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Let me preface this review by saying that Zafehouse Diaries isn’t your typical survival horror fare. It’s a strategic survival horror game; there’s no shooting or hacking zombies or exploration based gameplay (at least not done by you). These aren’t always qualities that a lot of gamers are keen on when looking for their survival horror fix. However if you’re looking for a fun, challenging take on the zombie apocalypse, Zafehouse Diaries has a single question for you – what would you do if you were in charge?
The basic premise of the game is that zombies (thus the Z) have risen from their respective graves, and you take shelter in a town. You are the leader of a group of survivors and you tell them what to do. You do this from your command centre in what I can only assume is a completely secured room in which you never need to eat, sleep or fight zombies. Or maybe you’re their collective conscience? The game offers three modes, the easiest of which is just to recruit survivors and survive. The other two modes require you not only to survive, but have overarching objectives, such as fixing up a car and leaving town, or just holding out til rescue arrives in seven days. There are other objectives too, but they’re game specific.
I tried the first two modes – I sucked at both of them. The game is challenging, but it only made me want to keep at it again and again. Because sometimes I am a sucker for punishment.
The main screen of the game is just as it appears above. You have your town map, a clipboard with your current orders, supplies and house information with all of your characters’ photographs at the bottom of the screen. You can toggle between this and the diary pages where your progress is recorded and can be reviewed and the Investigate/Breach/Assault page. By clicking on one of the photographs at the bottom of the screen, you can bring up that character’s bio, their stats and a list of their abilities, as well as a helpful guide to their interpersonal relationships. This last part will be important…trust me. The game is advanced by clicking the little watch in the corner of the screen and it advances the time by one hour each time.
Screwfly really took a lot of factors into consideration when it comes to how exactly you’re supposed to survive in the time you have. The game seems so simple, yet is surprisingly deep. Searching for supplies, creating traps, building barricades, scouting for zombies, investigating and breaching other buildings around you all seem like standard fare and are very complex and satisfying. For instance, what are the people going on a reconnaissance mission going to take with them? How are they going to fight zombies off if they find them if they don’t have anything? Are you going to make a lot of noise building barricades and do it fast, risking attracting a horde, or are you going to do it slowly and quietly, taking many turns to do so?
Almost everything in the game from the maps, the survivors themselves and the item placement is randomly generated. This aims to make each and every playthrough a unique experience and it’s rare to find a game that’s truly challenging this way. Zafehouse Diaries really is a game where a small group of zombies can wipe out your entire progress in as little as a few turns. One wrong move and an hour of progress is gone. So every time you click that little watch to advance the game forward, your chest tightens a little bit. Is this going to be it? Are they going to make it? It lends the game a constant feeling of dread that I rather enjoy. And everything about the game works just about how you’d expect it to. That is until you meet what is hands down the most frustrating part about this game: you’d better make sure that your rag-tag team of survivors actually can stand to be around each other, or good luck getting anywhere.
If you thought The Walking Dead had infighting, Zafehouse Diaries is going to make you pine for the days when Kenny and Lily’s bickering was all you had to put up with. And at least Kenny and Lily’s fighting didn’t actually hurt your chances of survival. Right off the bat when the game starts, no one is particularly trustful of anyone, but there’s always one person in the group who we’re hopeful will hold us all together.
Each survivor has a past with their own prejudices and hangups. For instance, the police officer may have a long-standing bias against poor people, the carpenter might not like young people, or the carpenter might be “totally not racist, but….” just doesn’t like the look of half of the group. They’ll argue with each other, they’ll wear down the morale of the group and they’ll even go so far as to break potential supplies and hurt one another. In one of my playthroughs, (there were many…) everyone hated one another within the first few hours and one of them even tried to poison food. Another woman in the group one threw a mirror at someone and ended up breaking their leg.
If your survivors hate each other they just won’t work well together, nothing will get done properly and you’ll probably all die. Correction; you will all die. In my experience, people who liked each other worked better together – their scouting missions and searching missions were successful and they didn’t try to kill each other. The easiest game mode allows survivors to be replaced, but in the other two, once they’re gone, they’re gone. So are all of their useful skills and another body to do stuff. Being down a survivor makes things difficult, especially at the beginning of the game.
The game faces you with certain major decisions you have to make – for instance the woman that was poisoning food insists that she wasn’t – what do you do with the food? Throw it away? She just spent an hour making it and you’d be throwing away valuable supplies. She’ll be pissed if you throw it away – but is anyone going to eat it if you don’t? The rest of the group will be mad if you threaten their safety with possibly poisoned food. In the easiest difficulty, survivors can be added to your group, but can also be turned away. Don’t expect them to just skip off into town merrily and live happily ever after. No, they’ll fuck your shit up and make stuff hard for you. Survivors can also be infected, then what the hell are you going to do? Kill them? Put them out of their misery? There will be people who aren’t going to like that…
Zafehouse Diaries also features the ability to add custom content to the game and effectively build your own campaign. Custom locations, survivors and photographs can be added to the game for a more personal experience. Playing custom games turns off achievement progress, but with how difficult this game is…it’s not like we’ll be earning a whole hell of a lot of those.
Overall it’s an enjoyable game, but I had a couple of issues with it that hopefully can be ironed out. The interpersonal relationships feel like they have way too much influence over what happens in the game, but the randomization makes the whole thing a crapshoot every time you start a new game. If your roll of the dice sucks, there’s very little reason to keep playing, especially if your team hates each other and you can’t find any useful supplies.
The game’s dialogue can get a little on the repetitive side and you can tell where random placeholders are. I told my survivors to modify an item and they created a terrifying fire axe, which sounds awesome. But then they turned around and made a vicious saucepan. What the fuck is that? The diaries also go into a little too much repetitive detail about how zombies are dispatched as well. It will inform you kindly that “Todd bashed a zombies’ brains in with a frying pan after hitting it in the right leg and the left arm,” when “Todd killed a zombie by bashing it in the head with a frying pan. Yay!” would have sufficed. A few days of this stuff and you’ll see what I mean. It also gives the game the feeling of sameness, day in and day out.
The assets for the game don’t always match up with their description, either. For instance, some of my survivors broke down a chair and secured 16 entrances. What the hell kind of chair was this?
I recommend Zafehouse Diaries if you’re looking for a challenging and surprisingly deep new take on survival horror. I don’t generally like turn-based strategy games, which is probably why I was so terrible at this game, but it was pretty fun and amazingly addicting. You may not get much in the way of violence or gore, but it’s a thinking-gamer’s survival game. Every turn where you don’t die feels like a victory in itself.
Be sure to bring a map and a copy of How to Make Friends and Influence People with you when it all hits the fan.
7/10
