Now, this is just a stealth zombie with extra steps of corruption. Welcome to Zombie Within, which was developed by NewGen and published by Wandering Wizard. Let us dive right in or corrupt my way in, I should say.

There is no lore to the game. Still, it’s pretty straightforward with a zombie imposter that slips into a survivor camp defended by armed guards known as hunters and technicians, with the zombie trying to sabotage and spread the infection throughout the town.

You begin the game with an in-depth tutorial showing three classes you can play. The first is an imposter, which gives you the task of sabotaging generators that fill the area with toxic gas, giving you the power to transform into a zombie beast and slay the helpless people who inhabit the surrounding area. The second class is the engineer who can locate sabotages, scan for imposters, and eliminate them using a pistol.

The third class is the hunter, and as the name implies, he can use traps around the map in ideal locations to catch the imposter off guard. Traps stun imposters for a short amount of time, giving the hunter time to locate and eliminate the imposter with his powerful rifle.

With Zombie Within only being multiplayer, it’s pretty easy to get a grasp of what the game entails. With up to 6 players, three infected survivors, and three defenders, you have up to 8 minutes to try and infect and sabotage as much as possible before you are found by the defenders and taken out. Infected survivors can also interact with items around the map to blend in with the humans in their surrounding area.

Finding generators to sabotage slowly builds your infection meter and when you have 50% built up, you can then transform into a giant zombie that can easily take out many survivors and defenders but only for a short period then you transform back into a human, it reminds me a lot of a game called Deceit and shares quite a few similarities.

Also note that at the time of review, it was very difficult to get into a game as there were few players, which was a little disappointing to see, not to mention frustrating.

Controls were simple but also quite annoying with WAD, yes, no backwards. A and D turn the character and W is the only way to move, it was very frustrating to get the hang of, along with the use of E to interact and R to sabotage. I also saw that the game supports full controller support, yet there are no settings or bindings to see how the controls work, which was disappointing.

The graphics in Zombie Within were minimal, with blocky and pixelated objects, but it has a sense of retro style of older games with rough edges around all objects. The lighting and shadows caught my attention the most, giving good detail with lighting effects, casting an accurate shadow with nice shading, and giving items and characters a real pop.

Sound was where it hit me deeply, with such peaceful sounds of crickets, owls, and other sounds in the distance, but also creating a frightened yet thrilling ambience, with the crackling of the firepit setting the mood for a zombie slaughter for the ages.

Overall, Zombie Within has its potential with its retro theme, but the lack of players and quality control made the game feel rushed, with controls feeling very janky and unfinished. However, parts of the game felt flawless, like the gameplay and lighting portraying shadows and shading perfectly.

Zombie Within has an interesting idea behind it, but it felt flawed from the beginning. I’m still interested in seeing where the game goes and if the developers address some of the issues I found.

Written by: TypicalCambieAU