The Walking Dead: Survivors Review

Fight The Walking Dead

Join the zombie apocalypse in The Walking Dead: Survivors, the new strategy title by Galaxy Play Technology Limited. Players build their outpost, recruit survivors and face off against human and zombie enemies alike. You may be worried this is one last cash grab before The Walking Dead T.V. series finale airs. Fortunately, The Walking Dead: Survivors is a title you’ll enjoy sinking your teeth into.

Survive Together

Players start out with just a few survivors. However, you can’t survive alone. By building the radio tower, players can recruit new survivors to their compound. These survivors can forage for lumber and food within the camps walls. You can also assign them jobs or to formations. Ergo the more survivors you have, the more you can accomplish.  Fans of The Walking Dead series will come across some familiar faces as they expand their ranks. Rick, Lori, Carl and Shane are just some of the characters players can recruit. Adding beloved characters to your ranks adds a certain thrill to the game.

Another important aspect of The Walking Dead: Survivors is joining a clan. Clans work like typical RTS guilds, allowing players to aid each other. Joining a clan also allows you to participate in clan related events. While the clan feature ads to the game, it doesn’t vary from the guild model you’ll come across in most RTS titles.

Rebuild

Much of your time in game will be spent building and upgrading structures in your compound. Per usual RTS design, upgrading your town hall unlocks new structures to construct. Construction requires resources such as food, lumber, meat, bullets and water. Upgrading your resource producing structures is essential to running a thriving base. Resources, which work much like you would expect, can also be gathered from the game map. This is accomplished by sending formations of trained soldiers out to collect them. There’s nothing special about the way this title handles resource collection and construction. However, that’s not to say these systems don’t work well. There is a reason you find this sort of system in so many RTSs.

You can also send soldiers out to battle walkers or attack other players’ settlements. When battling walkers or NPCs, the game will warn you if your formation isn’t strong enough to tackle said foe. To determine whether your up to taking on a rival player however, your best bet is to scout their compound.  Scouting gives you an idea of another player’s strength and the size of their army. But be careful, attacking another player could lead to retaliation.

Settlement Sieges

Probably the most engaging aspect of The Walking Dead: Survivors are the Settlement Sieges. In settlement sieges, hordes of walkers attack your town. Place survivors on top of defense towers to attack the horde. Zombies will quickly tear through your defenses and take out many of your structures before converging on the town hall. Don’t worry—any destroyed buildings will be repaired within seconds of completing a siege. The concept is simple, kill the walkers before they kill your survivors or destroy the town hall to win.

Some survivors have special abilities they can use during sieges. For example, when using Shane during a siege you’ll have access to his Molotov cocktail ability which sets zombies on fire. Other survivors have abilities such as healing other survivors, or the mud patch ability which reduces walker mobility by half. While the concept is straight forward, sieges do require a bit of strategic thinking. Placing fighters on defense towers and using abilities both cost energy. You’ll often have to decide between setting up another survivor or saving an existing one from an approaching horde.

In-App Purchases

The Walking Dead: Survivors does include in-app purchases. However, other than the ad that pops up each time you open the app, I never felt pushed to buy anything. Gems are the games premium currency which can be used to speed up construction, training and research. You can also use gems to purchase resources. The title offers 1,000 gems for $4.99 all the way up to 20,000 gems for $99.99. There is also a commonwealth contract monthly subscription which allows players to build exclusive buildings and includes 4,000 gems. The subscription costs $19.99 per month. While the in-app purchases can be pricey, you really don’t need to buy any if you put in a little work.

The Walking Dead: Survivors is an intriguing strategy title that is made more compelling by its inclusion of fan favorite characters. The title features standard RTS gameplay for the most part. However, the settlement sieges are a fun strategic twist. Pitting Rick Grimes and company against hordes of the walking dead will satisfy any fan of the series. The Walking Dead: Survivors offers an engaging RTS experience that will please fans and newcomers alike.