Zombasite

A hidden gem in the world of ARPG's.
Or not?
I am not sure, because its clunky, looks bad, plays slow, has no tutorials, no playerbase and is brutally difficult.
Sometimes it is impossible to win the "Round".

But what it can offer, is a real great mix of 4X and ARPG where you build your CLAN from the ground up, harvest, hunt, quest your way through the current game and have multiple win states. Other clans will get in your way or be your best buddies.

I think it is worth a try. Maybe its something for you. If not, Soldak has also Drox Operatives 2, which follows a similar formula.

Soldak games are always hard to review.

I respect indie devs who try to progress their genre. Making a 4x style ARPG with a dynamic world is a fun idea.

I do like how fast pace the game is. You have many classes to choose from and can even do dual classes. With the random and evolving world no two playthroughs will be the same.

The animations and combat leave a lot to be desired. Plus there are few models for the loot you find so a level 100 character will look mostly the same as a level 1.

All Soldak games are like this you will love them or hate them.

Wish I played this sooner. A complex Diablo-like aRPG with followers, 4X-style systems, Roguelike traditions, and a living world that is constantly evolving.

Zombasite took a little time to adjust to as it is certainly a game of dozens of spinning plates. My first few hours were filled with frustration as I could barely keep up everything the game was throwing at the player's attention. It is worth persevering, letting the failures roll over you, and sticking with it. Take some time, dig through all of the menus, intuit the many overlapping systems, lose some 'worlds', and keep pushing on. There was a moment where all of the layered systems clicked for me and I found my stride and started making hard-earned progress. My first 'world' win (think levels) was a raw moment of celebration and achievement! Really started loving the game after that.

The presentation doesn't quite match modern standards and sometimes the emotional impact of events is lost in quickly scrolling text updates/notifications. If one can look past that, then you have a true gem to get acquainted with and learn. As of this review I put in 17 hours and that is just in one class (Thief/Assassin) and that character is still progressing through world-states and building up a nice group of followers. I cannot wait to see how far I can take my Thief and then start all over with all the myriad of other available classes.

Really happy with what Soldak Entertainment designed here; looking forward to trying more from this tiny but mighty developer. What a refreshing game/concept contrasted against the live-service, big-budget dreck.

I've tried to like this game. I honestly have. It's got great classes, an interesting hybrid class that lets you combine any two subclasses, and the gameplay is like Diablo with factions. And for a while, it's fun. But after a few hours, the game decides to end you. Either you meet a faction that's way more powerful and so aggressive that they invade you the literal minute after they meet you(as was the session I just had), or some big bad way out of your reach decides now is the time to invade. So a literal army will appear at your base, break down your doors, slaughter your clan, and destroy your lifestone and end your game. If it's a faction, you can sue for peace. But peace was never an option, and they will just kill you anyway cause you can't afford the price.

I had hoped that things might have changed after a couple years since the last time I played, but my last session proved that was not the case, even though I played on the lowset difficulty with the "Stress Free" mode on. So unless you're a min/maxing fanatic and want to see how long you can last, don't play this game.

Awesome game, I played Depths of Peril forever ago and now I've just re-discovered Soldak's indie games. Zombasite is basically Diablo but also with a town management aspect. Having AI 'players' and clans run around is quite fun, but the game can feel very hectic at times - which is both a bad and good thing. You'll often be running back to town or trying to find portals that will get you back so you can help protect it with your AI recruited NPCs. It's really fun when you get into it though.

Best ARPG I've played in years, and considering this released in 2016 I'm kinda late to the party: 9/10
The DLC is also great value

I can't recommend Zombasite.

There are a few fatal game mechanics that just really hurt this game tremendously.

The first is the actual Zombasite infections which are absurdly difficult to cure, and prevent you from attacking.

Secondly, people management in your town has no instructions, and is remarkably challenging for no apparent game pleasing benefit. On our third run we did manage to keep our people reasonably stable. But it involves routinely punting people out of your town. Even then, they can occasionally fight each other.

Four player co-op gave each player their own town, instead of just one town, one faction, which was more in line with what we were hoping for.

Creature scaling. As level 13 players, we were routinely subjected to level 20+ raids from enemy factions, which was just madness; we attempted to do a quest victory only to find the final dungeon had spawned *dozens* of elite monsters at the entrance. 20-30 deaths was not enough to get us through. Additionally, leveling was painfully slow and skill progression was glacial and limited. After 14 levels, I had 2 skills I could use in combat... Pet pathing was also, at best, random.

This is a "Neat idea" but terribly executed, I would not reccomend.

I loved the freedom Drox Operative gave me to do as i wished to solve each world, to explore and ponder my options. Things could get out of hand ofc and they did, but at least i had the feeling i could change things, have an impact on the worlds.

For me Zombasite does the exact opposite. The game drowned me in multiple layers of crap and chained me to the bottom:

The outpost/town you HAVE TO MANAGE OR YOU LOSE is a prison, a clunky guesswork of a management minigame where people fling garbage at each other and you spend your time kicking them out or begging them with money not to kill each other while they slowly but surely go crazy. Leaving that nightmare of a place feels like leaving babies home alone making reaching peace of mind an impossible task while going for you daily tasks.

Then the game begs you to priorise those tasks but stops you from exploring in every possible way starting with labyrinthian corridor filled maps inhabited by monsters with huge hitboxes and if you manage to go around them the stamina mechanic is here to say "NO RUNNING WITHOUT CLEARING THE MOBS PLEASE".
"Ah... ok then, but... you know i need to go out there or something really bad (meaning way worse than usual) is gonna happen right?"

Sorry Soldak i really tried out of respect and to thank you for Drox Operative but i can't play a game that in addition of making me claustrophobic pisses me off on a regular basis. I actually want to play the game and not spend hours guessing how this or that feature works or i lose (my mind?).

PROs:

- Difficult autonomous living world where things can get out of hand really fast if you don't intervene.

CONs:

- Hum... can you let me... you know... intervene? Pretty please?? (lack of actual freedom)
- Town management brings headhaches instead actual of depth to the game.
- Prepare to lose some hair (headscratching guesswork of a game).

I love this game and would laugh at the negative reviews concerning difficulty when I'm 50+ and holding my own. But I'm not laughing as the game deserves critique not downrating because people don't know how to play or what to expect.

It's not for everyone though.

This game may be for you if you like:

Don't Play the Game If:

Well shoot, this game hits everything I'm enjoying in Drox Operative, but gives me even more to care about! Because my faction is more than myself and my really irritating bosses, I can get invested in keeping my clan afloat.

The premise is that the world's destroyed, and you claim a town with a handful of people and help keep them alive and fed while you go adventuring out in the hostile world. There's town defense to manage, the happiness and personalities of your people, their equipment, and their relationships. Two clan members can grow to hate each other and then fight to the death, which...does take care of the problem, but you're down a member.

The minute to minute gameplay is essentially Diablo, but more arcade-y. You get flashy spells and skills, you pop monsters, you explore areas and find mobs and there's loot and xp and it's a satisfying take on the genre. Not the best, but fun - and it's really heightened by the sense that you're in a living world, as you run into other clans, enemies can level up on their own and destroy each other, and you're in this giant chaotic sandbox looking for the best gear and supplies for your town so you can survive.

It all gels into this surprisingly pleasant experience, as you manage the strategic layer (your clan, other clans, town defense) and the Diablo layer in this colorful world. The flavor text is fun to read, too!

Now, the game's not for everyone. The graphics are antiquated, the UI is functional but you'll have to learn it, and the balance can sometimes be weird. But if you can look past these issues, there's something fun and complex to play!

It helps that there's a meaty demo, too - it offers a large chunk of the game to play, although as far as I can tell, you cannot import demo characters to the main game. So use it for a taster, then start a new game with a more interesting character when you buy it.

Enter the game with one of the worst titles in the history of gaming at a time when people are inundated with zombie titles. A crying shame because Zombasite is far more than it would appear to be at first glance.

Soldak have been creating mechanically deep arpgs for quite some time now, you may know them from Depths of Peril, Din’s Curse, or Drox Operative. Let me put it this way: back when Torchlight 1 came out, Din’s Curse also emerged. I spent, at most, 8 hours with Torchlight and several hundred with Din’s Curse. It was that compelling. So why is my playtime of this so low? The thing is that every time I come back to review this, I’m reminded why. Let me simply say this: When most developers tell you they’re giving you a living open world game, they are lying to you. They don’t have the bollocks.

Soldak have those bollocks.

At its heart Zombasite isn’t really a Zombie survival game, it’s a Soldak action RPG with some zombie mechanics worked into it. What you’ve got here is the management of Din’s Curse with the faction wars of Depths of Peril, and the undead add a bit of chaotic flavour into the mix. It’s a concept with a lot of potential. All the mechanics you’d expect from previous titles, with some new mechanics and an expanded world.

The art assets really need some work. The texture and shaders seem to be continually updated, good but they still look dated and low res, regardless. The decals for things like patches of fire, poison, and ice just about worked in 2007, why they’re still here in 2017 I don’t know. A lot of the functional combat information is still relayed by scrolling bits of text that spout from the character’s head.

The animations need some serious work. Again, I think the animations from Depths of Peril haven’t changed or particularly added to. As a result we still don’t have basic things like a proper set of weapon specific animations – your character more or less still uses a knife they same way they use a claymore. There’s no option for dual wielding, I assume it’s something to do with this. This very aesthetic, so to something more substantial:

The animations don’t really sync up with what’s on the screen. Several hits can land in the space of a single attack, there’s no syncing for blocking, dodging, or parrying. The various status affects don’t have adequate visual communication or feedback for the player. If you’re slowed, the animations will simply slow to a crawl. If stunned, your character simply freezes in place.

That’s not just a nice visual addition at this point: It’s more or less crucial to conveying what’s going on because there’s so much happening now. Scrolling text popups work in a turn based RPG. They do not work in real time. The lack of audio-visual feedback causes the game to feel extremely clunky and unresponsive. The ancient 8-axis movement, the fact that the animations don’t flow or blend together at all, all compound this feeling.

Level generation becomes a problem. Running away from enemies, trying to find new areas, you wonder why you can’t just run through that patch of undergrowth or why that waist-high wall buried in a hedge isn’t more clearly defined, or why you can’t simply hop over it. The flat two-dimensional space could really benefit from some verticality. The over abundance of obvious square sections could use a few curves, artificial walls of tree assets feel more at home in the 90s than they do almost two decades into the 21st century.

The worlds Soldak puts you in are very much alive. At this point it seems like they should fully take the brakes off the simulation working behind the scenes. It’s where their games really shine.

You know how Bethesda always tell you that the radiant AI is going to do some crazy emergent stuff but then they bottle it, pussy out, and just give you a set of dumbed-down decontextualized encounters to break up the monotony between cave #1 and cave #15? You know how you get quest after quest of some urgent magnitude that tell you all this stuff is happening, but it never does and you wander off into a field and pick flowers for six months without a care? Doesn’t happen in Zombasite.

If Bob the Lich wants to build an earthquake machine, then Bob the Lich builds the earthquake machine. In the process he allies with Alice the Fishmonger who is at war with Ted the Snakeman. So while you’re searching for Bob’s earthquake machine, you’ll find wars going on between fishmonger’s and Snakemen. They don’t care about you, they’ve got their own things going on. In Zombasite, if Bob the Lich decides he doesn’t like your village, he will attack your village. He’s not going to conveniently wait for you to show up in his cave hideout.

More RPGs and more open world games need to be taking their cues from Soldak. Because they’re doing immersion right. It’s not about thousands of static points of interest. It’s not about laboured cliché end-of-the-world plotlines that we’ve all seen a thousand times before. It’s about layers of interacting mechanics being allowed to run the unpredictable results of those interactions when they happen.

So why haven’t I put more hours into this? Because Soldak got the balance wrong on this one and they didn’t’ develop enough of the smaller bits of the UI and presentation and game-flow to match the breadth and depth of the mechanics that they’d created. The balance is completely broken. On the basic gameplay front, there is a huge discrepancy between how fast you die and how fast enemies die. The basic mobs soak hits like you’re attacking them with tissue paper. They are incredibly spongy. They will also kill you in a couple of hits.

This would be ok if the combat were more skill-based, but it’s not and the aforementioned clunky feeling makes it even more abrasive. The result is that progression become a protracted unfulfilling grind. The exploration goes out the window because the game relies on you being able to tag warp gates to be able to easily access new areas. You can’t get to those areas without running through hordes of enemies that aren’t worth fighting. Repeat ad nauseum. High mortality only works if the enemies also have high mortality. If you can’t kill them roughly as easily as they can kill you, then you just create frustration.

And then we’ve got the XP debt mechanic. This mechanic doesn’t work in this game because of all the balance problems levelling is a tedious nightmare.
Your XP gain is halved when you’re in XP debt. Through no real fault of my own, I ended up with twenty-thousand points of xp debt just trying to play. At which point I hung up the character and wondered why I wasn’t hanging up the whole game. Zombasite is a loanshark.

Zombie games should feel hopeless. Zombasite feels hopeless for all the wrong reasons.

With all of that said, I’d recommend Zombasite despite it drawbacks, because it is a shining beacon of what ARPGs could be. It has the bollocks to do what other developers in the genre are flat out scared to do: Let go of the reigns. There are some serious sweeping changes to the balance and underlying numbers that need to be made.

It seems like Soldak’s next game is going to have to be a significant step forward from this one. The developers really do put some great mechanical depth into their games, with all the politics and survival and exploration and factions, and AI interactions going on. They are doing something that the games industry should have been taking note of decades ago. Get it on sale. I think Soldak have the idea that they’re still making old-school arpgs with some twists. They’re not. They’re way ahead of the curve. If you want a glimpse of the way out of the mire of drab swill that open world games and rpgs are comfortable in these days, then play this for a few hours.

I wish i could modulate my vote instead of Yes or No.

I will say Yes, but Zombasite doesn't feel very attractive, after Drox Operative or Din's Curse. It's a mix of all Soldak's games features, wasted with a flat Zombie theme, a weird artistic direction, and a not so good GUI.

I don't like the colors nor the shapes of stuff ingame, and the outside lands are more or less ugly. The underground feels much better however. It's not a matter of techs, but arts.

The living world, the quest system to influence factions, the many possibilities of building your toon, all are nice and that's the root of Soldak's games in my opinion.

Still, i keep starting new games again and again, and i keep failing to continue after a while, but then again, i start again...

With heavy heart I can't recommend this game. I love Soldak games but this didn't do it for me. I really expected more than just 1 new class over din's curse but thats it. I appreciate the drox operative quest system being ported over and such but this really doesn't feel like a fresh step up for Soldak. Very minor reasons to get this over Din's curse or Drox operative and for someone whos played both to death this didn't add anything substantial to get me playing again. For me the zombie theme fell flat and came across as very out of place. The new death knight class is cool though. I hate that the rating system on here is so binary but would recommend Din's curse or Drox operative over this to anyone that asked and as such I wouldn't therefore recommend it to anyone at all.

I would recommend against purchasing this game.

I am a long time player of Soldak games. I put a LOT of hours into Din's Curse and Depths of Peril. While my review is being posted with less than 20 hours in Zombasite, if you were to add up my hours in Din's Curse and Depths of Peril, games from which Zombasite evolved so clearly that a lot of the classes and skills are virtually identical, it would be in the hundreds.

Then I lost track of Soldak for a while. When I checked up on them I found Zombasite, and purchased it in hopes that it would be what it said it would be- Din's Curse, but with more classes and some cool new features and bells and whistles.

And it is! But... it's also Din's Curse with more balance problems. And with a lot of those bells and whistles not... really... working.

So the core of a Soldak game is as follows- remember the procedural plot generation from Shadow of Mordor, where the results of your encounters with various boss orcs change the political structure of the world in which you live? Soldak does that, longer, and better, in an action RPG context. Monsters have agendas, which they begin to carry out against your town. How you fight back- whether you try to assassinate them, beat up their lieutenants and scouts, break their machines, etc, determines how much they succeed. Left alone, a monster can steamroll into an incredible threat that you truly hate, and feel quite happy when you finally kill.

And Soldak provides an incredible wealth of character classes, and customization within those classes. Basically, each "class" is actually three specializations, each of which can function as a class all on its own. You can either take three of them selected for you by the designer, or make a custom character with any two at all. Since each is robust enough to make a whole character, this leaves you with a LOT of options. And Soldak uses the best system available for determining ability score costs- dynamic pricing. The cost of one level in a skill goes up by one each time you invest in it. This encourages you to diversify instead of just putting every point you have into Fire Bolt or something and ignoring the rest of a given specialization skill tree.

And Zombasite adds more. Now you have other factions, like in Depths of Peril, AND you have monster agendas. And more classes. And your character can adventure with two companions. And instead of your town being a relatively passive area that you arrive in and try to rescue, its a permanent clan of people you carry with you as you travel from region to region, and you can upgrade and nurture them into something that assists you as an adventurer. For example, maybe you recruit someone named Lei, because she's an alchemist and occasionally produces extremely useful elixirs. When a given monster rival curses her and turns her to stone, preventing her from working, sending her happiness stat into the basement, and generally mucking up your colony, you'll be more motivated to save her because she's someone you actually interact with, albeit in maybe a small way.

So... why don't I recommend this?

Balance and gameplay issues. The game regularly drops enemies on you that are essentially just unfair. Presumably you're supposed to run from them. But the game features a stamina meter that only penalizes movement in combat, and seems to exist entirely to stop you from running. The game features no mobility skills. Running really means crawling away from an enemy who has no stamina penalty while chasing, drinking potion after potion and hoping you can crawl... slowly... to a teleportation point... before... you die. If you complete a quest and accidentally cause an avatar of an evil god to spawn, an avatar that can kill you in one, maybe two hits, you're... kind of screwed. There's no counterplay. If you want to adventure in a level 12 area but the game has spawned a team of five level 17 named monsters, you're... kind of screwed. I guess you just don't go there anymore. Except maybe you have to. If an enemy clan raids yours with a strike team of a dozen enemies five levels higher than you and the average level of your clan mates, you're... kind of screwed. You can't fight them. NPC hit points scale about three times faster than yours. They move as a group, and outnumber you. One of them probably has the Regeneration skill, and regens at about your DPS. Your clan mates don't move as a group so they'll be picked apart and slaughtered. About the only thing you can do is immediately sue for peace, and pay the raiders to leave.

The unfairness in Din's Curse was annoying. Sometimes you'd use a cool spell underground, and rocks would fall on your head, instantly killing you. But the only penalty was XP loss, and you could grind back. In Zombasite you can lose your allies when things go randomly bad. And they don't respawn.

If the game gave you methods of counterplay so that a skilled player could avoid these issues, it might be better. But it doesn't. No mobility skills, few skills to help your allies, your allies have few skills to buff or help you. The addition of teammates should have led to a redesign of the character classes to ensure that everyone had some team skills, but it did not.

The two most powerful classes, according to many but not all players, are healer and conjurer. Healer to save your allies from dying, because it sucks watching them die and being able to do nothing but throw potions at them. And conjurer because then a lot of the unfairness happens to your monster summons, who are replaceable. Its not a good sign that the most popular classes are popular because of the way they let you bypass the game's flaws.

There are a variety of other issues. Item prerequisites are very punishing, and the typical new player will screw up his ability score investment and have to grind level after level using poor gear to fix it, or else create a new character. There's a TON of town data you can work with to optimize your town, but ultimately its very hard to make use of it. You probably don't have time to figure out exactly why Carlos is miserable, and chances are that even if you figure it out you can't do much about it except heap money on him until he's happy again. Your villagers have personality traits and you can try not to recruit people with bad ones, but you aren't in charge of half your recruiting anyways- it comes from rescue quests.

Perhaps worst of all, the dynamic quest system is overloaded. In Din's Curse, you usually had about 3 to 8 problems at once. In Zombasite, each clan on the map usually has about 3 to 8. If there's eight clans on the map, that's... kind of an issue. What this means is that instead of looking up what quests you have, going to the relevant place, and searching out the monster you have to kill, person you have to save, or whatever, you probably just look at the map, see that there are fifteen quests in a given place, go there, and kill monsters for a while until a bunch of quests just finish on your own. You end up ignoring the very dynamism and interactivity that should make the game special.

I genuinely believe that there is fun in Zombasite, but I think its covered up by way too much that isn't fun. Its ok if a game occasionally throws unbeatable enemies at you... if it also gives you counterplay, like an interesting way to escape those enemies. It's ok if losing your allies is really sad... if it also gives you meaningful counterplay to help you protect those allies. You get the idea. I don't feel that Zombasite does enough of this. I think you spend way too much time chewing through insane monster or NPC hit point pools, or rage quitting

Well, this is a hard one to recommend. I have to admit that I had refunded the game once before I commited to it. So, yes, no unconditional recommendation.
Why?
I had quite abit of fun with the previous games Drox Operative and Din's Curse (bought directly from developers website, not on Steam) but I never was able to get into Depths of Peril.
So I saw Zombasite (silly name...) was out and tried the demo. I was kind of interested and bought the full game. I played a bit, but was COMPLETELY OVERWHELMED with it. I had no clue what was going on and all the messages bombarding me plus high level enemies trashing my camp and my expedition at start-up were completely over my head.
I just was "WTF????" and refunded the game.
That said, I haven't played a Soldak game for at least 1.5 years and had forgotten about the basics. Just for fun and giggles I installed Din's Curse again and reminded myself of the basics of a Soldak game. And I thought to myself- well, this isn't too hard. I really should give Zombasite another try.
And I did.
And what can I say? Now I actually enjoy it quite a bit! It is a nice change from ther ARPGs.

So do I recommend this game?

If you have played other Soldak games before, definitely YES. This is the most complex Soldak game to date and if you liked the other games you will get into this reasonably quickly and enjoy all the new features.
If you like ARPGs, you should also give it a go (try the demo!), but if you are just after some simple button-hacking this might not be for you, because it includes quite a bit of strategy, camp-management, damage control and frustration.
There is no real tutorial and you get thrown into the deep end from the beginning, which is VERY overwhelming and frustrating at the beginning. The learning curve at start is just like a wall.
And this is the biggest flaw of Zombasite's game design. I think many people might be interested and try it, but will give up on it before they are even able to appreciate this game.
Luckily there is a demo!
So, if you are in doubt, try out the demo first and see if this is your cup of tea or not.

Another great Soldak title. A strategy game in a living, breathing world that reacts on what you do and especially what you don't do. If you fail to kill a boss monster in time, it will accrue more followers. The beauty is that almost every aspect is tweakable, so you can make the game as nail-biting hard or as casual as you like. All thumbs up!

This game reminds me of a mesh of some of my favorite games of all time. Part ARPG (Din's Curse in this instance), but has a similar feel and depth that old-school games like Seven Kingdoms, Majesty, Civ, Dwarf Fortress and various roguelike style of games. Let me first get to the Graphics and Sound, and also let me clear up why this isn't quite like a regular "Zombie" based game, if you can even call it one.. If you want to skip to the gameplay review, skip down to where the review says "Finally, on to the game...."

Let me first get to the graphics and sound, they are not a sole reason you look to play something innovative like this for, but for me, being an old-school type of gamer as you can tell from the games I mentioned... they are waaaay more than passable. And if you are here currently reading this, you wouldn't be suprised to know this isn't a big dev game, so in that case I think you'll probably be satisfied with it visually. If you're ok enough to ever play a game with the graphics of some currently released games nowadays, say like the "The Escapists" or something else visually on a similar level, then you should have absolutely no room to nitpick here. Visuals are moderately sharp and have a good enough amount of variance for any given generated world. Music is pretty good to me, it comes on and off in certain moments. Not an epic soundtrack, but then again, it's not overly dramatic like some can be. Sound is varied enough from the somewhat various amount of different monsters, skills, and traps that are in the game, but some sound effects can still sound a bit too loud, so I would recommend lowering the sound volume in the options. This issue has been improved upon patch by patch. The Dev has been updating this game with major patches weekly, since it's existence.

Secondly, this is not a ZOMBIE based game in the general sense, not as much as you would think for something with Zombie and Parasite in the name.. Most of it comes from the fact that there are zombie based versions of monsters, and this also causes a lot of in-fighting between monsters. But even regular monsters can declare war on each other, yeah it's pretty crazy! Though, there is a Zombie threat bar on the bottom, that will go up over time and make more zombie based monsters exist in the world causing havoc, which you can slow it's rate of raising by doing certain quests. And you and your clan members can be infected, and this can be taken care of in various ways. Now it's basically a single dev game for the most part, so I know it can't be easy, but in my opinion I think he could have done better job coming up with the name of this game, marketing wise. I think it should be changed to something like "Perils of Survival", to give a better feel for the actual game. Though that name would be similar to "Depths of Peril", a previous game by this company.

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Finally, on to the game.... You create a character that levels up and gains skills, that you can keep playing through each game (generated world) you play, win or lose, and each game takes usually takes a few hours or more (this may vary by the world generation settings you set). It does have hardcore and semi-hardcore options.

So what is it generally like? It is beyond just another ARPG/Diablo clone, and like just like a lot of roguelikes, everything you do in game (for this game, doing quests/defending/raiding/diplomacy/clan member management), feels like it's for an important purpose or actual incentive to your clan or the game world.. The world moves even without any user intervention, as monsters level up and form factions to group up with another. And they even plot to raid your town or cause some form of trouble for you or other clans. A certain type of monster, say Imps or Orcs for instance, could actually go to war with you if you kill too many at once (think they will just let you just keep farming them, hey why shouldn't they fight back??)

You are considered a "clan" leader basically, with a home town (just one town inside walls, that doesn't ever expand in area) that has to win a generated world via one of these victory conditions, that are basically: Last clan alive victory, an Alliance victory, a gather enough food supply victory, or a do all quests victory.... all against actual other competing AI clans just like you (for the most part..).

Most quests are generated on the fly as you play, such as to collect such and such to fix a clan's poisioned water supply, or a town's curse. You can pay for rumors for somewhat accurate locations of these quests. Also quests like "to kill a certain powerful enemy(s) threatening to eventually cause trouble for a clan" (and he/she will, they are not BS'ing!). Escort, rescue, stop a zombie uprising, and many more types of quests that have been added since early access has been moving forward. You can turn in quests that other AI clans give out, quests that they don't end up finishing yet themselves (and you may even do some quests via chance without knowing, before you even meet these clans for the first time... and after you finally meet them, you can turn them in and get rewarded with XP/gold and improved relations) Doing quests for them is a great way to improve relations

You also have clan members that interact with each other, and have personality traits. You have to manage this a bit and it can be fun, interesting, and at times frustrating, like when people go insane. But that's part the challenge and variance this game has that I enjoy. You have to make sure to only recruit people that will probably tolerate each other enough, and you also migh need to help them tolerate each other. And you have to make sure they get fed, and don't hiring way too many clan members if you don't have enough extra food, as this can cause a domino effect of happiness and insanity issues.

To sum it up, to me It feels weird, in a very GOOD way, playing an action RPG type game... where you feel an actual pressure and importance to acquiring more XP, Gold, and also manage just enough other various things, to improve your chances of not losing and failing a given world/game. It's not super intense like a MOBA or most FPS games, it's more so a similar feeling to some older unique games of the past, and a lot of rougelike type games I've played before, have given me.

I also need to mention, there are SO many things that can be modified in the game with notepad via the Assets4 file, for you to tinker with if you'd like. There are mods already if you search the official game forums. Say for example, if you are bothered by lack of inventory space in early levels in ARPG games like this, and would like more in the earlier levels.

I urge people to give it a shot with the demo, and I recommend at first trying low stress mode at first. It can probably use just a bit more feedback before it officially releases in the coming months, but don't get me wrong, it's great just the way it is, even if released now. I don't think there is any game quite like this that exists.

Short answer: it's a really fun game with many evolving gameplay mechanics overlapping to make it enjoyable.

Longer answer: there are many areas for improvment and the developer seems to patch once per week. I read the patch notes regularly and requests/suggestions from the community are addressed.

The game has a fairly ambitious scope with so many interacting systems. Not to mention skill balancing for the character classes. So there's a lot of work left to do. That said, I enjoy the emergent nature of the game. You never know for sure how a raid on your town will turn out. Even kicking an NPC out of your clan can backfire.

I've more than received my monies worth and there's a rough diamond here that get's a little more polished every week.

I want to tell you to buy Zombasite. I really do. Sure, the graphics look like PSX era stuff, and it takes a moment to get used to the maze-like map as opposed to other, more open overowrlds to ARPG games. That didn't matter. The game took hold of me initially.

The good:
This is an ARPG set in a fantasy world with a zombie parasite running rampant. You're the leader of (one) clan of survivors trying to make your way. This means recruiting new people to your cause, maintaining a town, and keeping up supplies. You have relations with other towns, all of them being other races of sentient beings, never human. You can adventure with them, trade items, declare war, have defensive pacts. It's amazingly deep.

The controls are solid, sometimes movement is a LITTLE wonky, I have found a building I should clearly have been able to walk through, that I just...couldn't. This only happened once though. Sometimes you run around a pillar the longer way instead of diving right in to the enemy you clicked to attack. Of well. The character classes are fun, varried, and seem somewhat balanced.

The Bad:
Map generation is...bleh. I've acutally had it where I started in my town, and the only connecting area had no exits other than another clan's town. This wouldn't be so bad, I (eventually) discovered there was an exit from the 2nd town to another zone. BUT! That clan was warlike, and hated me. Had to start a new map, incurring an EXP penalty.

You have a nemesis. Cool right? A guy to fight against! One to STRIVE to beat! Eh...it's parked way out in some super high level area, so you have to work to get to it. Not a big deal, seems reasonable. However, there is a thing your nemesis can do...invade your town. I thought this would be cool, have to suddenly pop back to town to fight off some event. After all, your town has an inventory, for stronger gates, and to hire guards. I thought it would be like a whole 2nd character I was buildng up.

I've yet to find a single guard I could equip, all of them have some HIGH level requirements, and the gates break REALLY easy. This means I'm coming home a lot to fight off the invasions. Not BAD yet, right? Well, those invasions start to happen pretty frequently. They can destroy houses in town, and you need your houses for the...bluh...happyness mechanic. See below, in the worst.

So, with constant, damaging invasions happening, the devs decided that, screw town portals. You know those things that every ARPG ever has? Yeah. You get ONE per MAP. Sure, evey area of the map has waypoints you can teleport back to town form. The maps are build like a maze though, and when you're miles of winding paths from the nearest waypoint, your town is DONE FOR by the time you can get back.

The Worst:
You know those survivors I talked about recruiting? Well, they have a stat. Happyness. This is where the game breaks down completely. In every playthrough, (As of writing this, I've played 7 hours, and started MANY maps to try to figure this out.) all of my survivors happyness levels just plummet. They start rebellions and are generally just agressive little bastards. The thing is, there is no (revealed) reason for this. You can hover your mouse over their happyness level, and it will give you a breakdown of what is causing them to be more or less happy. This becomes broken because, all listed effects are green, and thus should be gaining happy levels.

Again, for emphasis. ALL shown information leads you to think NOTHING is wrong, but they are becoming more and more unhappy. THAT is a BROKEN mechanic.

All of your characters have traits, and those traits determine what they do and do not like. They don't all start revealed though. This wouldn't be TERRIBLE, but the hidden ones STILL MATTER! The onlyreason I can find from an extensive forum post, is those unrevealed traits are making them unhappy.

Summary/ TL;DR:
Potentially fantastic game is broken by a few poor choices. It is in early access though, so maybe it will get better. I will be keeping an eye on this, and updating this review if things settle down.

So far.. I'm not convinced. Graphics have never been a feature of Soldak games but its about time they advanced. The whole quests / rep system / npc system was way ahead of the pack but again I dont see that it had advanced. I bought into this on the strength of the last games - I expected more than what appears to be the same character classes from Dins Curse with the same skills / limitations . Perhaps a lack of imagination on my part but I would have liked to seen more modern character classes. I suppose if it isnt broke don't fix it but at the moment I'm disappointed.

On the recommendation...if you are really into the crafting / survival element of a game then perhaps choose this over Dins' Curse / Demon War - but otherwise I'd pick up the latter.

Hopefully I'll change my mind as the game matures and I play more.

The name sucks, and the graphics are not great. I don't care. Zombasite is one of my favorite games of 2015/2016, just like Drox Operative (Soldak's previous game) was one of my favorite games of 2012. I like how there are so many factions that can be fighting or allying with each other. I like how party members have personality traits that affect their interaction with other party members or clan members. I like how elite monsters start sending out scouts and raiding as they get stronger (they level up, too). Basically, Zombasite has the kind of dynamic environment I enjoy experiencing.

One example: I got six NPCs to join one of my clans. Two of them started flirting and married each other, and then one of them got killed during a hunting trip (you can send out NPCs on independent missions to collect food or other resources, but you can escort them if you wish) by an elite monster. The spouse went insane and went berserk, and the surviving party members had to put her down. Her husband became a ghost and attacked the party, and we ended up running away. The survivors became unhappy, one started secretly poisoning the others, and he eventually let in a raid party of monsters that killed the remaining clan members. That was pretty sad... but also pretty cool!

Character creation can be fun to experiment with. You can select from one of several classes, or you can create a hybrid character with fewer (but more specialized) skills.

I do wish the 'intelligent zombie virus' was more of a threat. I'd like to see coordinated attacks by infected monsters and NPCs. I'd like to see zombies overrun a weak clan so they can zombify the population and eventually overwhelm stronger clans. I'd also like to see zombie squads surround and flank clan parties so they become outnumbered, rather than just trickle individually into their weapons and spells.

(reviewed version: 0.913)

TL;DR: I really wanted to like this game. Tons of good ideas, borrowed from various game genres. But skill trees and fighting are plagued by huge negative points (imho), and since we're talking about a hack'n'slash, that's a deal breaker.


Positive:
Like in many other games of this developper, there are a lot of good ideas:
- Living map/quest system
- Customizable difficulty
- The zombie parameter is actually quite interesting
- Tons of loot of various rarity levels.
- 4 victory conditions / map is another good idea.
- Being able to opt for a hybrid class (at a cost) is cool.

BUT the negative points are a deal breaker IMHO.
Negative:
- Skill trees and whole classes need a lot of refining. Some skills are clearly useless. Others are incredibly strong, like, only interesting skill in the tree. Some scale terribly, and are useless quite rapidly, no matter how many points you invest in them. A few actually get worse with the scaling. Attack and cast speed are also weird. A lot of potential builds are non-viable because of all of this.

- Action itself isn't really dynamic. Compared to other hack'n'slashes like Path of Exile or Grim Dawn, this is shocking. You cannot "feel" your power. You are auto-attacking A LOT, and many skills feel exactly like an auto-attack. AoE skills are scarce, meaning it takes a lot of time to clean trash mobs.

- Vocabulary is not really accurate. Again, compared to PoE, where a specific word means a very specific thing, here, you regularly wonder how do things stack together.
- Oh, and visuals are dated. Not really a deal breaker, but one could expect a bit better.

You know it is a great game when six hours fly by and you want so much more and there is so much more. The more I play the more I like, my clan is starting to grow in power and I am starting to explore more and getting to know the game. This game seems to take the best parts of Dins Curse, Depths of Peril, and Drox Operative and mash it all up into one fantastic game. I love the character progression so much, you can mix it up anyway you want. I will be playing this much much more. It is in Beta but very playable and target finish date is three months.

It was either this game or Shower with your Dad Simulator 2015. Thank you Soldak for helping me escape just when I had needed you. Thank you.

9/10 (EA Placeholder, will review properly later.)

In all honesty, if you don't like Soldak brand of action RPGs then you probably won't change your mind for this. The textures and graphics are slightly improved (at the cost of poor optimization in beta, but I'm sure that'll get ironed out as things progress).

On the other hand, if you do like the very unique concepts that Soldak brings to the action RPG genre, this is the next best iteration in their succession of games. You have clans, one of which is headed by the player character, and you complete quests for your own clan as well as others (if you want to stay on their good side). In 4x strategy fashion you'll want to choose your friends carefully, and let the troublesome clans suffer through their problems. Then again, that might lead to an early raid on your own settlement, or one of your friends, at which point you'll be forced into a bad situation that will probably result in many deaths, or just one in the case of hardcore characters.

You have a great and inspired class skill tree, which offers as many combinations as are listed on the tin. Powerful traits are added to mix things up even more, adding a layer of progression that is common to all classes, and can make your character's skillset, in tandem with their equipment, very unique.

In short, so far it's looking so good for Soldak's new RPG, and it is as true an RPG as is being made these days, with meaningful choices that impact gameplay. RPGs are games of choice, afterall.