Unturned [Xbox]
Developed by Smartly Dressed Games and FunLabs, Unturned is a post-apocalyptic zombie sandbox-survival game, where you have to search for weapons and supplies to defend yourself against the zombie hordes. Each time you play, you are dropped into one of eight maps, and you must carefully investigate nearby buildings to arm yourself. You can activate cheats, to gain access to all items straight off the bat, and you can also change the difficulty depending on the level of challenge you’re looking for. You also have the option of playing in first, or third, person depending on your preference, and it’s as simple as tapping down on the D-Pad to switch. As well as the offline mode, there’s an online option where you can play against random players or you can create your own servers with custom rules to play with friends. This is definitely the way to play, as playing alone can feel pretty slow and tedious at times. There are still things to do in the Offline mode, don’t get me wrong - you can explore, and come across Safe Zones where various NPCs will be available to give you a number of quests, but it’s very easy to die repeatedly before you ever come across these Zones, if you’re focusing on clearing out one particular area of the map and looting all of the supplies, and even when you do get some tasks to complete - it’s just not the same without other people to play with.
There are a few different classes available for you to play as, including Civilians, Spec Ops, Lumberjacks, Thieves and more. Each has their own buffs as well as some form of pro for choosing them, including reduced cost for upgrades in certain skills, etc. The zombies here are a force to be reckoned with, as they don’t look all that scary or intimidating, but back yourself into a corner with a few of them coming at you and you’ll quickly realise their strength. You can sneak around, or lay prone to reduce the amount of noise you make, thus drawing less attention to yourself when zombies are lingering. Being able to keep a distance, or stay out of the line of sight of them is important, as you not only have to survive attacks, but you’ll have to stay fed and hydrated too. As you take more damage, either from the zombies, or from a lack of resources, the colour saturation will drop lower and lower until you die. This provides a good visual hint of when to bail out, and find something to replenish your health.
Unturned is the brainchild of Nelson Sexton, the sole developer at Smartly Dressed Games. Prior to this, he was a Roblox creator known by the username DeadzoneZackZak. Unturned evolved from his plans for a sequel to one of his more popular Roblox creations, Deadzone, which explains the blocky, Roblox-esque art style we see here. It’s not the greatest to look at, but it does the job. It actually pulls off the Roblox look better than Roblox itself, with slightly softer, rounded off edges to everything. Each of the maps are simple yet well designed, with wide open areas that - at first - feel needlessly sparse of supplies or shelter, but will later be recognised as a place to take a breather and maybe even set up your own base once you’ve collected some materials. Building feels a little clunky, but once you get the hang of things, you can actually set up some pretty decent little outposts. Gathering materials to do so is quite time consuming, but if you’re playing online with friends or strangers you’ve teamed up with, this helps to speed the process up as you can all work together.
Sound design is a bit hit or miss at times, with the music feeling light and airy within the menu - quite a stark contrast from the usual apocalyptic themes - and being almost entirely absent within the game itself, and sound effects ranging from ominous zombie grunts to guns of varying sound quality. We both came across a few visual and audio glitches at times, with loud, crackling noises upon respawn and the occasional drop in frame rate. Character animation is done pretty well too, with gun positioning as well as the ability to lean to the side to peek round walls and doors feeling and looking great. You’ll come across clothing around the world that can be equipped to increase protection or customise your character.
With all of the cheats available in the game, we were able to test out pretty much everything you can find and/or craft, getting a good feel for which weapons and other items work best for each of our preferences. Vehicles feels pretty useless across the board, offering extremely slow speeds that are inadequate, even when compared to running on foot. Plus the hit boxes for killing zombies with vehicles are way off, with you frequently just clipping right through them from the front, or being completely unable to reverse when they are behind. Guns on the other hand, feel surprisingly good, with nice recoil and sound effects. Some of the weapons sound fantastic, with shots echoing really well around the area, whereas others sound a tad flat, but on the whole they feel satisfying to use. On console, to select from the available cheats you must press down on both thumb sticks, which took a fair bit of figuring out. I’m not sure if we missed a prompt for this somewhere, or if it just isn’t as obvious as it should be.
The price comes in at £19.99 on Xbox, which at first seems like a shockingly steep price but once you get into the game a bit and see it at its full potential, doesn’t seem so bad. If you’re looking for a new survival game to try out, and the Roblox-like appearance doesn’t put you off, then you should consider giving Unturned a bash. The core survival elements are strong, and make you really work to stay alive, especially if you’re playing cheat free. Overall, we had a decent time with Unturned, and definitely enjoyed it more when playing in a group.
In the end, we decided to give Unturned the Collecting Asylum rating of 7/10.
Have you played Unturned yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to RenaissancePR for the Unturned Xbox review code!
