Are you the type of gamer who enjoys battling hordes of the undead? Do you enjoy strategic scenarios that feel consequential, and every turn feels like life or death? Steam has two new zombie apocalypse games available in early access: Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days and Infection Free Zone. These are two zombie-themed games that will get your pulse pounding. As a bonus, both are relatively inexpensive games that will provide many hours of grim entertainment.
Between watching horror movies and my day job as an architect, I occasionally get the opportunity to play some video games. I am particularly fond of zombie base-building games, and recently, Steam has featured two very different yet addictive titles in this genre. They look and perform nothing alike, but they both evoke the desperate life-and-death struggle that the zombie trope is known for.
Both of these games are in early access, open Beta testing, but they feel very polished. Into the Dead feels very personal, with team building, exploration, scavenging, and crafting exercises that gradually build a team of survivors looking to find a way out of a fictional Texas City that has become overrun with the living dead. Infection Free Zone uses similar functions but provides a macro view rather than a character-driven perspective. Exploration, crafting, and squad building are also utilized, but the primary focus is on base building and town defense. These games play like two sides of the same coin.
A Review of Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days
Intensity: 🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
I am usually not fond of the side-scrolling mechanics in gaming, as I often feel constrained by the two-dimensional nature of the play style. However, Into the Dead is gorgeously rendered, with highly detailed characters moving through highly detailed (and unique) locations, making it an immersive experience.
Walton City is a fictional Texas Metropolis, and you have your choice of starting character pairs. Different characters have different skills, attributes, and weaknesses, and through the gameplay, you will learn how to utilize their talents. Some characters are more valuable at your home base, while others lend themselves to exploration and scavenging.
The Strengths of Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days:
This game is smooth. The fluid actions that your survivors execute are so satisfying. It’s violent and gross. Each weapon has different animations and sounds. The zombies look terrific shambling around, and there is a huge variety of undead to dispatch. Though the game has almost no dialogue, the characters ooze with personality. Even the grunts and the animations seem tailored to the body types. I particularly like that the less athletic survivors sound like they get winded more easily, grunting and wheezing with the additional effort.
I appreciate all the little details. The game developers took every effort to saturate the production design to feel like it stepped out of 1982. The clothing, equipment, cars, and even the prices on display in the shops are from a whole different era. (Which just so happens to be the era that I grew up in.) The wide variety of craftable items and levelling up provide advancement through the game that feels natural and earned.
Moreover, the game is fun! The game mechanics are easy to master, which, for middle-aged Eric, is a big bonus. My button-mashing skills aren’t what they used to be. Moving stealthily through a room filled with semi-conscious zombies, trying not to wake the undead, is a thrill in this game. There is a vicarious satisfaction when you sneak up behind a zombie and beat its brains in with a frying pan—just saying.
Part of the reason the game is so much fun is also something that might deter some people from playing it.
The Weaknesses of Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days:
Into the Darkness is a challenging game with punishing consequences for failure.
There will be occasions when one of your survivors is too wounded or tired to go out in the field, and the more frail characters need to be used to accomplish missions. Recognize, though, that death is permanent in this game. You cannot save the game and try again. If you lose a favorite character, both you and the survivor group will have to grieve the situation and get over it, or perish. Therefore, it is essential to find other survivors for you to recruit to your group. Granted, I have restarted an entire game to recover a character.
I like to use the Penny and Daphne combination, and when I lost Penny, I panicked. I restarted a game that I had been playing for six hours to retain my best team. Here’s a recommendation: Don’t do that. Trust in the depth of your squad. The game is hard, and you WILL lose characters. Oftentimes, these will be your favorite characters because they are the ones who you take into the field and work so hard to protect.
My advice? Don’t push too hard. If you are low on health and your weapons are wearing out, bail on the scavenging mission and go home. I often got greedy, wanting to fill my backpack up with loot, and that’s where mistakes happen. Go back to home base, get the best equipment you can, and go back.
Another minor criticism is that I would have liked a slightly longer game, but I suspect that with the additional content being added, this will be addressed by the developers.
Conclusion for Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days
These are the early days for this game. The developers are still adjusting the gameplay on the fly, and they have been adding new gameplay elements. Recently, they have introduced characters that return as zombies if you let them die. Oh no! As I have mentioned, you won’t be able to save all of your survivors, and this encounter will be a sad inevitability.
The best part is that the game is available for only $24.99 on Steam, which is a great bargain! The game scratches all sorts of itches. If you like strategic thinking, this game will reward you in so many ways. Selecting your bases, picking your missions, assigning your team, and pushing your luck are all key elements that stimulate your gamer mind. Also, the game can be INTENSE. There is one moment in a meat-packing plant that spooked me so badly that I dropped my controller. Well done, PikPok!
Infection Free Zone Review
Intensity: 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
On the other end of the zombie survival perspective, Infection Free Zone goes BIG. If Into The Dead is The Walking Dead, Infection Free Zone is World War Z. Humanity has gone underground for decades due to a 28 Days Later-type virus outbreak that has created aggressive, fast zombie-like mutants. Most of the people who survived went underground. Radios have announced that the virus and the mutants are in decline, and that humanity should come out and try to rebuild civilization.
The radio may have been too optimistic.
The world is still overrun, but at least humanity has a fighting chance. Some canned food is still available, and humanity didn’t have enough time to gather supplies, so you can loot and scavenge your way to a rebuild, one block at a time. You will need to upgrade buildings, build defenses, and find vehicles to find supplies. Other survivors may come looking for your protection, and there are bandits and raiders who will look to take what is yours. It’s not just zombies that you need to worry about.
The strengths of Infection Free Zone
The absolute best thing about Infection Free Zone is that it uses real mapping data to allow you to take your fight to the undead ANYWHERE in the world. I chose my home City of Portland, Oregon, and it was unbelievable how accurate the map was. One of my games I played with my home as the base of operations. I have also gone the opposite direction, and started in Portland’s downtown, trying to start off in some of the bigger buildings.
Here’s the cool part: If you use your hometown, you will be able to locate supplies. Nothing warmed my heart as much as finding my favorite restaurants in town (Hey! I found Ken’s Artisan Pizza!) and looting the food supplies that I knew were going to be there. I also had to raid Powell’s Bookstore to get Books (duh) so that my citizens could learn more skills. Also, I felt somewhat guilty for knocking down my neighbor’s house across the street so that I could use the lot for farming. (Sorry, Kim!)
There is a bit of Sim City to this game, as building your defenses around your community is the absolute priority. Hordes of zombies will come knocking. Seasonal weather and day/night cycles will also play a factor. Winter can be harder, as farming becomes more difficult and the daytime working hours diminish. The nights belong to the infected. You will need to manage your workers, for they will be vulnerable to zombies and raiders, but you need them to expand and rebuild aggressively.
I found that strategically, medium-sized buildings offer good protection and conversion. Trying to occupy a basketball arena or a skyscraper may seem like a good move, but it takes a considerable amount of time to clear and secure a building of that size. A grade school makes an excellent home base.
The Weaknesses of Infection Free Zone:
Honestly, the game visuals are pretty basic. As cool as it is to have recognizable monuments and big buildings, the renderings of the city are simple and boxy. The color palette is also desaturated to a dull grey-green much of the time. I suppose that is appropriate for a dystopian post-apocalyptic landscape, but it is rather drab.
Some of the pathing of your workers and squads can be problematic. There have been times when I would get the alert that one of my squads has been overrun, and it was clear that their car drove straight into a mob that was clean and obvious on my map. I would like to believe that if I have that on my map, they would see it too.
There is so much packed into this game that I feel bad quibbling about lootable goods. I would like to see more development of weapons, food, and clothing that would enhance the game. Luxury goods that could make the citizens happy. Technical loot that could be researched and rebuilt would be a boon. Fortunately, the game is in early beta, and Jutsu Games has been updating and adding content regularly.
Be aware that if you select a map with numerous single-family residences (small buildings), your computer will require sufficient processing power. I am also curious how this game plays in a more rural setting. I suspect the strategy would be more harvesting for wood and farming for food. Metal and bricks may be hard to acquire, but you would have the benefit of not having to clear out too many buildings to rid them of the infected.
Another minor quibble, I’d like more variety in the audio voice performances. I’m thinking that there are maybe six voice actors. For a game with so many characters, some variety, even if using the same dialogue, would be nice.
Conclusion for Infection Free Zone
This is a grand strategy game. It has immense replayability because you can pick your setting for any city or town in the world. I have read about players who are selecting European cities with castles or fortresses that are inherently defendable, and that could prove very interesting. I’m thinking that my next city to defend will be New Orleans, which I have a great fondness for and have come to know well. It
Infection Free Zone is also a $24.99 game, so it is an inexpensive point of entry. I recommend this game for people who want something more out of real-time strategy games. If you ever wanted to play out the zombie apocalypse from your front porch, this is the game for you.