Yet Another Zombie Survivors review

Yet Another Zombie Survivors might not have the fanciest name around - but is this pretty much bullet heaven perfection? Disclosure: a key was provided to GamingOnLinux years ago.

If you've read GamingOnLinux for even a little while, you'll know that I mostly love the bullet heaven survivor-like genre. I've played a whole lot of them - some good, some bad. Yet Another Zombie Survivors to me feels like a warm cozy blanket on a cold night, it's familiar and comfortable and gives you what you need.

The basic setup is much the same as others in the genre. It's a horde shooter - so you run around shooting and killing, collecting gems for experience points and then level up. When you level up you can buff up your character with new weapons and upgrades. What makes Yet Another Zombie Survivors stand out from the crowd is the multi-character system and the combinations that come along with it. You go into a run with a set character class, but as runs progress you can rescue others and you end up with 3 individuals running together all with their own perks and weapons. It's a clever spin that keeps things feeling fresh, and does allow each run to be quite wildly different on the types of builds you can make.

Experimenting with different squad combinations is a really big part of the fun here, seeing how they work together, and watching the explosive action as each of them spin around individually to shoot. I like how each character class has 1 main weapon too, which you can evolve during a run into something more powerful - but somewhat grounded with traditional weapons as opposed to magical abilities.

The weapons all feel good too thanks to the design and sound effects, like the spinning saw blades cutting through zombies as it spins around you.

Not only do you get to pick weapons and upgrades during a run, but you'll also find containers that can give you a limited selection of extra tools. Like a frying pan, which can give a chance to stun more elite enemies on hit. Lots of little fun things like that to find. What I especially like about this system is you're not locking into the items you initially pick - you can replace, re-roll and even skip them (for a health and money) through more containers.

See the animated release trailer below:

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Something else I love, because I am but a simple man, is the pickups you can find like Killing Frenzy, where things speed up and you just tear through the hordes. Simple pleasures. Once you get ten minutes into a run - this is where things just become pure chaos. Bullets, explosions and a helicopter with things happening all over the screen. Never a dull moment, and you never feel like you waste a run here.

Plenty to unlock as you progress through it too, so you have a lot to work towards. This includes new survivors, maps, difficulty levels and much more. In addition to the permanent meta upgrade system where at your home base you can power up everyone globally, and go into their individual classes to give them each a boost through their own progression tree.

I think the only bit of the game I wasn't too keen on is the camera, it often feels like your squad is a bit too far up on the screen instead of being properly centred. Apart from that, everything is great.

Played on Fedora KDE 44 with the Steam Controller and Proton 11 - it performs great.

A great entry to the bullet heaven genre overall that doesn't overstay its welcome, and well worth picking up for more casual gamers because you can easily sit back with a controller in hand and just have an absolute blast with it. Feels like they got the difficulty level just right too. Enough to keep you firmly focused on it without it being too easy or too difficult. Quite accessible too with simple controls along with auto-fire and auto-aim that you can individually toggle on / off.

You can't really go wrong with this one.