Harvest The Walking Dead?
Stare in wild wonder as the half-human, half-zombie protagonist Reid slices through foes on a quest for righteous vengeance! Wield his inhuman zombie powers to fend off enemies while searching the wasteland for answers to what happened to the only man he could trust. Build fantastical new armaments, conjure curious concoctions, or even grow and harvest zombie soldiers to stand by Reid’s side against whatever the apocalypse throws at him. It’s a dangerous world, and in order to stay alive Reid must take full advantage of the dead!
Deadcraft is definitely a game that I wasn’t expecting, it combines Borderlands-style visuals with a hack-n-slash/shooter with farming and crafting elements thrown in for equal measure. Sure, you can plant crops and either use or sell them for cash, or you can plant zombies and use them as an army to help you on your quest. Yes, you read that correctly…grow your own zombie army…
It’s obvious by now that the game doesn’t try and take itself seriously, but it’s still good fun, nonetheless. Besides the Borderlands type of cel-shading for the world and characters, it definitely has some of the series’ light-hearted humour to it as well, whether intentional or not. Reid also is a half-human/half-zombie which has its own advantages, such as you can eat or drink items to sway Reid more towards either side of the living and each has their own benefits for combat, such as unique moves to use on enemies.
The in-game time is always ticking, and you’ll need to rest up, but also keep up your strength through food and water. So, it almost becomes a survival game as well, which adds to the overall craziness of the game. It’s definitely an unusual blend of genres but when it works, it works well. It does have its issues like a general lack of polish, but overall, I was impressed with what was on offer here.
Like I said, the visuals have a cel-shaded look to them that is clearly inspired by Borderlands, and it works well. It may not look as slick as Gearbox’s shooter with its cutscenes and the game itself isn’t going to win any awards for its design, but it does run at a steady framerate and there’s a nice amount of gore and humour to be found here. Voice-acting is pretty bad, but I assume that is intentional with the tone of the game that feels like a B-Movie at times.
The Verdict
Deadcraft is a blend of survival, hack-n-slash, shooting, farming, looting and crafting which adds up to one crazy game that is definitely going to be a game I remember for quite some time, regardless of any of its faults. For anyone who is a fan of any of the above genres, this is definitely worth a look.