Slick Minecraft-inspired visuals can’t save this dull zombie survival game

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SHOULD I PLAY SURVIVORS OF THE ZOMBIE WORLD?

Skip it, unless you really like zombie games. Survivors of the Zombie World offers chaotic zombie-slaying that’s fun in short bursts, but that’s about it. The survival gameplay could be a big enough draw on its own, but the game also faces terrible issues like progression walls, exhausting grinding, and repetitive gameplay that add up to an insufferable experience.

TIME PLAYED

I played Survivors of the Zombie World for three hours. I completed eight story missions and more than a dozen survival mode matches. I’ve only acquired two weapons, but I’ve upgraded my pistol five times already.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT SURVIVORS OF THE ZOMBIE WORLD?

• It’s a zombie survival game. Like the name says, this game is all about surviving an onslaught of ugly-looking zombies. Survivors of the Zombie World features mechanics like hunger, stamina, and health that added extra challenge beyond fighting off the living dead. There are a lot of weapons and cosmetics to collect that provide a reason to continue playing, and the zombie-slaying action is fun for the first hour or two at least.

• Slaying zombies in a big battlefield. Since Survivors of the Zombie World requires minimal hardware and has simplified graphics, the battlefield is a lot more detailed and bigger than most zombie survival games out there. While it’s not the prettiest game, it provided a gigantic arena for me to fight off hordes of zombies in.

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT SURVIVORS OF THE ZOMBIE WORLD?

• It gets boring real fast. Even though the game has four different playable modes—story, survival, defense, and online LAN—they basically all have the same gameplay: shooting zombies and trying to survive. And while that was fun at first, it got extremely boring and repetitive after an hour. I only played for a few hours, and even that was excruciating, especially once I realized what a grind it was going to be.

• So much grinding. Almost every cosmetic and weapon in Survivors of the Zombie World comes at a price. I hated having to grind multiple matches to earn enough resources to unlock just one weapon or upgrade. The drop rate for these resources is depressingly low to begin with; any given zombie might drop between seven to twenty coins. Given how expensive the weapons are, I spent a lot of time grinding my way through mobs of monsters and getting tremendously exhausted.

• Progression walls. This is a natural extension of the grinding problem paired with the difficulty curve in Survivors of the Zombie World. Story missions got harder as I progressed, which meant that I needed new and better weapons, which meant that I had to grind out the resources to purchase those weapons. These unavoidable progression walls made the already stale gameplay even more tiresome.

PLATFORM TESTED

Android via Samsung Galaxy Ultra S22 5G phone.