‘Shadow of Kurgansk’ is a new first-person, survival game made by Yadon Studios and published by Gaijin inCubator. This review was done on the Xbox Series X.

Shadow of Kurgansk will put players in a post-apocalyptic world where they will have to fight zombie-like humans and other threats to survive as they progress with story-driven quests. There are two locations to pick from at the start of the game. Both don’t really offer much in terms of difference of experience so don’t be alarmed thinking one may be a harder environment compared to the other, it is just cosmetic and will offer more variety in locations to explore. You have the choice of a wasteland or a coastal area so I went with the coastal for my first pick and then doubled back around to see if there was any major difference in terms of missions or difficulty, which there was none.

You will be given tasks to do like crafting certain items to help your character stay healthy and unlocking more features that the outposts and camps you come across will offer. Quests will automatically get accepted and start when you approach the item or area needed to start them so at least it was made easy to accidentally skipping a quest. The crafting element of the game is nothing new and I did hope it was going to be explained a bit more as there were a few items I was tasked with crafting but took ages to figure out how to do it despite it being a simple item to craft.

Graphically, Shadow of Kurgansk is dated, and with it comes a few common issues with enemies clipping or items not being able to be picked up as they have sunk into the ground. These items can still be seen though; this was only really annoying for quest items as I had to back out and reload the world again for another chance of the item working and to be collected. That being said, the world itself and the colours and lighting used to give off a decent vibe to fit the theme of post-apocalyptic war. It reminds me of the Fallout series and like those games it is easy to fall into and forget about how it looks.

The controls for movement and combat are nice but there is no ability to jump which I found weird. When using menus for inventory and crafting, it felt a bit clunky having to tab over to each section and it not being highlighted to show which tab you were currently on made item management confusing. I personally, would’ve preferred an inventory system that was controlled with a cursor that would be moved with the left thumbstick.

The d-pad is used for swapping weapons again good option to go with but there was no display of what weapon was assigned to the direction so the first time around or after changing out gear it was a lucky dip to find what weapon you wanted to use. While using guns, it does auto-aim onto targets so missing shots was very hard to do. This was in place of being able to aim down sights with guns but as helpful as the auto-aim is I personally prefer to line my own shots up in first-person games.

The world is quite silent in terms of audio other than hearing the zombie-like people growling on the coastal map. There is a ship in the sea that does blare its horn every few minutes for environmental sound and when I did come across other survivors that were giving me tasks the voice overlays were good but didn’t at all match up with the text subtitle on screen. The audio was a bit of a miss, I wasn’t necessarily expecting a backing soundtrack as I played but just some ambient sounds especially with the coastal map the sounds of crashing waves would have been a nice touch. Alas, nothing of the sort.

Final thoughts of Shadow of Kurgansk? If you don’t mind dated graphics and survival elements games then this is the game for you as it does hold a learning curve with crafting. I didn’t expect much of the game but after playing it for a few days I hoped they would’ve added more into it and worked out a better inventory system as that was a big nope for me.

Written by: Shane Walsh