick you. Nothing like coop in adventure, and factions war! You can also adventure together with "npc players", through faction diplomacy.

The whole game is extremely dynamic, while this is not entirely new to Soldak games, it is very rare on ARPG's. And I mean REALLY dynamic, not a quest with two choices that gives you a different npc. You know those boss monsters in ARPGs? Here they make alliances too, so you might find two of them wandering together to face the growing threat of factions. Monsters fight each other, according to races. Your town is under constant threat of being attacked, you gotta always keep an eye for a quick route back, making adventuring unique in a sense that who you left in the village matters and might die. This is a huge addition in multiplayer, since your friends can rush to your base's defense as well. The world is random every gameplay, with underground dungeons and open areas.

Overall, it's a must have to anyone who likes ARPG's, as you won't find most of these features on any other games.

If you like Soldak games, you'll like this. If you like the idea of Diablo with the randomness cranked to 11 and the graphics cranked to 1, you'll like Soldak games.

The last few updates have improved on an already great game

Short answer: it's a really fun game with many evolving gameplay mechanics overlapping to make it enjoyable.

Longer answer: there are many areas for improvment and the developer seems to patch once per week. I read the patch notes regularly and requests/suggestions from the community are addressed.

The game has a fairly ambitious scope with so many interacting systems. Not to mention skill balancing for the character classes. So there's a lot of work left to do. That said, I enjoy the emergent nature of the game. You never know for sure how a raid on your town will turn out. Even kicking an NPC out of your clan can backfire.

I've more than received my monies worth and there's a rough diamond here that get's a little more polished every week.