It's one year after the collapse of civilization and self-centered hedge fund manager Joe Wheeler emerges from his specially constructed bunker in search of food. This is a huge open-world RPG where you have the freedom to play how you want - but your choices have consequences.
The game blends action-RPG and real-time strategy elements in a post-apocalyptic open world. Players lead a community of survivors, managing resources, making moral choices, and fighting zombies and hostile humans. The core loop involves scavenging supplies, fortifying a home base, recruiting new survivors, and engaging in tactical combat and community-level strategy.
Players construct a variety of structures like houses, farms, walls, and guard towers, placing them freely in the game world. Survivors can take on roles like guarding, farming, scavenging, or construction. Players must ensure their community's basic needs of food, water, shelter, and safety are met, carefully balancing resources and morale.
When encountering zombies or enemy groups, players can take direct control of individual survivors in a top-down, real-time combat system. Precise aiming, timing, and use of ammunition and medical supplies are critical to surviving. Zombies come in varied types with different speeds and attack patterns, requiring adaptable tactics. Combat also carries the risk of survivor injury or infection.
The large open world allows players to explore, scavenge supplies, and interact with friendly and hostile NPCs through dialogue trees. These encounters enable gathering information, completing quests, trading resources, and recruiting new community members. The decisions made can have far-reaching consequences.
Reviewers praise the depth of systems and unpredictable, emergent nature of the gameplay. The open-ended structure, branching quest paths, and dynamic relationships between factions lead to unique playthroughs. Players frequently face difficult decisions that dramatically alter their community's trajectory, adding high replayability.
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