For me this game took a while to get good at. It is challenging good old fashion end of the world fun. I find looking for supplies, weapons, etc, while zombies are at every turn to be great addicting fun in this game. You can unlock things that make the game easier or harder, also you can find other survivors to join you and your HQ. The gameplay is really good and does'nt take itself so serious but still makes it great. You will need to make and find supplies to keep your group going and making their stats better. It all mixes really well.

Infectonator : Survivors , Small Review by Santo98

I would just like to start with this game being within Alpha and I can not go full blown with this.

Pros:
- The Music gets you pump'd
- The Scavange System is nice
- Movement system is nice, you can either click and drag or just click
- For being in Alpha, there is a nice amount of weapons.

Cons:
- After Completing a Mission, you are only greeted by a sentence saying you've made it, at least something visual
- The price of healing, I think it could be lowered to atleast 30 or 35 coins, 50 coins is quite a lot
- Your ability to reload, automatic reloading between waves would be nice

Overall though, I'm enjoying this game so far and hope the best for it and all of it's future updates, being a fan of the series.

"WALL OF TEXT OMG! No, PLEASE, give me the short version!"

-Ok, here goes: Infectionator : Survivors is a game with lots of potential but sadly doesn't deliver, it's says it's released but plays like it's still in early access. Easy to master, quick to finish, lacks replay value.



I bought this game on it's release day, it's full/gold release day. It had been in early access for quite a while before that and been on my wish list for almost as long. So seeing that it was finally completed pleased me, so I bought it.

The game is good in many ways, great even. It has nice pixel graphics and a fitting soundtrack. It is also fun to play, for a while.

The first reef barrier you hit is the frustrating random no-control insta gibs of one or all of your survivors; when on the strategical map, now and then when you move to another city block you get a prompt telling you that your team of survivors has encountered this or that, like a car on the street with boxes spread around it. Now you get pick between two choices, either leave it alone or examine the boxes.

The results? Well, it's either, A. nothing of value, B. some lesser valued stuff like twenty rounds of ammo and two food supplies, C. something valuable like a weapon (really, really rare, only found one once), or D. for Death; one to four of your survivors die, with no chance to revive, heal or mitigate damage. And the D. result happens quite often, I'd estimate about 20-25% of the times. So, you learn fast not to examine any boxes, open any doors, or doing anything besides leaving text events alone. The risk is NOT worth the reward, not at all.

But it doesn't end there, no no. Sometimes you don't get a choice. Instead, the game simply straight up tells you that one or more of your survivors have died, because "Hey, tough luck!". Could be ok if survivors in this game were like lemmings in Lemmings, or soldiers in Cannon Fodder but they are not, they are more like the soldiers in X-Com or adventurers in Baldur's Gate.

Dieing in a hard game, a survival rogue-lite because you make mistakes, misjudge or just plain isn't skilled enough is one thing. But losing because of random events you have little to no control over isn't fun, especially not when these events are text based in an action oriented game, no booming explosions or goory pictures of zombies gorging on flesh, only a plain sentence telling you that "Mike didn't make it".

Good thing that you can press Alt+F4, restart the game and get a new random seed. Mike is alive!

So, how is the "actual" game then, when the random text events are finally handled? It's fun.
Well, for a while.
If your survivors live on long enough (more than one day), either because you chose not to take part in any of the texted events, restarted the game to get a new seed or just got lucky (I don't like this kind of luck, unvolontary russian roulette is not fun, only frustrating), you will quickly find all you need for your team while you are out exploring the city.

Sure, you can craft alot of things in your base, like weapons, armour, grow and cook your own food to make supplies and rations, but there is no need for it really. Because you will find everything you need while you are out exploring, even food. If you have the slightest amount of brain power you will quickly find the optimal tactic to win the action sequences, whether that be the tower defence-like scouting missons or the more free-roaming exploration missions.

And then you win the game. On my first successfully completed playthrough I had owned the game for three days, played a little each day. I beat the game under nine in-game days, which there is an achievement for. You start out with a fifteen days limit in which you must repair your car and escape. That can be extended to thirty days if you spend tickets which you earn by completing runs, winning or losing.

So, after beating the game, even doing so on less than half of the required time, do I feel like play ing it again? No, not really. I mighth be going back for (some of) the achievements that are left, but I don't feel too excited about them since they are mostly "grindy" ones.
Remember how I wrote that that you don't need craft anything, because you will find everything you need? Well, guess what, several of the achievements are for crafting lots stuff. Others are grindy in the hoarding sense, either kill things in the thousands or collect ammo in the tens upon tens of thousands, or loot a couple of thous... well, you get the idea.

These "grindy" achievements might have been ok if the game had any kind of real replay value, which it doesn't. Sure, you can unlock different teams with your tickets, instead of stomping koopas with Mario you can flatten koopas with Luigi, or you can beat M. Bison with Ken instead of with Ryu (ok, maybe this is a bad analogy, ...yeah it is).
Point is, there is no replay value except for grinding out achievements; there are no special endings, no leaderboards, no functional endless/survival mode, no actual new things to explore or discover.

Apart from this there are also bugs, glitches and genereally unbalanced and unfinished elements in the game. This game left early access too early. Which is sad, because it could be a great game, and I really want to enjoy it.

Perhaps it will become updated and finally become "full" some day, I surely hope so, and that that day comes sooner than later. If so, I will update my review.

Pretty fun little game. For an early access game, it's pretty enjoyable. Very difficult at times. If you expect it to be like Toge's
flash project "Infectonator", you'll be dissapointed. It has the same art style, but this game is much more than what the original flash game was. There's still some room for work here, but like I said.. Early access, so it has time to become something huge.

The game is really good, but I have a couple of suggestions:

- I think at the moment it's way too easy. I'm able to hold off a block at "Dangerous" level including a boss zombie with only 2 survivors with no problem at all. I now have something like 15,000 ammo and 300 supplies and an insane amount of weapons and building material. Also, I don't know about anyone else but I've never had the need to build turrets.

- Going through blocks that you have already cleared is incredibly tedious... you're needed to hunt zombies in the building even though you have done it already? I don't see the point in having to do it a second time, especially if there's one zombie left and you're out on a wild goose chase to find it is pretty agrivating. Maybe after a random amount of days those blocks can become repopulated with zombies again?

- I really dislike that you have to always return back to your HQ in order to save progress. I think there should be an option to set up camp at the block that you have just cleared, maybe have a limit per in-game day that you can do this.

- I hate that you can switch equipment mid-clearing. It should be that the weapons that the survivors are already using to shoot zombies just stay that way until it's clear.

- Just a glitch I've come across when clearing zombies in the merchant block. I headed to a merchant block that I had already cleared and found that there were two merchants?? I couldn't talk to the second one or anything, it was just his playermodel standing there. No guards, just the merchant.

- It'd be great to see more variety/customisation in the survivors. Maybe like weapon specialisations, such as rifles or shotguns. Or even talent trees.

All this being said, the game is really good and would recommend playing this game, and any other Infectonator games, it's just a couple of things that I think could be improved.

This game is a tad bit fun. It might even be worth your hard earned monies. But not at the price of 12.99. This is a 2 to 3 dollar game at best. I can easily, off the top of my head, list games that are in the same genre and beat this game hands down: Project Zomboid, Fort Zombie (even with all the bugginess), and rogue survivor. What I expected, from the description of this game, was Fort Zombie+UFO: Afterlight-lots of things due to it being alpha. What I got instead was essentially a more spiffy web browser game (even the graphics reinforce this notion of the game).

Pros:
+Solid semi-fun mechanics

Cons:
-No challenge (you don't even need turrets half the time and you would be hard pressed to lose any survivors)
-Limited tech tree
-Oversimplified mechanics (for a zombie game that's 12.99)
-Unintriquing story
-Pretty much no content that justifies the current price even for an alpha

This may all change as the devs continue to release material for the game. However, until they do I highly recommend those of you looking for a rogue zombie game to check out Project Zomboid, Rogue Survivor, and even Fort Zombie if you are considering this game. If you haven't played Rogue Survivor it is FREE to download and play, and it offers a good challenge for those who like games in the rogue genre. On the other hand, if you want a good rogue-like game that combines RPG, strategy, and tower defense there is also Dungeon of the Endless which is absolutely fantastic (and very challenging).

More in-depth analysis:

I recently replayed this game. While the tone is much more apocalyptic many of the issues I had with the game haven't been addressed. Primarily, the issue of getting me hooked and wanting to continue to play the d*** thing. I'll divide this up into several sub-sections.

1. Failures on the zombie survival game level.

Again, if you're looking for something to fill the void of being eatten alive by the undead (wait, what?) there are plenty of other titles out there. This game fails on this premise simply because supplies are too plentiful. It is too easy to acquire absolutely everything that you need to survive. Most zombie survival (and rogue-likes) turn every move into a time vs ammo vs hunger sort of mechanic. IE, if I engage that horde of zombies how much ammo do I waste to get the supplies they're guarding? That simply isn't the case here. The issue becomes simply one of finding enough food and resources, which are too plentiful. But that's partially due to design. Because you *have* to clear each level there is no room to design the levels around players making strategic decisions (rather than just tactical ones).

2. Failures on the level of tower defense.

The towers/turrets are still just over-simplified fluff. I didn't get to (and I didn't want to either) play long enough to see if we see towers/turrets evolve. Are they even really necessary? Well, they could help someone who doesn't know how to manuever characters in the middle of combat. I could see that, but I still don't feel that we need them. At this point in time they're just feature creep.

3. Semi-successful on the management side:

With getting rid of the rest period between fights we actually do see a useful element of management occuring, however this is undermined by the fact that the game is still way too easy. In a 1-2 hour play through I ended up with enough characters to both send out into the field and to research/build stuff (and I choose a 2 character start). If the devs manage to make the game challenging the current management part of the game might become more important and less feature creep.

4. Still just a way too easy RPG tactical:

We still don't see the game improving to the point of really having much promise. It is mildly fun for a 1-3 hour play through (though boring to come back to). While the devs talk about a lot of exciting improvements none of the changes they're proposing will actually fix the main issue with the game: Making people want to (continue to) play it.

I think what has to absolutely be addressed is either developing a decent story to make us want to play through the cities or to ratchet up the challenge (preferably both). The later of which doesn't necessarily have to come from overhauling combat, just rebalancing how players get resources. Specifically, redoing drops from zombies and forcing most of our resource gathering to be from scavenging the mission sites. This might make both turrets (as a way to deal with really difficult waves) and management (as a way to balance injured personel) more important and less feature creep-ish.

This game is almost good. I enjoy the survival aspect and the resource gathering. However I do not like how you cannot assign a character to rest. He will just stand around "tired" for hours. When it comes time for a mission he is tired and will walk slowly for all the missions you under take that night. There is not a way to strategically avoid this. It is a dice roll to see who is tired and who isn't. It is a strategy game so that is frustrating.
When you need a particular resource it is not more abundant or more likely to be found at any particular destination. If I need fuel I am just as likely to find it at a church as I am to find it at a gas station. This removes the strategic nature of choosing your missions.
The game also appears to be free on http://www.miniclip.com/games/infectonator-survivors/en/#t-sd. Perhaps it is an older version of the game with less features but it appears to be the same game. I paid for a free game. I feel like I have been hoodwinked!

At the first look, this game looks like any other better flash games. It might be true but it's pretty addictive and funny. Soon enough you'll noticed that you spend quite some time on it. With each update you see more and more stuf which brings more tweaks to the game, making it even more interesting.

Game is quite simple. You fight zombies, look and scavenge for materials, upgrade your gear and your characters, explore town, fight bosses, find survivors, fix your car, get some fuel and travel to next town. Even if it sound quite boring at first you end up playing the game for few hours and only then you notice how much time you spent on this "simple" game. I myself ended up playing from the begining like about 30 times just because I didn't want to see my characters dead haha... After spending more time you notice that some areas become harder to deal with and you end up constantly healing your characters or trying to find a better strategy how to fight off zombies. Turrents, reminding you tower defence games, help you a bit but they need quite some supplies and they stay at that place, unless you dismantle then. Of course, no matter what you're doing zombies sometimes get to eat raw brains and you end up losing a character which might or might not be very important for you because of it's stats, gear and/or anything else :P

I spent some time on this game and I'm pretty happy with it. After a while you notice that it might become more interesting with more stuf, but for that we need to wait for more updates. I really recomend playing this game even if only for a short time.

Please Remove the 15 day Time limit. There is so much here, but i can't enjoy any of it because i am racing a very close deadline. As a result, I ignore All forms of crafting, side quests, population building, and anything else that isn't growing/cooking food or getting to quest markers. That means that 90% of the game features are wasted. Just give us a sand box mode. it'll be nice.

Saw this at PAXAUS and bought after seeing its gameplay.

Much as this game still on its Alpha stage. It has proven its potency of a survivor/zombie/small-class management game.

Gameplay is simple and easy to understand. Mechanics of both base and 'before entering the building' phase is a still a little funky in a way. But difficulty in this has its own up and down depending on location you visits.

Only thing I feel stumped on is:
- Does the base function on any other things? Besides Crafting/Research and Farming?
- Do we get more Survivors? *Only managed to find one throughout three gameplays.*
- Do we get any base upgrades like barricading the openings that are being spread out throughout the building?
- Is there no chance of pausing the game while selecting of projects in the crafts/farming section? Or any sort of auto bump to next project selection.
- Would there be an option to repair/replenish Armours/Items that have Durability?
- Because there is no pause in Crafts/Farming Section and the day ends. It literally bumps you to the next day.
- Are we not allowed to control our characters when Base is under attack?
- When Characters got K.O in base. Is there no way to revive them without spending 500 Ammos on that? *Could be a chance of using a Med Kit if avaliable or spare a certain amount of supplies.*
- Does Scott and Shiro have any use to the game at all? I see Scott has a Communication Device on the desk. And Shiro could be used to be sent out as a scaveanger hunt like bringing back random supplies or items?

The game is still fun despite of the stuff above. Difficulty is its key element, Survival on the other.

What I hope to look for in its complete stage is that,
- More Characters?
- More Survivors to be recuited/saved/joining your base.
- Chance of upgrading your base.
- Maybe a storyline of such? *Might be asking too much. It is a survival game after all.*


Cheers, and happy slaying. :D