Deadcraft Review

Developed and published by Marvelous Inc., Deadcraft is a rather cool zombie apocalypse game that as its name suggests involves crafting and the dead. From the cover art alone I thought the game was going to be a game based on a Japanese anime but the game doesn’t play that way at all although I did get some vibes of the show “Fist of the North Star” about it. The graphics of the game are pretty decent, if anything I would liken them to Borderlands in style but not as cartoonish. But the game plays with an isometric view with some rocking alternate tracks to help accompany the action.

                You play as Reid who is a half-zombie due to a “Blade” style birth where his mother was infected with the zombie virus as she gave birth to him. The zombie virus itself came from meteors that crashed onto the planet and started to reanimate the dead. This follows most zombie apocalypse themes where the people were overwhelmed and formed groups to try and survive. But in doing so the remaining groups fought over the scarce resources so survival became that much hard. The game begins with you escaping from people trying to experiment on you. You escape their clutches and vow to get revenge on them for what they tried to do to you and your friend Gene. You cannot do it alone so you need to put some trust in others.

                TDeadcraft plays quite quickly and smoothly and there is quite a bit to take in from the start. As this game is part survival you need to manage your character’s health, food and water intake. With resources scarce, you have to make do with what’s available which at the start is just sludge and rotten rat meat. What would normally kill a human only slightly hurts a half-zombie but it also satiates the thirst and hunger. To improve your consumption options you need to explore and reach out to fellow survivors who can give you tips on crafting. Using their guidance you can develop your base to build equipment and make better resources and equipment. But everything comes at a cost and most fellow survivors will have a job or two for you to do. So there is plenty of side quests you can do to get your hands on resources, currency or blueprints. All of the tasks you complete and the actions you do earn you experience. This can be used to purchase upgrades which could be new blueprints or just upgrades to slow your energy and thirst meters. Another gauge you have to consider is the energy gauge which depletes as you perform any action. Once you are low on energy you need to sleep to restore your energy. You shouldn’t sleep thirsty or hungry as the lower those gauges are when you sleep the lower your health gauge will be when you wake up.

                Apart from the survival aspects, there is also the crafting aspect and once you get the blueprints you still need the materials to build them. That involves exploration and there are plenty of zombies and other survivors willing to attack you for those resources. The combat is pretty robust and simple as you only have one attack button and hitting it repeatedly does a combo. However, if you try to just hack your way through hordes then you will come unstuck pretty quickly. You have to make use of the evasive roll and employ a hit-and-run tactic until you find better equipment and strengthen Reid using upgrades. Once you have found the resources strewn around or by completing side quests you can head back to your base to build things like farms or machines to craft better resources. A farm does seem quite vanilla in a crafting game but in a post-apocalyptic world, crops become key in survival and as a currency.

                Being a half-zombie means you can do things slightly differently. As you kill the zombies, here called Zivvers, they sometimes drop their blood which you can use to drink, partially quenching your thirst, but it can also be used to water crops. These crops then become hybrid crops which have different effects than the standard crops and some survivors may ask for these specialised crops. But as you are a half-zombie you also have another gauge to watch – your zombie gauge. The more things you consume that are tainted with the Zivver blood, the more zombie you become and if you go too far you move slowly like a zombie, are a bit weaker defensively and survivors will act harshly towards you. To reduce your zombie meter you just need to eat and drink normal things. Being more human increases your defensive resilience so it is a matter of keeping balance. Also, the perk to having some zombie gauge is that you can use special zombie moves which can help in battle. These moves range from a rushing charge, a big swipe from your arm which grows giant and zombified and a pure zombified rage mode called zombie maxx mode which makes you almost invincible and allows you to swipe away at enemies until your zombie gauge runs out.

                The best/strange element of the game is that you can grow your own Zivver/zombie. By killing humans you get the chance to collect their corpses. By then combining the corpse with a zombie’s heart you can plant the combination on your farm. Then with some sprinkling of Zivver blood and some time, you can harvest your zombie pal.  These zombie pals can then be used to fight alongside you which comes in handy to deflect the danger from yourself.  The zombies you can grow get stronger as you progress through the game and get better blueprints. There is also a chapel you can build to marry Zivvers and combine them into a strong Zivver which is cool and very weird.

                The game does have some niggles which is a shame as I really enjoyed my playthrough. I found the story to be very lightweight and lacking some meat. The goal of the game is to get to the sanctuary and have revenge on Nebron who is the leader that captured you at the start of the game. However, the game progresses in stages by completing tasks for the special NPCs who are part of the story they help you get closer and closer to the sanctuary. But the more you upgrade the easier the game becomes and eventually even the boss fights don’t pose much of a challenge. The worst niggle is the wanted meter as it feels slightly broken. If you hit a fellow survivor or kill them you get a wanted star and if you attack more survivors in the complex you can get up to 4 stars on your wanted level where everyone attacks you on sight. However, it takes too long for it to go down and if you think going back to your base or sleeping helps then think again. It’s purely time based and you have to wait for the meter to drop to 1 star before people stop attacking you on sight. This takes about 5-10 minutes of real-time to go down which can become quite frustrating when you’re just trying to progress the game.

Conclusion

I thoroughly enjoyed Deadcraft and if it didn’t have some of the niggles I would have recommended it much higher. The crafting system is simple to learn and growing your own zombie pals is delightfully morbid fun. But as I was so hooked on upgrading and crafting I didn’t realise it made the game too easy. I also just wish there was more to the story as I enjoyed the game and ended up feeling more could have been added.

This game was tested and reviewed on Xbox Series X/S. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.