Vaccine

Vaccine is a fun, faux retro horror game that re-imagines the classic Resident Evil as a roguelike. You have a limited time to explore a house filled with zombies while looking for the titular vaccine. Along the way, you'll find weapons and items like keys and med kits. It's all randomized, and once you've returned with the vaccine, the cycle begins anew with a shorter timer. The gameplay is addictive and has a lot of replayability. The only real complaints I have are that unlucky attempts can sometimes be agonizing and there isn't much enemy variety, though that seems to have been addressed in the sequel. Overall, it's a fun game and worth the price.

An isolated Victorian-designed mansion, site of a catastrophic experiment, harboring dangers and mysteries. The influences on the first Resident Evil are clear in this amazingly made one-person game. But instead of a long journey, here are quick and procedurally generated runs. Yes, this game has elements of a roguelike. If you die, nothing is left for the next run, which is an important thing to say as the in-game store page doesn't concern to inform you clearly about this aspect. Which makes it an interesting mix that can bring some frustrating moments, but it also conveys unique and tension-filled moments.

The clock starts to count down, you will have only 30 minutes to find the vaccine for your partner. The tension starts at this point, realizing that you will have to deal with time running against you. From there, it is clear that atmosphere, aesthetics and tank controls are not the only influences from the 90s Survival Horrors sought here. The idea of ​​rationing and managing resources is also present. Running from enemies and trying to outrun them is crucial. The variety of enemies is not that great. Just like the found puzzles, which is actually just one type with a few variations of it. Not only is the map procedurally generated, but also weapons, resources, and enemies are distributed this way.

Roguelike mechanics work like a tension booster and fit well with its plot. Unpredictability prevails. In many cases the act of opening a door, or moving the character by changing your camera perspective, can leave you face to face with the enemy. Which is something that can frustrate or annoy those who are not used to these mechanics. These mechanics, which are not found in the affective memories of players who experienced Resident Evil in its beginnings. The feeling of dying and then trying again, hoping you find useful items as soon as possible, will be frequent. Which can generate some frustration, since you won't always find enough resources to face some threats in the game. Also the game has different attributes to be evolved, if the player manages to complete the run, the attributes will be kept along with all the equipment acquired in the last run.

Although the game contains effective moments, some points are problematic. Some items distributed across the map do not have such an obvious distinction in relation to the environment, and can easily lose them. The character's item menu is not much organized. Navigating the inventory is not very intuitive, and the colors chosen to designate the options make it difficult to see what will be selected or not.

Regardless of some questionable design decisions, Vaccine fulfills its function in conveying moments of tension and mystery. The roguelike components present here seem to have been mistaken for lack of polish. Since the game itself does not make this clear in its presentation, which causes conflict between the game and its audience. An audacious idea to unite survival horror in procedural scenarios. A combination that deserves to be experienced not only by Survival Horror fans, but also by anyone interested in roguelikes with short and quick matches.

Sorry but not enough mediocre to pass the test,
I've played less than 10 minutes and yet corridors and rooms started to repeat like in a nightmare where you go through the door at the end of the corridor, just to find yourself at the beginning of the same corridor that you have leaved less than a second ago.
Also zombies position is repeated and i've played less than 10 min. Randomization in this game is very repetitive.

Enemies are too much sloppy, and the regdoll is just a quick solution for death animation that honestly has nothing to do with ps1 era games and is very unpleasent to see like a fly in the soup.

The bad part by the way are the controller. I'm used to all the tank controller that were available for ps1, n64, dreamcast, pc and whatever game you can remember from the 90s but the rotation of this game is too sensitive, not impossible to handle but the fact that someone has tested it and though that the rotation was ok...sorry but it needs to be fixed (probably the problem is with the acceleration). Is very frustrating to pass from one indie game to another, and not one single of them have controls that work decently, and this is said by someone that has implemented better tank controller for game prototypes.

I will conclude by saying that i always appreciate the work beyond hobbyst and amateur games also if they are not good but for the customers that want to buy it, my impression is that "Vaccine" is very close to not beeing a game but just some rough game mechanics attached togheter.

I will never call this a great game, but I can say that I genuinely enjoy it and recommend it to a specific subset of players. It does what it set out to do and I can see myself putting quite a few hours into this one as I look for the true ending.

Just be aware, it's a rogue-lite game based on the mechanics in old survival horror and the flaws of both genres are front of center. If you don't like fixed camera angles, tank controls, losing progress, randomness, etc. stay far away. You'll hate this.

But where the game shines for me is that it gives you 30 minutes to find the vaccine and save your friend. This time limit shrinks the experience into bite-sized chunks of play. This means that one run will never outstay its welcome and it will be a highly focused and tense play session.

The gameplay works pretty much like old-school survival horror. It's lacking some quality of life features like 180 degree turns and good autoaim but otherwise functions Melee combat in particular functions particularly well and I don't feel that the game is over when I run out of ammunition.

The games major negative is an overall lack of polish. Very few things are actually broken, but the jagged edges are there.

- The lack of autoaim that makes ranged combat harder than it needs to be ESPECIALLY against smaller/faster enemies
- RE zombies are vocal so you are aware of them before walking into a new camera angle and getting hit, that is not the case here.
- Key items don't always shimmer leading to some pixel hunting
- The map format is pure random. I've had runs where its a straight line of 20 rooms, and I've had rooms where I'd had 8 possible paths by room #3.
- There is only a handful of possible rooms that can spawn (Less than 10). You'll likely see everything on your first run.
- The lack of a map feature makes the large maps of identical rooms even harder to navigate.
- The characters are basically identical. The stat differences can be purchases with the XP from killing one or two enemies.

Despite the list, none of the above was bad enough that it ruined the experience for me. Most runs you'll only notice one or two of the above. They are just enough of a hassle to notice them, but far from game breaking.

This game set out to create a small-scale survival horror game that can feed the desire to play old-school R and nails it.

It hits most of the same notes in classic survival horror and condenses them into a 30 minute period allowing me to get in, enjoy myself, and then go back to whatever I need to do. I picked this up on a whim during a steam sale and am glad I did.

A brief love letter to the original Resident Evil. It's quite difficult and it could do with a bit of polish, but it's a perfect pick for when you're feeling that RE itch without wanting to sit through an entire game.

For a game made by a single person this is actually pretty amazing. It doesn't really last that long once you figure out the mechanics but it's a fun romp while it lasts. Hopefully the dev makes a more traditional horror game in the same vein one day.

Horrible game. A randomly generated Resident Evil could have been such a good idea, but this here is not the one you should turn to.

Way too hard! There is no chance in getting to the end, its impossible to avoid certain enemies and you get almost no ammo at all. You dont even start the game with a weapon at all, not even a knife.

Enemies can follow you in different rooms, as there arent any loading times between doors. Its simply not enjoyable.

This game is a one life, randomly generated, rpg action game, with controlls, camra and grafics inspired by (ps1 era) surrvival horror(resident evil). it's fucking terrible.


Cons:
>The level is randomly generated patchwork of premade rooms randomly throuwn together. There is a pool of aprox less than 20 rooms that mostly lack personality and repeat often.

(in progress)

Another Steam game with misleading user reviews.

I stayed away from Vaccine for awhile due to a few of the negative reviews, claims of it not being genre accurate, but as it turns out, this game is 100% accurate to the genre. It's essentially Resident Evil 2's Extreme Battle Mode done up as a roguelike, and in fact, all my criticisms come down to the game being a roguelike. It's difficult, very difficult, and sometimes the game just doesn't give you what you need when you need it or spawns enemies in areas that are just hard to outmaneuver.

It seems to me the people that are saying the game is bad are just fans of action games. Titles such as Resident Evil 4 or Dead Space. This game is not either of those. This is actually what the genre was like in the 90's. Stumbling and bumbling away from enemies with a knife, and for the record, fighting zombies in RE1 with the knife wasn't any better. Could you be a fan of the genre and not like this game? Sure. Some of the animations are wonky, you can't change your control scheme, etc, but for me, it plays exactly like what I was hoping for, relying on imperfect camera angles and not knowing where everything is, creating a sense of unease at all times.

What this game truly lacks is a really nice, cinematic story you can sink your teeth into, and as this is a game made by an indie studio and not Capcom, they couldn't accomplish that and so this was the result. Do I recommend it strongly? No. Do I recommend it to real survival horror fans, the ones that actually played the games from the era? Yes, with the caveat that you're okay with a survival horror game without a strong narrative. To make a comparison, if classic Resident Evil is steak and potatoes, this game is just the potatoes. Now that can be a boring meal, but you can also butter them up real good and get the most out of them. (Not like we're getting survival horror games anymore, so I'll take what I can get.)

If you played PlayStation in the 90's, the tanky controls and slightly unresponsive input will almost compliment the
nostalgic, yet muddy visuals (reminiscent of Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, etc.).

'Vaccine' wraps an interesting puzzle mystery inside a rouge-like survival horror experience that encourages tight resource management and exploration. The mystery of the game's story reveals itself through documents scattered around the house; some containing useful information, others providing background on what's going on. The leveling system doesn't carry from game to game, but will allow you to have more of a fighting chance the longer you survive in a single game.

The procedurally generated "quantum" nature of the house can cause it to skew a little on the unfair side sometimes, with some games ending way too quickly due to a hard enemy spawning early when the player hasn't had a chance to level or find weapons/items (ammo's pretty scarce, too, by the way). However, when it works it serves well to keep the game fresh with each playthrough being tense, thanks in part to the tension building music, cinematic (yet occasionally obscuring) fixed camera angles, and inability to predict what will be behind the next door, all while a thirty-minute timer counts down above you.

I'd recommend 'Vaccine' to fans of classic survival horror games, especially at a sale price. A great game to kill half an hour with.

I find this game kind of charmingly bad, but it's still bad.

Survival horror classic tank control roguelike with:
- More awkward tank controls than even genre-norm
- Absolutely no sound effects for enemies thus partially missing the point of RE's fixed camera angles
- Pretty shoddy balancing
- Fairly unnuanced combat
- You can get screwed pretty fast by just encountering the wrong enemies too early
- Doesn't have a lot of content or variety
- Game doesn't explain its own mechanics well

However, you can knife everything to death like you're a character in Fist Of The North Star if you get rolling enough to level up and the writing is like, adorably typo-riddled.

I find it kind of charming in its neverending naffness, but I don't think this is a game for most people.

I really appreciate the graphics and overall nostalgic throwback to resident evil games, and that's what i bought it for, but it pains me to say, that it's completelly dull and just not fun at all, and after just these 30 minutes I know I won't be playing this anymore. I hope the developers actually reads this because I actually want something like this, but done better. I would love to see any game with fixed camera angles, with a survival horror theme. I thought that the roguelite elements like permadeath and procedural generation would enrich this, but it did not for me.

The game is playable, it works well and I can see the love poured in it. It's highly stylized for a PS1 game. It beautifully mirrors the style of Resident Evil 1 both in visuals and controls. You can have some fun with it, but believe me - I'm a huge fan of classic RE games and Vaccine let me down.

I think it would actually work better if it were a linear adventure, with everything handcrafted as beautifully as these backgrounds. The game itself right now feels like an unfinished minigame for this non-existent Story mode.

Procedural generation of rooms kinda works fine, but the repetetivness kicks in fast, and the lack of any kind of a map gets confusing, especially when you have identical rooms generated in one run. Random enemy placement is actually fun and I like it. It would work in a linear adventure and it also works here. RE1 had a few different monsters and it was okay. Here this variety is a necessity if you wish for it to be an engaging roguelite game. Maybe take a hint from Raid mode in RE:Revelations 2 where there are maybe 10-20 different monsters, but they have many different and interesting modifiers to them.

Also the monsters in vaccine are really unfair. Zombies are okay, bats are pushovers, but these crawlers are insanely strong to the point where the moment they appear, I know it's a game over. Hunters in RE1 were also very dangerous, but you could ooutrun them somehow, and blowing a shotgun actually knocked them over for a brief moment giving the player a chance at fighting them. Here you just wish you manage to kill them before they kill you.

And then there are the controls. DOn't get me wrong - I like tank controls. I to this day play the classic RE sometimes. But here the controls feel wild, unresponsive and unpredictable. also there should be a larger margin of error when picking up weapons. It feels as if you have to be in an exact spot to pick the item up.

So again: I hope you are listening devs. I hope you maybe polish this one up, change it, or move alogn to a new project entirely. And I want you to succeed. I want to see something like this. But maybe try going with a Linear story but add a mode like this as a bonus? And flesh it out more. Add variety, add incentive to do just one more run. Maybe look at Raid Mode in revelations and don't go the roguelite route and instead do short missions with random drops. Whatever you do, I hope I will see something from you guys in the future. I'm rooting for you, I really do.

It took me 3.3 hours to solve the mystery / get the achievement for that.

This game had its moments. It was very short, but money isn't a factor to me, so I don't measure value by dollar/hour. It simulated the old PS1 graphics pretty well, and it got a bit intense towards the end, when the clock became a real factor and the music ramped up. The underlying sci-fi premise was a neat enough concept, and it was very cool when you saw yourself and the other player character as zombies.

However, there are a ton of problems with it - so many that it is barely a game. So, I had to give it a negative rating in the end.

The number one issue is content. There is barely any content in this game. There are 4 enemy types - zombies, crawlers, rats, and bats - and then a "boss" type, all extremely primitive in design with nothing really going for them other than following the player. There's not a lot of room variety and you will often see the same handful of rooms several times in one play-through. There are only 3 guns, a knife, and proximity mines for weapons (from what I could find). There is hardly an intro and barely an ending scene and no cinematics or other story-related scenes for the rest of the game (story is executed through notes and it is very bare-bones). Overall, the lack of content is so severe that this alone makes it barely a game, and more of a pre-alpha demo.

I found certain aspects of the mechanics terrible. I didn't like that there was no quick turn and that pretty often enemies were positioned so that they could get cheap shots in on you when the camera perspective changed. The camera perspective didn't work very well in larger rooms; from one angle, you'd see an enemy, but at another angle the enemy would vanish, even if that new angle still showed the same space in the room. When you get hit, for some reason your character faces the enemy sometimes, and enemies damage you just by walking into them, so very often you were prone to getting hit multiple times due to the game's archaic tank controls. The menu was a bit awkward to navigate because of the sloppy design. Also, I REALLY would have liked to be able to hide certain elements of the UI, namely the XP and fatigue meters over your head.

Room design needs improvement. Most rooms are overly large and empty. They don't have to be so spacious. They should also look a lot better - even if he is attempting to simulate PS1 graphics, the old Resident Evil games had far more detailed environments. This game felt somewhere between Resident Evil 1 and the original Alone in the Dark, which gave it a nice vibe at times, but overall it just feels cheap. And, while I understand that procedural generation is a key part of this game's replayability, I am not a huge fan of it - there needs to be a lot of pre-generated content and more stunning set pieces in the mix for me to enjoy it for longer periods, because otherwise the level design feels scattered, lazy, and repetitive. One of the best aspects of the old Resident Evil games was their stunning set pieces and hand-crafted angles which this game completely lacks due to procedural generation.

Also, this game needed proofreading / proper editing. The text in the game is riddled with typos and it is very clear the developer is not a native English speaker. There's not much text in the game overall, so this probably could have been done using a freelancer and a shoestring budget. The presentation of the game was weak to begin with, and the poorly written notes made it even worse. And like Jim Sterling points out, the name Vaccine doesn't really make sense - that's not how vaccines work.

That said, I would love to see the developer continue using this engine that he created to create a sequel that has far more content, more enemies, better combat, more puzzles, and is just more of a real, full game. I would definitely play it. The game has something going for it, but it needs way more fine tuning first. Only play this game if you absolutely need to play a new game that is mechanically similar to Resident Evil 1, regardless of how thin those similarities are.

This is a game that many will want to enjoy, but the truth is that we've been vaccinated by far better options for the price point of this title. While the artistic choice to have this look very similar to the Playstation-era Resident Evils is a nice call, it lacks many of the key gameplay elements that helped define the series as one of the heavy hitters of the late 90s, including, but not limited to:

No map function
No 180 turn
Unable to manually reload in menu
No auto-aim
Death is a complete reset (no saves)
Unable to customize controls

What this leaves is a game that takes too much from the inspiration to the point of imitation, while emulating all the flaws that have been removed with newer releases in the Resident Evil series. I'm quick to forgive limitations of older Resident Evil-style games due to them being made over two decades into the past, but this game has no excuse to fall victim to the same issues.

And let's talk about the RNG, since that's important for gameplay in this title. You can have scenarios of giant four-way rooms that can lead to halls into more four-way rooms, only to lead to either walking into a new camera angle to instantly be mauled by an enemy, or waste several minutes just to land into a corridor with a broken door to greet you. At the start of the game, it doesn't hurt too much, outside of wasting ammo, but from night four onwards where they lower you to 10 minutes and remove 30 seconds each successful run, that kind of RNG can be life or death. Coupled with randomly generated keys strung throughout the map for certain doors, it turns what should be a test of a player's skill into a dice roll if one can continue onward and unlock the true ending, which takes nine successful runs. A reminder that if a player fails due to time or death, they are stripped of all items / levels / progress and begin back at the first run with 30 minutes, which is enough to cause most players to shelve the game.

In regards to controls, it takes inspiration from Code Veronica, where it is partly still images with a few full 3D segments, but it doesn't have the digital controls to manuver like CV and beyond brought to Classic Resident Evil. This means cumbersome tank controls for the sake of tank controls, where some rooms have 3+ angles to disorient a player. This can cause a player to accidentally run into enemies they are trying to escape from, which can lead to a failed run.

There's a puzzle with laser beams, but it seems that if one just places dots in a diagonal line, it auto-wins. I've yet to encounter any additional puzzles, nor see others streaming the game encounter such things. These laser boxes are discussed in random notes in RE fashion and tie into the true ending requirement.

The worst part of the game is the level system, since one would think it would encourage players to replay the game, since they can only grow stronger, but it's poorly implemented. After increasing Aim and another ability, the knife allows the player to suddenly fight like they're Kenshiro from Fists of the North Star with how damaging and how fast they swing the knife. The entire time they're swinging, they gain massive exp due to the risk involved, which allows a player to cap out by 4/9 runs. Due to levels capping at 10, this removes incentive to fight from that point onwards, and makes it more clear with the timer that what should be a rewarding gameplay element is just there to stall you for the timer. And by that point, if a regular enemy gets in your way, you can knife them down in seconds. I feel that if the level system carried over upon death, and had a higher cap to keep players engaged, it would make the game better overall.

Translation is bad as well, since it will say "you picked up 9mm gun" and then it's really just ammo. Letters and other things will have errors, like repel will cover your "small", and Luck stat doesn't explain what it does.

The last thing I want to touch upon is the menu, since it is horrible. I have a hard time figuring out what I have selected due to color choices used for the cursor, and find myself having to rely upon the text descriptions to accurately relay what I'm highlighting. Use something bright like green to show what is picked, as opposed to a very light brown that blends in. I also dislike that the health is a set value that blends into the menu, despite Resident Evil having the health conditions and other things to make it obvious all players. I'm an idiot and did not expect the 50 health to actually be 50 health, though I connected the limping animation to dangerously low as in Resident Evil titles. Also, it misleads with gun clip as the ammo icon, when it means to show bullets. RE used ammo boxes for this reason, since a clip usually means a full refill, while the ammo boxes had a specific count. Imagine my horror when I found out I didn't have 14 clips of full ammo due to RNG, but only 14 shots when I ran out of bullets in a filled room.

I will gladly update this review if the game is updated, but as it stands, it succeeded in making a 1996 game in 2017, which is not what I expected. I would like a map function at the very least that fills in as I explore, and would love options for things like auto-aim (or tie it to aim level) and things like quick turn / digital controls (or again, tie them to levels), and would love for some kind of save or progression system. I feel that these can be accomplished through patching over time, and create a better game as a result.

And one last thing, since I may as well ask for a pony that can fly, but difficulty levels like Resident Evil would be welcomed, with perhaps a beginner / casual that removes the timer element, and the current game being expert / extreme. There's lots of promise, and I'd love to see this game reach other players as something fun and enjoyable.

I know I just bought the game but I already own it on Wii U AND PS4 because the developer is awesome. This is a ONE PERSON DEVELOPING TEAM....ONE GUY MADE THIS! If you love classic, original Resident Evil with a mix of Rogue Like gameplay, then this is for you! This game ain't easy and be prepared for a LOT of deaths lol You can be lucky and not find an enemy for ages and when you least expect it, the creepy crawler dudes kill you! :@ haha BUY BUY BUY!!!! Highly recommend you also check out FreezeME too :D