Games worth discovering
1 View2025-09-14
It used to be good, but now it’s not even mid-tier. The game never evolved in any meaningful way, and community feedback has never been a priority. Events feel like nothing more than cash grabs designed to squeeze players instead of offering engaging new content. It’s sad, because the game had real potential early on, but the developers seem either too scared or too unwilling to make the bold updates that would keep it alive. What’s left is a pay-to-win game disguised as free-to-play.
The energy system is the perfect example of outdated, lazy design. Nobody in 2025 wants to wait 24 hours just to be able to play again. Petrol, which should serve as an alternative, is extremely rare and burns out almost instantly. Instead of being a mechanic that adds tension and strategy, it feels like a deliberate choke point to push players into spending money. It’s not gameplay. it’s monetization disguised as progression.
Maps are another major disappointment. There aren’t many, and the ones that exist are painfully small. Exploration feels limited, repetitive, and unrewarding. Loot is scarce unless you go into bunkers but those can only be raided once every 48 hours, which adds yet another frustrating, artificial cooldown to an already padded game. Story progression isn’t much better: it’s locked behind RNG tied to specific locations, many of which also take 24–48 hours to reset. That design choice doesn’t add depth; it just wastes time. Instead of feeling challenged, players are stuck waiting.
Multiplayer mode should have been a chance to breathe new life into the game, but it feels completely detached from the main experience. It’s like they bolted on an entirely different title just to say they had multiplayer, with no effort made to integrate it meaningfully into the core loop. Instead of feeling like an expansion of the survival experience, it feels like a cheap, unfinished side project.
Meanwhile, the devs keep riding on the memory of winning “Best Game of 2017,” as if that title still holds weight. The problem is, other studios kept innovating while Kefir stayed frozen in time. Supercell, for example, drastically improved their games by removing outdated mechanics like troop training times. They weren’t afraid to admit when a design was holding their game back. Kefir, on the other hand, clings desperately to old systems because they generate short-term revenue even if it kills long-term interest.
What’s even more frustrating is realizing what this game *could* have been. Look at Project Zomboid, a true survival classic on PC. It’s punishing, but fair; it’s deep, but rewarding. It gives players freedom to experiment, build, and survive in countless ways. If Kefir had the courage to lean into that kind of depth and make a true mobile survival sandbox, this could have been the definitive handheld version of Project Zomboid. Instead, they went the opposite direction: shallow mechanics, constant timers, and systems designed around monetization instead of survival.
The result is a game that feels more like an obligation than entertainment. Instead of rewarding creativity, exploration, and persistence, it punishes players with wait times, scarcity, and monetization traps. It’s a survival game in name only , the real struggle is tolerating the outdated systems long enough to squeeze a little fun out of it.
In 2017, this game was ahead of its time. In 2025, it’s stuck in the past. Unless you’re willing to spend heavily on a broken progression system, there’s no reason to invest your time here. This is a wasted opportunity that could have been a true classic maybe even the “Project Zomboid of mobile” but instead it’s become a relic of bad mobile game design.
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