Developer: Yodubzz Studios
Platform: PC (Reviewed)
Genre: Action, Adventure, RPG
Publisher: indie.io
HumanitZ is a post-apocalyptic game where a zombie outbreak has wiped out most of humanity, with zombies roaming the land. Zeeks have become the planet’s predators who have pushed the human survivors to the brink of extinction. The developer is Yodubzz Studios, and the publisher is indie.io. This game isn’t a huge budget flashy game, but an indie game that has prioritised depth, replayability and the player’s freedom and flexibility.
HumanitZ is an open-world survival sandbox where you and your friends scavenge for food, weapons, and overall supplies. Crafting tools, gears, fortification and more, all to stay alive. Equipped with a tutorial which really helps to understand the game and gives you a kick start on what to do. The freedom of how to play is truly one of the biggest strengths of the game, from choosing where to go to where to build a base and exactly how you want to live your zombie company day life. The crafting system is rich and meaningful, having to gather basic materials to eventually build tools and even different systems, with a skill tree and different professions that let you customise your survivors’ specialities.
HumanitZ can be played solo, cooperatively, or online in PvE and PvP modes with dedicated servers and proximity voice chat. We played this game with up to three players and found that our session was working quite well after a slight bug that occurred with one of the players. Now the UI of HumanitZ is very easy to use, and creating a game session or joining a session is straightforward. In the one server we were running, there were people based in both Europe and Asia with no connection or lag issues on either end, which was nice to see. One of the players ran into a weird issue where they could not join the server at all, even after several restarts of the game, until the host had created a completely new session. I will say that there are some optimisations in the servers that do need to be tweaked, but considering that a small team has developed this game, it can easily be overlooked, especially when you get to delve into a zombie apocalypse adventure with friends and not just yourself.
The controls are fully functional and familiar to survival gamers, but can feel a bit annoying sometimes with the different camera rotation and inventory management. It does take a bit of time to get used to it. And the tutorials help to focus on the progressive side of the game.
HumanitZ uses an isometric 3D art style so the palette leans to a more muted, earthy tones, with the greys, browns and unsaturated greens, which fits the bleak setting of the game. The differences in how the cities, vs the forests and others look are incredibly different, which helps the game from becoming stale. The ambient sounds are another one of the game’s highlights, from the birds to the footsteps; the environmental audio truly deepens the immersion. Music is present but subtle, and could be further improved. The sounds really do help you immerse yourself in the loneliness and dangerous world.
The premise of the game is that there has been a zombie outbreak, and you are one of the last survivors. It tells its narrative through meeting other characters and discovering new locations, which entices the player to fully explore the game to its full potential. This is, in fact, a top-down RPG where you go around looting buildings, managing your hunger and thirst, crafting weapons, and so much more. The game has an insane level of exploration, and the map itself is extremely huge, so at times it can overwhelm you. What makes the exploration enjoyable is that there are several points of interest scattered throughout the environment, which makes looting even more addictive. I mean, I was unaware at first that breaking into a house would trigger an alarm that would swarm zombies all around. The game is exciting because it really puts you into the survival atmosphere.
Of course, with this game, combat is a huge part of what you are doing. In terms of the combat, sometimes it works well, and other times it can be a bit clunky, leading you to getting bitten and dying when it could have easily been avoided. First off, the armoury and weapons HumanitZ offers are of great versatility, which can allow players to fight zombies up close or from far away. I do like that the combat gets the player to think about engaging in battle or just sneaking away, which makes for interesting survival instincts.
HumanitZ offers so much for players to do. You can spend hours on end, and sometimes playing the game for merely three to four hours is not even enough to do much, which makes for a good title. Players can indulge in farming, fishing, camping, building and doing whatever else they can do to survive.
We were provided with a few games, and two of the other players had their own comments about the game. First, Sapphire said the following, “I went into this game not knowing much besides the fact that it is a zombie apocalypse survival, and I was surprised. First and foremost, I would like to point out that I love how there are different ‘classes’ that you can choose and even affiliations that will give you negative to positive buffs throughout your gameplay, which gives players the ability to try out different roles to change up their playthrough. Being able to select a role will also allow you to unlock skills that are specific to their traits that can help your chances of survival and help out your team.
I would also like to point out that for new players, this game works so nicely, because the tutorial and little quest prompts you are given from the second you spawn in truly tell you step by step on what you need to do and which controls are used. I thought this was very handy, but it also made the player always have something to do. I mean speaking of something to do, there will, in fact, always be something to do. I could see myself building a house or trying to repair a broken-down car that I could actually drive. I just thought the exploration, crafting, and world-building aspects of this game are insane. I was also the one hosting our game session and was surprised by the number of settings you could tweak to make loot spawn more, or change the traits of the zombies, which gives players so much free will.
I love how this game also introduces interesting mechanics like managing inventory weights between your pockets and backpacks. This game keeps the players always on their feet. For instance, if you do end up getting bitten, you need to search for medicine or just have it on hand to avoid spawning far from where you currently may be. You will always be looking for items, foods, new weapons, gear and switching them out to survive better. Personally, I loved how you could loot clothing pieces that would add little customisation to your character.
One of the main issues I had with the game was that when connecting to a server, there was significant loading time (this may be due to the world generating), but it would be nice if it could be optimised for the future. There were a few additional visual bugs, like camera movement and the weird cursor positioning that did throw me off, but once you get into the actual specifics of the game, those little details can easily be overlooked.”
Vroggo had the following to say, “First and foremost, the graphics were something I slowly appreciated after playing the game for a while. Everything just blends in together nicely with the greenery and clutter around in the environment.
The mechanics were clearly thought-out, given how big the tutorial is, and with the extensive survival guide, and the survival aspect was okay with its own progression quests to play through to guide players on what to do.
Although playing for the first time was weird, it was definitely something that needed time to get used to because of the camera/cursor. Even after configuring the settings to something I was comfortable with, aiming and/or picking up felt like a hassle.
Speaking of hassles, the inventory UI could use some more optimisation. Sorting my items does take me more time than I’d expect, and there’s a noticeable animation delay after exiting the inventory that just gets a little annoying. The concept and mechanics behind the game were fine, but there’s, of course, room for some quality of life improvements.”
HumanitZ is a worthy indie survival game that has delivered to the players, with freedom, survival, deputy and long-term play. If you like a long, thinking zombie survival game, you would love this.
Overall: 7.5/10
This is S & S. We are world game explorers. We play games. We have played over 10,000+ games! We travel, we write reviews AND we play more games!!!!
