Envy the Dead

ED is a game where you are tasked to lead an AI generated ragtag squad of sole sourvivors through dissstopian lands. It sells itself as 'extremely hardcore' as you're fighting in the face of impotence, but ultimately it just flops its way into a sea of mediocrity and lazy development. The tower defense elements are an interesting addition and allow for periods of camping out the infection, but your charactors die way too easily and the combat is bad, plane and simple. At roughly 2 american dollars, ED is the same price of a Bacon McDouble, so it won't cost you much to take a bite. Nevertheless, there is better content out there.

Good for killing time but its unclear how to use things and the combat is really bad. Characters die way too easily and getting supplies/skill upgrades takes way too long considering how strong the enemies are and how easy it is to die.

bad

honestly, its not bad of a game. i dont mean the combat parts, but i enjoyed the survival part of the game. choosing your path on the map. scouting and getting supplies. choosing who gets what weapons and items...feeding them and getting supplies. it is a buggy game. enemies through walls and for some reason never saved for me. had to beat it all in 1 go. its a really hard challenge on hardcore difficulty...but i recommend it for guys who like survival games.

very little information to go on and no other difficulty settings other than hard and harder almost impossible to play have a decent playthru because of the sheer difficulty

Extremely cheap game, but this is its only advantage. The game looks unfinished, it just doesn't have any cool features.

is a cool zombie rts give a good challange and the gameplay is fun for what lil it ask

Really hard to figure out what to do, following the limited directions didnt seem to help and eventually i gave up because its rather ugly and barebones and the swooping around the screen made me ill. So I admit I didnt give it much of a chance but it didnt seem worth the effort, much as i love zombies.Still for the price I guess its not too upsetting.

This game is definitely worth the dollar you'll spend on this, it's surprisingly very good for how little it is asking, it's a good time killer and has a challenging playthrough but I haven't even touched hardcore mode yet because I wasn't ready for the last boss and had to start all over Dx having different classes makes it a bit more interesting for survivor classes as well, each fight is defense mission which might kill the fun for some people but for me watching my survivors pop zombies is enjoyable. As long as you can look past the sometimes butchered English and the obvious look of Unity engine use then you'll be having a swell time; this game is no masterpiece for sure but it's a good game for pocket change. there's really no downside to checking out this game yourself. :]

Not very in depth game, but honestly a fun time killer when you are bored. Props to those who made it though, as I'm always a fan of seeing a project or idea fully form into a game that is playable and enjoyable :)

this is a really good game (atleast for the price) the gameplay is very fun but i would suggest the dev make it not as hard to search for supplize while scouting. even with one of my scouts built for scouting i need to constantly abort because he gets attacked every 2 seconds while out there. besides that i love this game and i beleive with more help on this game it could go somewhere good. i give this 7.5/10 brains

Amazing game. I didn't think it would be good, but the thing plays out like some awesome board game but with really intense, not-turn-based combat in parts. I love this and have been playing it for hours. My best run, still on-going, had 8 original survivors who all survived until the first Exit. Then one died, saving the lives of the others. Then they went on into the city, out of food, medicine, and low on ammo. We turned down an opportunity to murder and steal from some survivors, and only having 5 food, had to let some people die. I couldn't bear that, so I merely kicked them from the group, maybe we'll meet again! Anyways, this game is great.

I know that this seems like a bad review.

"Why do you only have .2 hours on record?!"

The answer is becasue I really don't know whats going on in the game.

For the past year or so, over a couple of steam accounts, I've been accumulating little & cheap indie games that have caught my eye from the Steam store. This was on sale for around 50 cents when I bought it, so I figured I'd give it a spin.

The Big Picture:

You are a group of survivors in a Zombie Apocalypse looking to strive in the harsh conditions. You need to manage your food, ammunition, and scrap (I'll get to this later), and your shelter.

Mechanics:

Crafting - Very simple but gets the job done. Scrap is the main building supply, but in order to build things you also need "hammer points" (for lack of a better phrase), which I assume comes from each turn you've been through.

Scouting - Have you ever played Bethesda's Fallout Shelter? Well, the scouting is basically the scavenging in that game sped up to around 3-4 seconds. You pick a character to scout (scavenge) and equip the desired weapons and equipment, then send them off to the wastes. They come back in a few seconds with some supplies and maybe some currency. Overall a good system.

Leveling/Skill Trees - This game's leveling is so very simple yet perfect for the purpose of a lightweight mechanic. You have a variety of available skills you can choose upon leveling up (in which your character glows yellow until you pick skills), and have four max at any given time. Some of these skills are class beneficial, where others are more universal. It adds the aspect of the importance of management, because you have to spend your points wisely.

Traveling/Moving Settlement - Very simple. Ties into scouting in which new locations are found, and then are available to inhabit. Not sure of the importance of certain settlements, but this review will be updated eventually*.

All other Mechanics - I haven't made it very far, but all of the mechanics that I've seen and messed with seem to work quite well.

Pros and Cons:

Pros:
-Cheap & Goes on sale often
-Good Developers & Updated often
-Decent Graphics
-Fun & Casual (Not much effort is needed in Normal mode(Not sure if that is supposed to be, but whatever,))
-Overall Good Game so far

Cons:
-Bit confusing (Maybe update Tutorial???)
-Menu Text sometimes goes over borders
-Resolution is default set to 4k (Maybe just me)
-Options are limited
-Characters are sometimes cutoff by screen
-Crafting menu isn't compatible with scroll wheel
-+ A lot more simple and not that bad things that don't really need to be mentioned.

Summary:

If you have some leftover money in your Steam wallet then this game is quite the deal, for .99USD full price and common sales, it's a downright bargain. It is a very good and from what I know an original idea, with no major bugs that make the game unplayable. The bugs that do occur often only effect the asthetics and resolution rather then any gameplay mechanics. It's an overall good game, and even though it might have some bugs here and there, and maybe some confusing bits to it, it really has room for improvement.

+rep for not copy-pasting more Unity assets onto Steam.

P.S. Please feel free to comment any revisions for this review if you feel they are needed.

*I'm quite a lazy person so don't expect anything too soon if something does change.

Pretty entertaining. At first glance looks very simple, but there's plenty to learn. The game is very unforgiving. You need to assemble the right gang or you're toast. There is a decent amount of things to do like crafting defenses and weapons, learn skills, upgrade your characters, provide them with armor... Also, even when there are no missions, most locations give you choices like fighting, running away, accept new people or kill new people, let someone starve or kicking him or her to the curve, etc. Is a little game but with some deep. Takes ya several attempts to get it right. Is challenging but not unfair. No bugs. Is usually pretty cheap and there are cards and achievements. I think is a great deal and something I gladly recommend.

At the moment i have played just over 7hours on this game and i think it is great... BUT...
There are alot of problems with the game. when you are in a fight it is really hard to get your team to do what you want. at one point i had 5 members of my team against 1 foe and we lost. this was because the commands didnt work and they stood still. When this happens you can save yourself by pressing ESC and then going back into the game but by doing this you lose everything you had in your invo for example, walls, barrels, tank etc. IT IS A PAIN!!!...
Another problem i have had is you can on to the exit zones and click "not now" so you will be on that spot but wont leave just yet... this is great if you change your mind but if you do this on both exits... your never getting out because it dosent think you ever want to leave. you might as well kill yourself and start again.
Would i recommend the game... i would say no. i have played over 7 hours and i have to start again because of the above problems. not a good way to spend your weekend.

What a great little find this game is. I managed to pick it up for just 50c
You play as a group of survivors during a zombie outbreak and have to scavenge for supplies whilst keeping your group fed and trained so they can get to the exit of each map.
The idea is solid and addictive as hell. It plays a bit like a board game which is great.
Sure there's a bit of bad broken english (which i think adds to the charm) and I’m
still not 100% sure how to manage the resources properly or how exactly collecting more works to be able to do it effectively and the combat system seems a little unbalanced (but I guess it would be during a zombie apocalypse). But i just can’t stop playing.
The creator of this game has stated that FTL was a big influence however having never played FTL i can't compare it.
Hope they port it to IOS or Android as this would be a great game to play mobile whilst waiting for a train.
Interested to see what any updates bring.

TL:DR;
This game is not what it appears to be on a first glance. I cannot recommend it without few conditions and without explaining what it really is - read on!

Review:
Envy the Dead might appear at first glance as tactical combat mixed with survival in post-apocalyptic world.
In reality this is more of a board game, where you move your pawns around and make decisions every day.

Combat sucks. Random events are usually combat related, so they suck a bit as well.
Graphics as on screenshots is somewhat of a lie - it's not bad, but not really that great either.

There is virtually no tutorial in the game, except of few explanation screens.

If you are into post-apocalyptic zombie survival board games, this might be it for you.
There are however few things about the rules that you need to know to play it succesfully.

Rules:
- scouting ends the day. Set your toons to training/scavenging before scouting.
- you can only train skills when you use them or if character has proper equipment. If you toon carries rifle, he will not train melee fighting.
- in stage 3 you will not be able to recruit anyone. make sure full party makes it to level 3 or you will suffer
- melee weapons become useless very fast, but ammo is very limited. avoid fights whenever you can
- barricades and traps won't work against non-zombie oponnents or bosses. use flammable oil barrels instead.
- skills are being unlocked during a playthrough and this is global. your first playthrough will only let you unlock skills it's the second where it starts getting serious.

If you are in that type of the games or a great fan of a genre, go ahead and grab it - you will enjoy it for a dozen or so hours, but just don't expect too much.

could be so much better. lotsa potential though. you know this genre\type of zombie game.

Escape the city with so n such people. random \ selected
start off one end of city, go to other end. along the way you scout, scavenge, learn skills etc.
lotsa random events as you progress.

I don't get why the last screen shot in the steam store page of this product shows a nice grid like set up. as the game is nothing like that at all. its RTS in battle mode.

RTS mode is funky. can't quick camera to anybody (double tapping their icon etc) but at the least it lets you select them no matter where they are, to move within your current camera field of view

another thing about RTS, the baricade \ trap system is also weird. little to no boundary per baricade, trap set down. so you could almost stack as many walls \ traps on a single area.

Walls, depending how you put down baricades, they will be slightly overlapping one another so that you don't have any gaps. despite this sometimes a zombie will push through despite my baricades 'overlapping' and will get at the guys behind.


also error\bug i've noticed. At the end of a battle, if you had people healing each other before the last enemy is killed. they will continue to heal target ally for 100% hp as long as you don't accept the battle results.

suggestion for dev. battling no matter what difficulty tends to be short n sweet. makes it very hard to attempt to salvage \ search throughout the battle. Perhaps make it so that if you didn't search everywhere during the battle you only get a small fraction \ % of it (excuse is such n such got broken while fighting) whereas you'd get the 100% whatever if you had people searching\looting during battle.

for Night time, allow flashlights \ fires or something to be crafted. fires could be used for torches \ traps too!

for leveling up stats. if you say 'putting a point in this statistic raises damage output of melee... gun etc' then let it be reflected when you equip weapons on them! i don't want to see a guy with 10 stats on gun and see the same starting pistol still does "2.0 damage" !!!

be nice to resize the UI since after getting 4+ survivors their icons start to take up the left side of my screen.

You cannot organize the people in anyway. so you get them in whatever random order you save them \ they join you \ start the game off with. i would love to have reorder the people so that all my melee people be the first numbers of the group then shooters etc...

If you have a guy with a shield equipped. and for some reason click on another shield. you suddenly lose a shield :( had 2 shields. lost one that way.

and when people die. you don't get to recover the things on them. or cannabalize. that would be a neat idea. (oh boo hoo morality issues)

This is really a fantastic little game. It's essentially a board game with RTS elements. It's slow moving and thoughtful. I thought it was very much like FTL, in a good way.
It's a game I will keep coming back to, and I hope the devs continue to sopport it as it's fun and addictive.
In order to fully enjoy the game you must appreciate the stories of how your survivors end up dying, because they will die.
The RTS is so far the weakest element and needs work, there seem to be some exopected features missing, like hot keys and group select.
The art in the game has a nice style and I appreciate the thought that went into details like the camp locations. Many games would have just used the same graphics, but this really makes it feel as if one is moving from place to place.
It also grows the more you play it, as the skills you unlock by going from major area to major area stay on subsequent play throughs, so the more you play, the more the game opens up as far as character abuilities and crafting go. If you play this once and give up, you will never see what the game really is. And what it is is fun.
If you like board games, then I have no problem strongly recoomending this game, even at it's current level of completion I am enjoying the hell out of it.

This game was a very pleseant and very inexpensive surprise.

it's like FTL meets The Walking Dead. I approve whole-heartedly. It's still an early access and it definitely shows in some places, but the dev is still releasing updates, so I can only assume it will get better with age

Decent Game,

Much to improve on Interface,
adding Bind keys and more controls,

Very lacking in contents,
Infection status seems to be rushing the user to head to the exit on the map,
preferably tone it down alittle to let players have a run on the current map,
or give the player a chance to battle the infection, to eliminate the current infected zone, to deter its growth.

Could use more Crafting recipes.
Bugs on crafting/ duplicating armor on a crafter character.
Bugs with my Food storage that keeps resetting to a figure of 56 after encounters that involves receiving Food.

Hope to see more updates, improvements and additions.
Will comment more later.



Edited* Steam Trading Cards and Achievements are now available.

EARLY ACCESS REVIEW.
I like it I have played 6 Hours so far and can already see that this game is going to be a good game, yes it comes with glitches and bugs but after only a few days on release you can see its potential, there are some things that could do with being changed such as Inventory management, skill levelling for the survivors themselves, and other tweaks but this game in time will be a good one, it might be worth waiting for a few updates but at the price that it is I believe its worth the coin.
to those that have played no time at all in this game and wrote bad reviews clearly did not give the game time to get going I can only say that these people should stop buying games that are EA as they just won’t get it.
TO THE DEV:
Ignore some of your bad reviews and don’t let them discourage you they have not put the hours in, have no idea what they are talking about and are quite simply complete and utter Muppets.
DO NOT BUY THIS GAME IF YOUR EXPECTING A FINISHED OR COMPLETE PRODUCT BUT I AM IN THE BELEIF THAT THIS GAME WILL AFTER SOME UPDATES ONLY GET BETTER