Infectonator: Survivors (alpha) review: blood, sweat, and zombies

To be honest, I had never heard of Toge Productions or its Infectonator series so I wasn’t sure what to expect from its latest game, Infectonator: Survivors.

Infectonator: Survivors is set in a post-apocalyptic world where your goal is to survive for as long as possible. To do this you will need to manage your time and resources, and scavenge for precious fuel and supplies. This is a game where starvation is as deadly as a zombie to the throat.

OK, so maybe not that deadly.

Infectonator: Survivors will be on Steam Early Access on April 14, 2014, for $12.99. It’s in its alpha phase now, so there’s going to be loads of changes and updates before we see the finished product. However this is by far the most solid early access game that I have seen and after a solid day of playing I never encountered a single bug. That’s a damn good sign!

(See: Infectonator Survivors Christmas review: the face of evil has never looked so jolly)

Tower defense and real-time strategy fused

The combat in Infectonator: Survivors is slick and tight. The controls are simple and the goals are simple. Stop the zombies from leaving the area and stop them from eating you. The second goal is especially important because Infectonator: Survivors features a perma-death system. When a character dies, their experience and equipment dies with them (no, you can’t pick up their stuff), so keeping them alive is essential.

The combat is reminiscent of many tower defense games. Each survivor acts like a different unit, depending on which weapons and how you levelled them up. For instance, the sawn-off shotgun works great but you must be close; rifles work great from afar but have no area of effect. You can have melee tank characters that bash in zombie skulls with medieval weaponry, long range gunners, or shotgun guerrillas.

Guns need to be reloaded, which adds a whole extra element of suspense. There is nothing worse than facing a horde of hungry zombies and having to spend two seconds reloading your shotgun. It was nice knowing you.

Infectonator: Survivors is not only a tower defense game, it’s also a real-time strategy one because you can move characters at any point during combat. Positioning characters around a bottleneck or splitting them to cover multiple routes is essential.

(See: Top 5 tower defense mobile games from Asia)

Scavenging is the most important thing to do when exploring. Blasting zombies gives you coins but scavenging gives you supplies and fuel. Supplies feed your survivors and fuel allows you to progress further in the game.