After more than two years baking in early access, Yet Another Zombie Survivors has officially reached its 1.0 release. The auto shooter (or bullet heaven) genre is incredibly crowded these days, with heavy hitters dominating the space. But this game manages to stand out by doing something nobody else is doing: giving you an entire squad to control at once.
If you want a tight, addictive loop you can jump into cold without a sixty hour commitment, this game offers immediate fun for the price of a couple of coffees.
In most games of this type, you pick a single character and shape them with random item drops. Here, the load bearing system is your three person squad. You start a run with one survivor and eventually rescue two more to fill out your team. Because each character has their own specific weapons and abilities firing simultaneously, your upgrade choices become a lot more interesting.
Instead of just picking the biggest damage number, you are making tactical choices. Do you pump all your points into your SWAT soldier so he can carry the team's damage, while letting your Tank soak up hits Do you feed all three characters the same aura buffs to turn the squad into a moving meat grinder This dynamic elevates the gameplay, turning what is normally a straight line of progression into a layered triangle of choices.
The jump to 1.0 brings a lot of fresh content, completely changing how the game handles progression. Instead of a simple menu screen, you now load into a fully fleshed out Camp hub. Here, you can listen to radio chatter, watch your characters interact, and most importantly, pick up specific missions. Runs are no longer just about seeing how long you can survive; you might have objectives like finishing a map with a full inventory or maxing out specific weapons for a certain character.
The update also introduces a new survivor: The Ranger. She operates a little differently from the rest of the cast, utilizing a repeater crossbow and fighting alongside animal companions. Her dog can be upgraded to fetch health packs and power ups, while her falcon can be specialized to provide healing or deal heavy damage to marked targets.
A brand new map was also added, bringing some unique challenges to the table. You will face hacker zombies that lock down loot chests until you kill them, and you will have to navigate a shrinking contamination zone similar to a battle royale mechanic, forcing you to stay on the move.
While the core loop is highly addictive, the 1.0 release is not perfect. The meta progression skill trees, while extensive, lack real depth in the late game. Synergies tend to just be percentages stacked on top of other percentages. They add up, but they do not multiply in weird, unexpected ways. Eventually, your upgrade choices feel more like maintenance than actual strategy.
There are also some balance issues introduced in this update. The difficulty ladders have been scrambled, making some of the mid tier hardcore modes feel like massive brick walls compared to how they played in early access. Furthermore, the new map leans heavily on area of effect spam. When every enemy explodes on death, the screen becomes a noisy mess of red zones rather than a test of your positioning skills.
The biggest letdown, however, is how the runs end. You spend twenty minutes building a god tier squad that deletes enemies faster than they can spawn. But when the timer hits zero, the sun comes up, the zombies despawn, and you just get a victory screen. There is no final boss to test the build you just spent a half hour perfecting. It feels like an unearned victory lap.
Pc Version Tested
Disclosure: We received a free review copy of this product from Devs
You can check the game pages here
