The sheer number of zombie games coming up in the next few reviews is a bit daunting. There is a part of me that wants to play through all the zombie games, then evaluate them all at once, seeing how each of them envision the zombie apocalypse, and what makes each of their views different.

Then it occurred to me first, that I’m too lazy to do this, but second that I think, quite often, zombies are set dressing more than the point themselves. When I think about the process of story development, I find it interesting to step back and think about the core idea, what it is that started any particular game down its path, and work backwards from there. With Dead Age, I’m torn on whether that initial idea was a zombie game, though the outcome isn’t necessarily dependent on that initial idea. Still, the approaches the game takes and how it views the world make for an interesting contrast with other zombie games, and show an interesting focus on mechanics and genre first, with the theme itself being seen as a support to that gameplay.

It’s not a zombie story without a tragic family annihilation, and I guess a sheriff?

Dead Age is a combination survival, management, and turn based combat game. You play as any number of characters, struggling to survive in the wake of the zombie apocalypse. In my particular playthrough, I played as a student who woke up, couldn’t find his sister, and joined up with a group of survivors. As with any zombie game, the player must fight to survive, battling zombies, raiders, and the constant demon of starvation.

Dead Age’s mechanics are an interesting combination. The management element consists of assigning various members of a survivor group to different activities, such as guarding, hunting, or crafting. Meanwhile, the player and up to two companions travel a particular waste, scavenging resources, battling zombies, and having encounters. Like with Cult of the Lamb , the adventuring element is required to ensure the camp’s continued functioning. However, unlike Cult of the Lamb, the player’s activities and the camp’s activities are independent of each other, with no requirement that the player be in two places at once to ensure the camp’s success. This makes the camp management elements feel more organic, even if there is very little player interaction with them.

Ah, I see this is the apocalypse with the male gaze zombies.

Dead Age’s combat system represents one of the more unique gameplay elements, though I’m a bit torn on whether it worked as intended. Dead Age relies on a turn-based combat model for its combats. Players face up to three zombies, using an array of abilities to counter the zombies’ unique abilities and resistances. In practice, this meant I usually wandered out on my missions with at least one friend, punching zombies while my friend ran out of bullets in their gun.

This combat model, in theory, makes for fairly varied combat, as the particular enemies and the party combinations will be different in every combat, and, to a certain extent, that’s true. However, in practice, I found that, despite having a range of abilities at my disposal, my combats fell into a loop. There was not enough variety in my abilities to really justify deviating from them, nor were the enemies different enough to incentivise me to try something new. Instead, I faced similar combat after similar combat, with no real incentive except the nebulous promise that there might be a reward if I pressed on just a bit further, and the knowledge that each combat knocked my health bar closer and closer to a tediously irrecoverable state.

That horse has seen things.

This may seem like an indictment of the game, and I suppose, in some ways, it is. I found the combat uninteresting, and the management elements around it shallow. The story is shallow and generic, and there’s nothing to really tie me to any of the characters or the world. Even the world itself feels generic, as if it borrowed the best elements from other games, and fed them through a male gaze fantasy filter. It generally failed to engage me in any particular way, and just felt tedious to play.

This is not to say this is a universal experience. For those who are more fond of this turn-based combat system, the game may have more to offer. However, for me, I found that the game was tedious and dull, with nothing either particularly good or bad to hook me in. It just existed, as a way to fill my time, but without saying anything or leaving any kind of impact. It is a meh game.

Developer: Silent Dreams

Genre: Roguelike, Survival, Turn-Based Combat

Year: 2016

Country: Germany

Language: English

Play Time: 19 Hours

Youtube: https://youtu.be/mefbffRW5w4