I think, on some level, that most gamers have a soft spot for city builders. I also think that most gamers, have a certain affinity for zombie-like monstrosities. So, putting those things together seems like a no-brainer recipe for success. Enter Infection Free Zone, a game I recently played during Steam Next Fest and was extremely excited about. Infection Free Zone’s big selling point is that it can create a ‘zone’ in any existing city in the real world using real geographical data. On paper, this sounds like a great concept. Yes, defending my real city from virtual hordes is totally something I’m into, and I don’t think I have ever seen this gameplay mechanic utilized anywhere else before. So, when the demo launched, I was super eager to check it out. Every piece of media I had watched reminded me a lot of those mobile survival games, where you are just trying to outlive the never-ending hordes while trying to piece back together some semblance of civilization. While those games do look appealing, I know that they are going to be bogged down by all the mobile gaming fluff: an ‘energy for tasks’ system, microtransactions, and ads galore. Infection Free Zone looked to be free of all of that, and appeared to deliver the city-building/zombie-surviving experience I had been waiting for.
The demo offers a limited number of towns to choose from, where you are unable to pick which part of that city you start in. I understand that I played a demo and the purpose is to showcase a vertical slice of the full game, but I at least expected the demo to resemble something closer to what the game is being advertised as. Everything just seemed too small-scale compared to what the full game was promising, and it dulled my excitement really quick. It also doesn’t help that the gameplay itself didn’t exactly wow me either.
You start off with a handful of people and create a couple of squads, who you can then assign to go search nearby buildings for loot, or to gather materials like wood, stone, and metal. Once you have enough materials, you can start building shelters to house your people. Once everyone has a roof over their head, you can begin working on your defenses, such as fencing and guard towers. All of this can be a tad time-consuming, and time, as is it turns out, is the one resource you don’t have enough of. Because once the sun goes down and darkness covers your tiny group of survivors, the work-day ends, and bad things begin to happen. I always felt like I never had proper defenses in place before nightfall, as the amount of time needed to put vital structures in place always took way too long. Even when I increased my population, which I hoped would speed up production, I hardly noticed a difference in the turnaround. This led to hordes attacking my incomplete structures and my population taking a nosedive…because of all of the deaths. And this would then make the resource gathering/building process even slower than it already was; it’s a vicious cycle. To make matters a bit more bothersome, the game never really clarifies how to heal injured survivors. I would basically wait for any of my wounded peeps to die a slow agonizing death. But hey, at least the controls were easy to manage, so its got that going for it.
Unfortunately, the demo did not deliver on the core premise of what makes Infection Free Zone so appealing. While I was super excited at first, I may have to wait to see how development on this one progresses. There is definitely a great foundation here, and the concept is top-notch. I’m hoping the team over at Justu Games listens to all the feedback, and delivers when the game is released.
