German studio Silent Dreams best known for her parody series Grotesque Tactics, in which the authors ridiculed everything – youth culture, fantasy clichés, the standards of the RPG genre in general and turn-based combat in the style of Japanese role-playing games in particular. Two years ago they released the same funny sequel with a self-explanatory title Holy Avatar vs. Maidens of the Dead. In the new creation Silent Dreams There are also turn-based battles, somewhat reminiscent of what we see in JRPGs, and the word Dead in the title. But here the Germans finally swirled the fountain of their simple humor. And what kind of jokes can there be when there are zombies all around, and you absolutely need to survive and save the world??

All types of opponents have their own characteristics, and many can also use unique combat skills.

This is the job – to survive!

Dead Age has all the hallmarks of a typical survival game. But what is important here is not the presence or absence of originality, but how the gameplay elements are worked out. So, they have been worked out at a decent level.

We take on the role of a young man who, finding himself in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, first searches for his missing sister, then finds her already infected, tearfully blows her head off and ends up in a camp of survivors. Naturally, almost immediately he becomes the new leader, on whom the lives of others now depend.

And it’s not easy to survive. The passage is divided into days, and progress is saved only after the end of the next day – if you died before that, start a new game. To prevent this from happening, you need to properly develop your characters, collect resources important for survival (food, materials, tools) and correctly distribute responsibilities among your charges.

Each of the survivors, whose number is gradually growing, has both combat and crafting abilities. Therefore, it is possible to create narrow specialists. Some will basically walk with you and fight, using their advanced skills in handling one or another type of weapon, while others are better “sharpened” for work in the camp. There you can hunt, collect plants, “craft” weapons, armor or first aid kits, and also protect others.

Each duty has its own https://nalcascasino.co.uk/withdrawal/ skill – Survival, Crafts, Medical, Cunning. They will also help during random events outside the camp. Will you be able to open an abandoned car without getting hurt or setting off the alarm (and the undead will come running at the noise), will you be able to crawl into a cave or distract the attention of enemies so that the group can quickly run further – the chance of success in each case depends on the level of “pumping” of the corresponding skill. True, for some reason Cunning is responsible for both the effectiveness of camp security and lockpicking, but let’s chalk this up to mysterious German logic..

Step-by-step tests

You’ll have to spend a lot of time fiddling with characters, equipping them, leveling them up, and redistributing them to this or that job. Someone, for example, after another foray into the forest or on the highway in search of resources, is already breathing his last – next time it is better to leave him to work in the camp, where his health is gradually restored. True, if there are few guards, and the threat of invasion by zombies or bandits is great, then they can kill you there (as well as seize valuable resources). But all this is a pleasant fuss, on which the survival of the group directly depends.

The situation with battles is more complicated. As I already said, they are implemented in a turn-based JRPG style, but they look much more primitive: you and your opponents stand opposite each other and on your turn hit with one or another weapon, use items from your inventory, as well as attacking or defensive skills to, for example, knock down an enemy or heal an ally.

Actually, that’s all: no combinations, no calling on assistants, not even the opportunity to go into defense. The only tactics are to use firearms carefully (ammo is in great short supply), to fight hand-to-hand more often (therefore, melee combat needs to be “pumped up” by everyone!) and “take out” the most dangerous opponents first.

Moreover, at each available location you need to go through a couple of dozen of these identical, routine battles in order to get to the mission goal or to an important “boss”. And the levels themselves are not particularly diverse – for a long time you will only have access to the forest and the highway in the night or day mode, which differ only in the strength of the enemies and the resources found there. Random events on them, despite all the “randomness” required in such cases, are also constantly repeated.

On the other hand, this routine work is also very important and useful – you earn experience, collect resources and complete numerous tests to kill different types of enemies, for which you are given special medals. For these medals you can then unlock new character classes (soldier, medic, engineer) and receive bonuses that will be available upon a new playthrough.

Love in the Time of Plague

The authors did not ignore such an important component of all survival games as nonlinearity and moral choice. Of course, in Dead Age there is not the same intensity, drama and really complex, twisted dilemmas as, for example, in The Walking Dead from Telltale Games. But still sometimes you think and check with your conscience. Is it worth sharing food with a hungry boy when you are already running low on food?? Should you come to the aid of two poor souls surrounded by zombies when all your characters are already unwell?? Should you agree to attack a group of other survivors in order to receive excellent weapons as a gift from the bandits??

Moreover, in Dead Age, in addition to random events and routine missions to kill certain enemies and collect resources, there is also a rather interesting plot – we must fix the radio tower, get to the city by the date of general evacuation and ultimately save the world. And there, too, from time to time you have to rack your brain: whether to accept new people into the camp, which will increase the consumption of resources; who to blame for the assassination attempt on one of the important characters; which girl to have an affair with.

In general, relationships with partners need to be built carefully and correctly – they may be offended. One of the newly arrived girls, for example, first asks to help her find the weapon of her dead boyfriend, and then flatly refuses to give it to anyone else, although she is a poor shooter. Not everyone in the group likes this, and then you have to decide what to do. Depending on your actions, you can get six different endings.

Dead Age — another “survival” game about zombies, but with its own characteristics. And thank God for the signature humor Silent Dreams not included in their number. The Germans, of course, are still joking out of inertia – they allow our hero to flirt with various ladies in the survivors’ camp and call their combat system Final Fantasy-style turn-based combat, although it is also far from FF, how far humor is Grotesque Tactics from a comedy frenzy South Park: The Stick of Truth.

But these are, so to speak, residual phenomena. Moreover, in some places, on the contrary, it becomes a bit boring – the battles and locations are too monotonous. However, this is already a cost of the genre. In general Dead Age is a serious, thorough and complex game that I am sure will appeal to all fans of harsh survival challenges.

Pros: interesting plot; well-developed survival mechanics; availability of professions; good role-playing system; there is nonlinearity and moral choice.
Cons: monotonous and not very interesting fights, few interesting locations.