Deadly Days - Surviving and Scavenging In The Zombie Apocolypse
We are covering Deadly Days, an indie zombie apocalypse game from Pixelsplit (Germany). The game has been out since 2019 and has enough content to keep you playing for tens of hours.
Quick Summary (TL;DR)
- Deadly Days is a fun casual game that gives you the right mix of strategy and rogue-lite gameplay.
- Reasonably priced non-early access under $20
- single-player game with enough post-release content and polish to give the game depth.
- Deadly Days gives you 20+ hours of quality gameplay.
- Progression through building up your camp and manage a team of survivors.
- Replay value with random missions to scavenge food, resources to upgrade your base with and weapons to fight against the zombie horde.
Deadly Days Review: First Impressions
Deadly Days gives you the perfect mix of rogue-lite and strategy that offers you over 20+ potential hours of gameplay.
New weapons, new survivors, and random missions that make every playthrough unique. A fun and straightforward pixel design that doesn’t overcomplicate the top-down view on each map.
The goal of Deadly Days is to build up your base, create a team of survivors, and shut-down a sinister burger factory that’s causing the zombie apocalypse.
You start with a small group of survivors, a small fenced-in encampment, and a school bus.
Each day you will get a few random missions to choose from that differ by difficulty levels and the type of loot you can scavenge.
A supermarket mission is better to loot food for your survivors, but the warehouse mission will offer more resources to upgrade your base.
As you continue to fight the horde, build up your base, and strengthen your team of survivors, you will get closer to the primary goal of stopping the evil zombie burger factory.
It’s not an easy game! Like any rogue-lite, you will get confident, take a few too many risks, then get overwhelmed by the zombie horde and die.
Even though I kept dying, the “game over” screen just made me rethink my strategy for the next group of survivors. “Do I invest more in my base early on?” or “I need to mix up my weapons more. Ranged and close-ranged to counter normal and special zombies.”
Deadly Days: Progression
Each time you die, you still progress with the Skill Trees. Upgrading your skill trees allows you to spice up each new round.
As you go through these missions, you are scavenging for loot to strengthen your team for the final burger factory battle.
The loot you scavenge can you used to upgrade your main base, weapons for survivors, or special abilities.
The inventory system isn’t super complex, so you’ll usually decide what weapons to equip immediately after returning to base.
The special abilities can mean life or death for the harder missions. You can drop missiles that do AOE damage or use drones heal your party while avoiding damage above.
Deadly Days: Mission Types
Each mission type offers a different objective, difficulty, size, and loot opportunity for your team to scavenge.
Decide whether you need food to survive, looting resources to upgrade your base for better end-game tactics, or to find rare weapons for your team.
The mission types include:
- Hospital
- Rescue
- Fire Department
- Supermarket
- Scavenge
- Hardware Store
- Warehouse
- Burger
- Find Airdrop
- Last Mission
Each one offers you an unexpected opportunity to find loot and potentially new survivors to join your party.
Deadly Days: Looting & Scavenging
Every day is important, and the mission you choose depends on the survival of your team.
You will choose a mission; then, your team jumps onto the bus on their way to the location.
You will see a timer start counting down after arriving at your destination. The game has a day and night cycle, where you want to loot as much as humanly possible before the sunsets. Once the sun sets, zombies get more challenging, the horde gets larger, and survival gets more difficult.
In each map, you will see lootable locations or objects, including:
- homes
- cars
- apple trees
- unique buildings like warehouses, garages, or supermarkets
You can also find vending machines that allow you to buy unique items, abilities, and other cool stuff.
You can visually see lootable objects as they have a light sparkle and are clickable once you hover your cursor over it.
Even though looting is one of the core game mechanics, you need to complete your mission objectives if you want to unlock special perks and gain unique loot.
The excitement is with finding rare weapons and unlocks that will turn your team of scavengers into an unstoppable force to be reckoned with.
Should You Buy And Play Deadly Days?
Easy to learn, hard to master! Deadly Days surprises you with its challenging survival game mechanics that keep you rethinking your decisions after you hit the “Game Over” screen.
It’s a great permanent addition to my Steam library that I can easily pick up and put down.
I especially enjoyed the rogue-lite mechanics of Deadly Days that allowed me to have fun replaying the same mission over and over again with different outcomes.
Its polished has enough content for 20-40 hours of gameplay; it’s under $20, and it’s definitely worth a buy!
Pros:
- Huge replayability
- Clean pixel art and great animations
- Progression, upgrades and RNG to keep you entertained
Cons:
- AI pathfinding needs improving
- Controls and cursor needs improving
Verdict
Deadly Days is an excellent addition to everyone's library as it gives you a challenging rogue-lite casual experience with a decent progression system. Each playthrough is different, and you won't get bored of scavenging with a massive variety of items, bonuses, and abilities.
James King
James is a gamer, writer and developer that covers various different gaming topics. His goal is to promote and encourage more indie game development that brings new and exciting game ideas to life.
