Deadpoly

Review

The world has recently gone to the dogs, it has become overrun with zombies. Basic supplies, food and water will require you to search and scavenge in the desolation of the end of the world.

Upon the game starting you find yourself spawned somewhere within Garden City with nothing but a Frying Pan on your back and a few empty pockets. The frying pan isn’t for cooking your bacon and eggs though, but rather to be used as a weapon against the roaming zombies which want your brains.

To survive you’re going to need more than a frying pan, you’re going to need supplies, resources, equipment and gear. You can find these scattered around the city, inside buildings, trash heaps, post boxes and just about anywhere else you want to look.

There are plenty of weapons to find which will work better than your frying pan: fire axes, swords, pipes and even rifles and pistols. While axes and other melee weapons can be equipped straight away, rifles and pistols require magazines and bullets. You’re able to equip yourself with two weapons that you can switch between when required. You can also equip yourself with the usual trousers, shirt, shoes, accessories, helmet, face armour and backpack.

Bullets are rarer to find.  However, you are able to craft various different types of bullets once you have crafted a bullet press and have enough brass and gunpowder. Gunpowder is also rare to find, and it can be hard to spot at times, so keep your mince pies open for it. Brass and metal can be found on cars and buses and smashing the hell out of them with a weapon or other item such as a pickaxe will give you those resources.

You have Pockets in which you can store some items, although you are only able to carry items weighing no more than twenty kilograms total and have sixteen slots of storage space. However, you can increase the number of items you can carry by adding armour and a backpack. The type of armour and backpack you equip yourself will depend on what you can carry and store within them. A medium vest, for instance, can carry up to ten kilograms and will add eight more slots for storage, while a heavy vest can store more. The same goes for backpacks; there are different types which hold different weights and storage slots. Any gear, backpacks, weapons don’t take up any storage slots.

Along the bottom centre of the screen are the quick select slots; the type of armour or backpack you have will determine the number of quick slots available to you. You begin with four, but I think the highest number of slots I’ve had has been seven. Slots one and two are for your weapons, any other slots available to you can be assigned by dragging an item into one of the empty quick select slots. These slots are ideal for having food, water and medical supplies on hand instead of opening up your inventory and using an item from there. You don’t want to be standing around paying too much attention to your inventory as the zombies will still sneak up and attack you, so if you do decide to check your inventory make sure you’re in a safe place to do so.

Trees and rocks can also be collected for resources and used to craft new items, like storage boxes, draws, cabinets, chairs, shelves and a host of other items. Although you will also need items that will help you to create new items, such as the workbench and the anvil. The anvil will allow you to craft items using metals like tables, the bullet press, a safe for keeping your valuables safe, ammo magazines, metal doors and fences etcetera. The workbench will allow you to craft items such as wooden doors, barricades, wooden tables, cabinets and dressers, crossbow and bolts.

At some point you’re going to want to find somewhere to hole up; somewhere you can build a workbench etcetera and protect yourself. There are plenty of buildings ranging from small homes to mansions, tower blocks and warehouses. As it’s the start of the end of the world, most places will require some work to make them safer, as windows and doors are missing. Wooden and metal doors can be crafted to keep the zombies out of your abode, barricades can also be crafted and used to cover up windows. Fences, barbed wire, wooden spikes can also be used to provide extra protection around your base of operations.

If you are unfortunate and you die from a zombie attack (loss of health) or by your own stupid actions (don’t try looking over the edge of a tower block and go too far, falling to your death) you will have the choice to either respawn at your base or respawn at a random place with the city. Upon respawning you’ll have lost all weapons, equipment and anything else you had on you; the only thing that you will respawn with is a new frying pan.

You can also die from lack of food and water; you can keep an eye on those along with your health and stamina in the bottom left of the screen. Stamina will replenish itself automatically, but health will require medicine, bandages or painkillers to replenish your health. You can find food like apples, tomatoes and bananas, and drinks like bottles of water and pop, all of which will help you survive.

There is a day and night cycle and when the night sets in it becomes pitch black; you can hardly see anything in front of your boat race. You can find torches to light your way and there are a few places where street lamps are still on, illuminating a small area around them. I would return to my base on the roof of a tower block where I could look up at the stars, crafting items so that I could spend more time searching the city for resources in daylight when it’s safer and you can see what’s around and what’s trying to take a bite out of you.

In the options you’ll find settings for Game - Show Items Tooltips and Hud tick boxes; Video - Resolution, Window Mode, V-Sync, Max FPS, Anti-Aliasing, View Distance, Textures, Post-Processing, Foliage, Effects and Shadows; Audio - Master, Effects, Ambient and Music Volume Sliders; Controls - Mouse Sensitivity and Key Binds.

I’ve enjoyed playing Deadpoly Zombie Survival. I like that is it a casual game and you can go and do what you like. The game doesn’t currently have a story or any quests, although I believe this could change in the future. There is a multiplayer game mode where you can play with friends and others online, however, I haven’t tried this mode and have stuck to only playing the single-player.

The game is in Early Access and there are still things to be added in the future, such as levelling, questing, skill tree. I haven’t had any problems running the game so far.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com

Deadpoly Steam Store Page