Infection Free Zone developed by Jutsu Games and published by Games Operators is now available in Early Access on Steam! You can find Infection Free Zone HERE on Steam for £19.99.
Infection Free Zone is a strategy survival game with one of the most unique twists I’ve ever seen. What gamer who loves apocalypse games hasn’t thought about what a zombie apocalypse would look like in their town, well Wonder no more! Infection Free Zone lets you choose pretty much anywhere on the map to live out your survival dreams and of course, I choose my town and put my HQ as my own house, who wouldn’t? This made getting supplies easy as I don’t live too far from the shops. There are vehicles that you can traverse the map with, they are fairly easy to find, however as mentioned before, being so close to the main town, I didn’t feel the need for one early on in my playthrough. Infection Free Zone does a great job of using the map system and generating your chosen place pretty close to the original look of the town, village or city, so it feels like you’re fighting for survival in a familiar place. The way the game shows each location from the unique and individual shop names is pretty special, especially when I started raiding the local supermarket for food, I found this quite amusing having to scavenge areas I have to go to for groceries and whatnot and even our local doctors appeared as a medical building which I loved. Players start in their chosen location with squads of looters and workers who will both collect supplies and build to help fortify up the area you’ve decided to go with which will ensure your survival. Buildings are very important and they range from farmhouses to store food, warehouses to store items, research labs to research new technology to aid your survival, and antennae to talk to others on the given map and watch the story unfold. As the game progresses and you build up, more threats will be introduced as the game progresses from special types of zombies to rabid bandits that want your loot.
Once you establish yourself fully the story will start playing out, it is quite interesting running into all these events that crop up during your playthrough will have you making choices that impact the game, so you must choose wisely.
The roadmap shows players the plans moving forward and some fantastic features are coming however, squad stamina sounds like one I’d personally rather do without. Below is an image of the road map that appears in the main menu:
The others sound great though and if they do manage to bring them into the game. I personally feel Infection Free Zone will be up there with the greatest survival titles on the market. I do have a complaint though while I love the game I wish zombies roamed around a bit more instead of always knowing where your base is at night this has been addressed on the Steam Community pages and I do hope zombies are attracted by something like sound or smell rather than always knowing where your base is because late in the game when it sends infected dogs, it can get overwhelming quickly. Structures also need to be stronger, at the moment building a wall feels a little pointless, again this is something else that has been addressed.
Infection Free Zone so far looks really good with the way it maps each location out as close as it can to the originals obviously there are hiccups here and there but overall it looks really close to the originals. Each map looks overgrown with nature, the weather taking an effect on the buildings and it really all suits the apocalyptic vibe. In future updates more will be added to the maps like elevation and different buildings to expand on what already exists within the game. The zombies look as terrifying as ever when crawling and sprinting toward your base in massive hordes but even when a lot is happening on screen the game never slowed down for me. The game just looks and feels so unique and in time I can really see this becoming something special. The sound design at the moment is mostly limited but in what there is it is pretty great from the zombies screaming to the soundtrack at night when you truly are in the most danger it’s all done so well I just hope they add more music and more voice lines down the line for the humans as they do repeat the same lines constantly but the game is in early access and only launched last month.
Verdict
Overall I feel that Infection Free Zone has a bright future ahead if the roadmap is stuck too, already fixes are coming in left right and centre so the team are clearly very dedicated to their project. Having all the available maps to choose from and them looking so reminiscent of the real locations is nothing short of incredible, fighting the zombies off in my own town has been fantastic and there really doesn’t feel like there’s much else like it out there. I definitely recommend giving this game a go if survival is a genre you love.
nerdybirdgames.com 