Developer: Marvelous, First Studio
Publisher: Marvelous, Xseed Games
Platform: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: PS5
DEADCRAFT – Review
Over the years, we have played through many games in which we had to mow down hordes of zombies. While many of these games proved to be action-packed, some also made things trickier. In the case of the latter, we had to scavenge for supplies, find weapons that would only get us through a handful of battles, and hopefully, we would live to see another day. Now, however, we get to play as a human-zombie hybrid and try to use the skills at our disposal to defeat both zombies and humans. Initially, DEADCRAFT seemed like a very interesting title, but when we spent some time with the game, we were treated to a badly designed mess that only starts becoming fun after investing several hours into the game.
Story
DEADCRAFT takes us to a nearly destroyed world where hundreds of years ago comets hit the planet. While this alone was already horrible enough, the comets also carried a certain virus that also started spreading across the globe. The virus turned humans into zombies, and before long, nearly the entire world’s population had perished. Now, only scavengers, bandits, and zombies roam the earth. You, however, are a human-zombie hybrid on the run, but you are determined to fight back.
The game’s story often feels like an afterthought and the presentation is all over the place. Sometimes you’ll get an in-game cutscene to relay important information, other times you get voiced dialogue and at other times it’s just muted dialogue. The story starts off extremely vague and there is little incentive to press on to uncover the rest of the story.
Graphics
As a whole, DEADCRAFT’s graphical prowess is quite underwhelming. This does not mean everything looks bad, as the game has a few interesting character designs added to the mix, but at no point throughout the game will you be under the impression this is a next-gen title. Many of the game’s environments feel empty, zombie and enemy models also seem to be copy-pasted all over the place, and there is simply a lack in asset variety as well. Luckily, some of the skill animations and a few odd characters make up for a lot.
Possibly the most horrid design choice comes from the lock-on feature for enemies. Even though the lock-on feature is essential to make battles easier, you will immediately get sick during combat, as the camera will start rotating around the enemy you’re locked on. This is something that is never done in games that are viewed from a top-down perspective, as it is simply vomit-inducing. Sadly, you are somewhat forced to use the lock-on feature, as it’s the only way to see your enemy’s HP and it is also the only way to easily target and hit your foes.
Sound
The sound design isn’t too bad, but it could have been a lot better. The background music is okay, albeit forgettable. The main thing that slightly irked us was the inconsistency of when the game utilized voice acting. Some dialogues were fully voiced, only for the next dialogue of the same quest to be completely mute. At other times, the characters speaking would say one or two words, with the rest of the dialogue then also being mute. We would have loved fully-voiced text for this title. The voice work that is present in the game is a bit cheesy, but it works for the game’s setting.
Gameplay
DEADCRAFT describes itself as a zombie survival game, but in reality, it’s a top-down hack and slash game with RPG and sim elements. From start to finish you’ll be busting zombie skulls and beating down the human opposition while building up your base and learning to handle your zombie powers. As you are both human and zombie, you’ll have to find a balance between your zombie and human sides. You’ll quickly notice that the game is a lot of micromanaging. Luckily, there are many goals to work towards as you have a lot of active and passive abilities to unlock. The fact that the game has a lot of skills to unlock is one of the biggest redeeming qualities, as it does create an incentive to keep going.
On paper, DEADCRAFT has a lot of great ideas. Sadly, these do not shine through, as the game fights you every step of the way. Even in the early moments of the game, you’ll constantly be struggling to keep your energy, hunger, and thirst under control, which simply gets extremely annoying. Regrettably, this doesn’t improve for quite some time, even if you immediately start investing in upgrades to make these aforementioned meters deplete at a slower rate. We constantly had to backtrack to our base in order to rest, and even then, most of the time we couldn’t even finish one quest before we had to go back and rest again to replenish our energy. This also includes constantly having to consume food and drink water in order to just fight a handful of goons or zombies. We cannot fathom how the developers could have thought this was a good system to embed into the gameplay. It might be asking for a bit much, but we hope that nearly every component of the aforementioned constant micromanaging gets removed from the game in a future update.
Conclusion
DEADCRAFT has a lot of potential, but sadly due to awful game design choices, this potential is never utilized. While we enjoyed playing with a half-zombie hybrid character as a protagonist, we were ultimately disappointed by the constant micromanaging of our character. The latter got to the point that the game became a chore rather than something relaxing. This, combined with subpar graphics, a bland story, and lackluster sound design, made the game quite underwhelming. We do have to say that if you invest some time in this one, the later stages become a bit more fun. Sadly, this only happens after several hours into the game, and many people will have given up by then. If you really want to give this one a go, we suggest waiting for a hefty discount.
DEADCRAFT - Review,
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