Review: Terminus: Zombie Survivors [PC]

Developed and published by Ingeon Games, wake up to a frozen and dead reality. Zombies walk the streets and hills and there is only one salvation. Every step you take, and action you make, puts you ever closer to hopeful survival and imminent destruction. In a horrifying blend of Project: Zomboid and Tangledeep, prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

I hope you’re able to stay warm. This is Terminus: Zombie Survivors.

It’s a thriller!

Humanity is doomed. Zombies are everywhere. There is only one place to actually be safe, a mysterious place called Terminus. Where is Terminus? Some random location that you have to figure out while not dying. That’s the full plot of Terminus: Zombie Survivors. As a 2D-Turn Based Roguelike, there is less emphasis on story and more on the soul crushing difficulty and randomly generating encounters.

Let’s start off talking about you as the player. When you start up a run of Terminus: Zombie Survivors, you can pick a ‘job’. This will give you a preselected load-out of traits, which will determine your surviving experience. You are allotted a few extra points to put into your stats, as well as picking a trait to help boost your character ahead to give them a fighting chance. More character archetypes can be unlocked through successfully surviving and making it to Terminus.

Once you spawn into the world, you need to start looting and looking for a way out. The more time you spend in a single place, the more likely you are to run out of resources when night falls. It’s always a good idea to take shelter indoors, as outside can have a constant horde of the undead as well as bad weather further impeding your progress.

Lost my way on the Organ Trail

It’s not all random however, as the map itself is predetermined. There are only so many points of interest in any given run. However, how they link up are, as far as I’ve seen, consistent. Every point of interest is a random location, be it a house or a hardware store. One major location is the train tracks, which all link up and eventually leads to Terminus. Be wary of this path, as a Hollywood costume department worth of zombies tend to congregate around the tracks.

The biggest part of Terminus: Zombie Survivors is its action system. You have a set amount of Action Points that allow you to move and do various tasks. These can range from looting a location for materials and weapons to attacking zombies or reinforcing barricades. Everything in the game requires AP to do. The only time you don’t use AP is when you are sleeping, which can regenerate your other stats to a point. I say to a point because no matter what you do, something is always going down. Be it your health, sanitation, body warmth, or moral.

That might also be the biggest flaw with Terminus: Zombie Survival. The AP system is functional, but tedious beyond belief. Every action takes points, every step, every attack, every moment of crafting. Waiting in place will regenerate AP. But if you have low stats, it will regenerate less. And the only way to get the stats up is to consume drugs or food. And the only way to get that is to loot. Which takes AP. Noting in the map you’re on? Move to a different map, but that takes a ton of AP. AP that you have to then wait in place for it to regenerate. But that makes the clock tick forward, and it gets really dark really quick. It’s an endless cycle of waiting, moving, waiting, eating, waiting, and trying to find a place on a giant map that moves.

Concluding Thoughts

Terminus: Zombie Survivors is an anomaly. It’s frustrating to play when you end up in a bad spot, but strangely engrossing when you happen to get lucky. And while luck is partially what makes a roguelike a rogue, in this instance it can hold the game back. It’s punishing enough to juggle all the everything of your character as well as surviving, the hyper-reliance on everything AP just pushes it over the top. But, it is enjoyable to play when you have those lucky moments. Maybe we’ll see some balancing in the future when it leaves early access.

Terminus: Zombie Survivors is early access and available on Steam PC.

Steam key was provided by Ingeon Games