Welcome to ‘Night Of The Dead’, where base building, zombie defenses, foraging and exploring are the main course. Developed and published by Jackto Studios, let’s dive in and survive the onslaught!

In Night Of The Dead, you play a crucial role. You wake up from a deep sleep in a land decimated by a rogue scientist’s mutagen; a substance causing a vile outbreak, with most humans purged. It’s up to you to find the outbreak’s source and survive the nights against the relentless hordes of zombies that are spread across the lands.

When you start the game, you can fully customise your character, adjusting every body part. This feature allows you to create a character that resembles you to a reasonably accurate level. After the customisation, you wake up in a cryo pod inside an underground scientific laboratory. Once you find your footing, you are contacted by a scientist named Dr Veronica Grimes, who helps you escape the lab. The beginning of the game primarily teaches you the basics for gathering resources and crafting tools and basic weapons like a metal pipe and bow. With tasks from Dr Veronica Grimes on the other end of the radio, it creates a fantastic main story with the intent of finding the source of the outbreak and finding a cure while on the run.

The base building is a massive part of the game, with the possibility of multi-story bases with a vast number of blades and ranged traps, going from a spinning blade trap to a falling spiked log trap. That is not even scratching the surface. As you progress through the game, you can upgrade your workbenches with many different workbenches. Starting with a chemical workbench that gives you a tech tree that uses research papers found in loot and dropped from zombies to upgrade your character’s stats; from increasing inventory space to boosting stamina regeneration and much more.

Equipment is built and crafted from the equipment workbench, which you are taught how to make initially. There is also a vast amount of weapons to craft, as mentioned before, starting with a bow, moving up to throwing stars, and some other really cool ones that you will have to find for yourself. I found that Night Of The Dead plays and feels very similar to ‘7 Days To Die’, but instead of a horde every 7 days, it’s a horde every night, which throws in many twists.

One thing I really liked was the base building, as said before, being able to build multiple floors and building them how you like with full custom base designs with many cosmetic items to make your base pop. Not to mention the many, and I mean many zombie variants from basic running zombies to acid spitting or even massive giants, which were recently added making for some very interesting and exciting gameplay for everyone to enjoy, that’s if you survive and so much more.

One thing I found quite frustrating but also important was how the combat was done, with most animations feeling quite forceful and in tight areas with larger weapons hitting the wall, making it feel natural and realistic. Still, I did notice some fights with basic attacks wouldn’t register and would end up getting hit by the zombie I found this, especially in melee combat, which was a bit of a disappointment for a game that has been in development since 2020, but that said the game does get regular updates with patches and bug fixes so I’d say most of my concerns are already on their radar.

At first glance, multiplayer seems very similar to single-player. It has the same main story but the difference of playing with others, building massive bases and defenses to take on the hordes together. However, with more players comes more zombies, and with such a variety of zombies, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed. But the experience has not been the smoothest, with some fellow players finding that some bugs arise the longer you play, resulting in a poor experience with even what seemed to be a lower frame rate for other players’ characters, making them zip around and looking very unnatural and straight up janky.

Controls are available with a mouse, keyboard, and controller. Many keys are standard for the layout and gameplay, making it easy to get the hang of how it all works with a mouse and keyboard. However, playing with a controller is almost impossible. Half the in-game actions are unbound because there are not enough buttons on the controller, which seems strange even to have a controller as an option.

I found the graphics to be a mixed bag. Close-up renders were quite fluid, with good textures and attack animations from zombies and players showing good realism. Even the gore and dismemberment were super gruesome and very satisfying to watch unfold. Although at a larger view distance, zombies and players zip around like it’s going frame by frame with very low visual quality. On a higher note, the design of each zombie is vastly different from the last, with impressive detail showing all aspects of their abilities and weaknesses, making it so much more enjoyable.

One thing I found was that the sound was very peaceful, with just light tones playing throughout the daytime, but once it got to nighttime, the atmosphere changed completely from bright sounds to dark and dreary. With zombie sounds being the most jarring sound, hearing zombie screeches when they spot you to them straight up attacking you with each swing of your spear or bow fired. Giving a real oomph to your attacks and blocks, even the thud when you jump-kick a zombie gets the blood flowing and the sounds of traps cutting up the zombies are so satisfying.

In conclusion, Night Of The Dead has great potential. It has some great mechanics with traps and many different kinds of zombies. Even though some parts of the combat system need work, overall, it worked as intended, especially with hordes every night pushing you to your limit. With the great sound and visual effects, even the fantastic animations, I know with time, it will only get better with more bug fixes and additions to the game, making this a real go-to title for people on that grind for an open-world survival zombie base defence game. I can’t wait to see what they bring to the table next!

Written by: TypicalCambieAU