Outbreak Review: Cool Top-Down Zombie Horror

Outbreak is a top-down 2D zombie shooter game published by Dead Drop Studios in 2017. In this game, you are offered to play as a survivor who finds himself in a dangerous building inhabited by walking dead. Your mission is to solve various puzzles and shoot zombies to get through and exit the place. You can download Outbreak for your Xbox One with a significant discount.

Graphics – 4.5/5

Outbreak game is made using the Unity engine technology. Though a top-down perspective and pixel-art style are very typical features for the vast majority of low-budget indie titles, this game presents a unique ambiance. You always see some raindrops on the screen and hear the surrounding noise of rain. The atmosphere of loneliness and imminent death is above all praise.

Gameplay – 4.5/5

Outbreak gameplay offers you to choose one of 9 scenarios, a level of difficulty, and a character. Each scenario includes unique quests and puzzles, while the level of difficulty defines your plot admission level. It means that in the Easy mode you are allowed to discover fewer story facts that in the Hard, and Biohazard modes.

There are 4 optional characters. Mason is an experienced police officer and a hard-boiled military veteran. His distinctive feature is high resistance to damage and permission to start every scenario with a police pistol. Alendra is an IT scientist and computer engineer who can easily open electronic locks. Ethan is a student of bioscience faculty, who can restore health faster than others. Finally, Quies is a law student who can carry additional items in the backpack but can't use combinations of Health Kits.

On each level, you have to kill zombies and other mutants to clear the way and find various pieces of information related to your mission. There is no pause menu, which adds hardcore to the gameplay. You can't just stop to read something, because a zombie may reach and beat you up. Every weapon you carry has limited durability, so it's crucial to change guns as frequently as possible as there is no damage indicator.

Controls – 4/5

It's essential to mention in this Outbreak review, that you have to control your character similar to the Resident Evil 4 scheme. It means that you can't just move the stick into the right direction; you also have to rotate the character with the second stick to make it shoot in the right direction.

Replay Value – 4.5/5

To complete Outbreak full game you have to spend about 4 hours. Every episode of the campaign is designed for the cooperative walkthrough, so you may invite up to 3 friends to join you. It's also quite interesting to play scenarios in different difficulty levels to reveal more details.

Conclusion

Outbreak is an authentic indie exploration shooter game in the zombie-apocalypse setting. It is influenced by old-school games with character selection. Selecting a new one, you change the scenario with unique character features. This game is certainly worth the attention of indie fans and zombie apocalypse setting lovers.