Deadly Days Review

Deadly Days provides gamers with enough variety in their characters, weapons, and items to be a great and entertaining rougelite game that actually keeps its charm and replay value for hours on end. When it’s compared to other popular rougelite games, you may begin to think how much more could’ve been added to this game to make it better and more enjoyable.

The gameplay is actually pretty simple and easy to get the hang of. Players have to move their characters around a fairly small map hunting for loot while trying to fight off hordes of zombies, and once the area is cleared you hop back in your vehicle and go back to your home base to count the spoils of your supply run. Strategy is a key element in Deadly Days. The looting mechanic I will say is somewhat lacking in Deadly Days. To loot in the game you just target a building or care package, and one of the characters in your party will go inside to loot for a bit, while your other character fights off mobs of zombies. Combat in this game is pretty much all autonomous which can for sure turn off some players. Your characters will automatically shoot zombies for you and can only be pointed in a direction of where to go. Now the game feels more like some management simulation game especially with the involvement of Apples. Apples are a key component in this game and will be used for pretty much everything, from levelling up characters and weapons to also keeping your survivors fed so they can survive the night. So if you come back with no apples after a run, your gonna have a bad time. I feel like the game would’ve been more fun if this aspect was either removed or tweaked to the point it kept that RPG dungeon crawler aspect instead of a micromanagement simulation game.

It’s important to make sure that your survivors are equipped with the best gear you can find because these zombie hordes are not to be underestimated. As I mentioned before you send survivors away from the group as they search and pillage throughout the map. That’s one less person to help you with the zombie horde. The zombie horde at first is pretty easy to fight off in the beginning but the further you progress in the game it becomes much more of a challenge. Especially once night-time hits, as they become more wild and feral which is a nice touch that the game added. The aggravating part with the zombies is that luck plays a heavy role. There are special infected ones in the game such as spitters and bomb zombies that will kamikaze you and will absolutely end your run in an instant. The spawn rate of the special infected at times can be either low or high so you are honestly playing chance on how far you get with your runs. There are power-ups you can acquire such as airstrikes to make your runs easier but they can only help you so much.

The maps are not anything too special or out of the ordinary. Each day you’ll be able to select a mission to complete: this can range from scavenging to hunting down a care package. Especially to start with, the maps themselves are pretty small and won’t take too much time to explore. As you progress further it will take you more time to explore your surroundings as you are more focused on keeping your team alive but still, the maps don’t expand much in size which is disappointing.

Compared to your everyday rougelite, Deadly Days does put a bit of a spin on the concept with its own unique management system. With that being said though that doesn’t mean a system like that will bring enjoyment to some gamers. If you’re like me a concept like that doesn’t really mix well with Rougelite games. I will give props for the variety of characters you can meet and weapons you can find. There’s even an encyclopaedia and at the start of the game you can look through to see everything you have unlocked. For the first couple runs you go on, you really won’t get bored of Deadly Days immediately but it is missing that factor that makes you wanna pick it up again after bingeing it for a day or two.

Deadly Days isn’t a game that I would be dropping hours of time into or would be playing on week’s end. There are elements that do make the game work such as it’s fasted paced gameplay, a variety of weapons and characters, and a story that involves the zombie virus being spread from a contaminated hamburger. There’s even story progression in the game which actually surprised me. The RNG aspect of the game is a bit frustrating along with the constant micromanagement of my team of survivors. I just feel like aspects like these shouldn’t belong in a Rougelite game. If you wanna a game to kill some time then I would gladly recommend Deadly Days, but if you want something long-lasting this may not be the game for you.

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.