Exploring Zombie Hunter, Inc.
- ceejwrites
- Jan 23
- 7 min read
Updated: Mar 9
TITLE: Zombie Hunter, Inc.
VERSION: 1.0
GENRE: Topdown, Shooter, RPG.
TRAILER:
NARRATIVE:
The game's official description goes as follows: "Zombie Hunter-for-hire who rescues stranded survivors for a reasonable fee, of course. It features a unique "Helicopter Camera" that allows you to aim at the head for the first time in top-down shooters and adds a new dimension to the world exploration." I mostly agree with the latter part and its uniqueness, but the former doesn't hold true in the present version; the game plays more as a zombie survival game where you take on the role of an overly timid, middle-aged man who does his best to navigate the world till he's saved. In the future version where the story is expanded upon, maybe it will, but for now it doesn't.
GAMEPLAY:
It has a survival-centric loop that's prevalent with games in its genre. Explore, scavenge, or loot, combat; stay alive/survive. The game's mechanic with the helicopter camera that helps you aim at the head adds a layer of uniqueness but doesn't offer much difference, as with top-down survival games, you simply don't care much about perfect aim.
LUDONARRATIVE DISSONANCE:
Noticing subtleties may be my thing, but I think this was quite obvious. Going through the initial sequence of the narrative, a screen shows up saying it's 3:52 am, but immediately after the fade-out and into the protagonist's room, we are met with a radiant, sunlit room with such intensity that bold shadows are cast on the floor and the rays light up the apartment. Except the game is set somewhere north of the Arctic Circle or south of the Antarctic Circle during a midnight sun; the chances of that happening are very low. It shouldn't be this bright by 3:52am.
DIFFICULTY:
Not difficult, but constantly frustrating. Picking up one weapon means you lose the other. I'll expand more upon this aspect later. I found myself constantly frustrated in a boredom-promoting way, leading me to quit. Don't get me wrong, games can be positively frustrating; a good example is FromSoftware's Elden Ring. I died an unreasonable amount of time, but it gave me enough bits of progress and micro doses of dopamine to keep going.
PROGRESSION:
The game progresses rather slowly, even with the development of its character. One would think after a plethora of killing for self-survival the protagonist would develop a backbone, but until the story is halted—rather abruptly—he remains spineless. With the level design, it was really well done; the character goes from his room with enough tutorialization to the roof, then into the world. Love when good level design follows the concept of teaching players in a small space and then progressively making their space bigger.
BALANCING:
The balancing needs a lot of work. A shotgun shouldn't have more range than a rifle. Enemy atomics need to be revisited; an obese zombie vampire shouldn't move at the same pace as a regular one and should be able to tank more hits. Ammo count and lack of an arsenal halt gameplay and push it from survival to frustration very quickly. The exploding zombies also need to be tutorialized, as they're too difficult as a concept of emergence, which can lead to frustration. They could be better balanced by reducing their movement speed and AOE radius for explosion.
UNIQUENESS:
The game has a unique mechanic, but it does so little for the gameplay that its presence can and will be overlooked.
STRENGTHS:
1. Excellent audiovisual cues.
2. Good voice acting.
3. Unique concept.
4. Simple UI that's easy to navigate.
WEAKNESSES:
1. Lack of weapon variety: picking 1 means losing another, and ammo counts are less than ideal for a survival game.
2. Game atomics need better balancing.
3. The story stops after the first scenario is completed; Bob picks me up and just drops me somewhere with no story continuity.
4. Character development is nonexistent, as the protagonist remains timid even after a plethora of killings.
5. The death screen should also come with "return to main menu" and "quit" buttons.
6. Ammo count after death isn't efficient (12 bullets to face a horde till you reach the next loot is insufficient); this should be adjusted in every level, especially a level of boy meets mad world.
7. Needs a lot of work with balancing; gameplay evokes frustration more than fun presently. Didn't experience the flow state.
8. As unique as the control is, it's not intuitive, as getting a better view of zombies sometimes means moving around and rotating. A potential fix would be highlighting zombies when they're behind buildings and platforms or not in our immediate POV.
The UI button for graphic quality scrolls backwards when clicked, which is unnecessarily unique as it halts performance. The forward scroll from low to ultra and back to low procedurally and safely increases the workload on your GPU, which helps it stabilize and adjust better than a backward scroll from low to ultra, potentially leading to crashes.
Y doesn't work for rotation; only F does.
The interaction box needs to be bigger with weapon caches.
Upon exiting the room where Bob drops you and progressing to the next scene, reloading after dying presents you with a black screen, but gameplay has resumed as UI elements and sound can be seen and heard. When you can finally see what's happening, you're already surrounded by 3 zombies and have to fight them with 12 bullets. Couldn't play past this point.
BUGS: (ANALYSIS, SEVERITY CLASSIFICATION AND REPDUCTION STEPS)
1. Ghost truck :
Summary: In the second level, a truck east of the first location can be passed through by players and enemies alike.
Expected Result: Block player from going through vehicles.
Actual Result: Allows player pass through vehicles
Reproduction steps:
Boot the title on build "Zombie Hunter, Inc v1".
Playthrough level 1.
On the second scenario of Level 2.
Get to location.
Move towards the vehicle.
Severity: Medium
Technical Reproducibility: 5/5 (100%).
Potential fixes: Add a collision box to the truck and make it solid to prevent all from walking through it.
Now you see me, now you zomb:
Summary: After entering the second scenario in the first stage, zombies disappears for 1-2 seconds after jumping down from a higher platform to the floor.
Expected results: Zombie lands properly without falling through surface
Actual Results: Zombie is missing for 1-2 seconds after landing.
Reproduction Steps:
1. Boot the title on build "Zombie Hunter, Inc v1".
2. Playthrough first and second scene.
3. Upon reaching third scene approach the higher ground.
3. Move towards zombie to get noticed (aggro).
4. Jump down while still having aggro.
5. Study zombie animation when it jumps down.
Severity: Low
Technical reproducibility: 5/5 (100%)
Potential Fixes: Fix the physics relationship between the enemy mesh and buildings. Adjust the building collision box to cover every visible part of its mesh.
Rotahang:
Summary: In any level, especially in areas with a lot of zombies, there's significant fps drop, almost to the point of freezing.
Expected Result: Seamless rotation while turning to aim.
Actual result: FPS drops profoundly, leading to freezes.
Reproduction Steps:
1. Swivel mouse fast to rotate fast while moving
Severity: High/Medium
Technical Reproducibility: 4/5 (80%)
Potential fixes: It could be the event it's tied to in the programming architecture. In Unreal Engine, an event dispatcher while rotating could fix the memory overload.
4. Sewer strikes:
Opening the sewers before playing almost guarantees crashing the PC.
Summary: In the main menu after navigating to the sewer, the game freezes and then crashes.
Expected Result: See achievements after opening the sewers.
Actual Result: Game freezes then crashes
Reproduction Steps:
Boot the title on build "Zombie Hunter, Inc v1".
After Main Menu loads.
Click on Sewers
Severity: High/Critical
Technical reproducibility: 5/5 (100%)
Potential fixes: Sewer was likely not programmed to be opened until achievement exist, DIsable interaction with Button with a notification telling players no achievements exist yet.
CONTROLS:
Works well, WASD to move, E to interact (which should have been tutorialized when the player approaches the first dead zombie officer he meets to pick up a gun), Space to jump (wasn't tutorialized), and Ctrl to crouch (perfectly tutorialized). Nothing too complex.
REPLAYABILITY: Let's use a range of 1-10 for replayability. For me, this was a 4; there is not much to discover, explore, or excite, and it is quite linear in gameplay.
INTERFACE: UI is basic and easy to navigate. Good iconography when it comes to what can be interacted with and the icons for guns.
MUSIC: The music choice might be the best thing here, music choice is perfectly cohesive with gameplay and premise. Ui could use some more sound effects for when you click or scroll.
LOCALIZATION: Some errors with spellings but still understandable and not bad.
VISUAL AESTHETIC: Pleased, not too much; the props are well made and fit into the theme of the areas. Guns also look well made too. I think variety could be added to the levels. Twisting and rotating some props on a table, would make the world feel natural and real.
OPTIMIZATION:
Not very well optimized; the file size is quite big for what it is, and design choices further accentuate a lack in this area.
SUMMARY:
Zombie Hunter, Inc. could be something special once its narrative is fully developed- they're off to a great start outside of the random story halt. If its bugs were fixed, its ammo was more balanced, and the player had an arsenal of guns that worked better for different enemy types, and maybe its uniqueness was pushed with active pickups like slow motion. This would make it necessary to take advantage of this groundbreaking mechanic of the helicopter camera to complete the game. It's the alpha release, and I look forward to what it will become in the future.
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