Games worth discovering

ZERO Sievert: Survival in a deadly post-apocalyptic world

1K View2022-11-17

You walk with your tiny, ugly character in a visually underwhelming world. You meet a Hunter, like you. "Hi, my frie..." Peng, you are dead.

You see a wolf in the forest, kill it with your gun. While you loot the remains for some meat or pelt, you die. The other wolves killed you while you see the looting screen.

You find a camp of woodchippers and go to greet them. They shoot you on sight.

You see a big, red crystal and go towards it to examine it. You die. Was it radioactive? You will never know.

That is what expects you. At least in the first few hours. This game is merciless. But let's begin from the start. First you choose your starting equipment from six premade selections - different weapons, edibles, medkits and armor. You begin the game in a russian bunker, full of trash but at least with people that are friendly. This is one of the last save places in Zarkov. Meet the bartender, where you can drink away your worries, trade a few items, talk and get your first mission. Or the mad doctor, who is happy that the world is destroyed, because he has now lots of mutants to research. You can also sleep in the bunker. Or stash away your items. There is also a workbench for crafting, to produce items you need, upgrades and new furniture for the bunker. When you leave the bunker, you will meet the train conductor. The railway still works, he will transport you with his large train to the (currently) five locations of the game, like the forest or the makeshift camp. The others (industrial area, swamp, mall) are not available from the start, further biomes are still in developement (probably).

Your job is to be a Hunter. Scavange and explore what is left of the world, after something really bad happened in a former nucelar power plant that turned into a secret (bio?)lab. They conducted experiments, and there was a large explosion. Since then, the world turned into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, most people are dead, many animals turned into mutants. Surviving people are bandits. There are also ghouls, no idea if they were humans before. Anyway, nearly everyone you meet wants to kill you when they see you. Even the other Hunters. No wonder nearly noone returns to the bunker after going outside.

You run around using ASDW, there is no gamepad support. You soon begin to shoot everything you see as well, after you managed to load your weapon. This works only by pressing R, drag and drop from the inventory screen does not work. When you survive a gunfight (the rabbids are easy to kill...) you can loot the remains. Pellets, meat, other hunters have nice weapons or even a Gameboy. I always knew this stuff survives anything (and it doesn't need batteries in this game). Try to collect what is required for your missions, like samples for the doctor. Don't carry too much or you will become slow. The mission description is really bad, the first missions are just primitive "bring me this and you will get a ridiculous reward" missions. Ok, some stuff you receive is useful, like books to upgrade your skills (after reading). Or some more rubles to buy stuff from the overprized traders in the bunker.

Your aim is to survive, to gather ressources, to come back alive to the bunker. Getting back actually is not that difficult. You can always open a map of the (randomized) locations you are in, and there are small circles that are used for extraction. Just go there, and you are magically teleported back to the bunker. More often than that, you die and are also magically transported back to the bunker, keeping your experience points but losing everything you found during the time outside. If it suddenly gets dark, this is not a bug but night has come. I didn't really find bugs, although the loading times after each death (and procedureally creating a new biome) are a bit long.

So, what is cool about the game? The atmosphere. Walking all alone through a deadly world, knowing every step can be your last. Crafting - you can add some fancy upgrades to your weapons. Inventory management - there are a lot of items to find and use. Maybe too many, but collecting them and using them is kind of rewarding. Your character gets better and better all the time, better skills and better equipment.

Top-down survival action game. Survive and progress.

ZERO Sievert - survive in the wastelands

The world has gone down - and you try to survive out in the wastelands. Bandits, mutants... everyone tries to kill you. Scavenge through the lands, completely alone, loot and bring as much as you can back to your base. Upgrade your gear - and go out in the wilds again. Pros: - Great atmosphere - Lots of items to find - but are they all useful and worth to carry around? - Many different weapons - but ammo is hard to find

Sven Evil13K2022-11-16