Yet Another Zombie Survivors review – One of the best survivors-likes around

After a two-year stint in early access, Yet Another Zombie Survivors is finally fully-cooked. Along with its version 1.0 launch on PC, it’s also landed on consoles, giving more people than ever access to one of the best survivors-likes around. As cheesy as its name may be, this is unironically a fantastic, frantic bullet heaven game with a comprehensive upgrade system, plenty of levels, and an endless amount of replayability.

Yet Another Zombie Survivors initially has you select just one character class to play as. The SWAT soldier comes equipped with a pistol and has abilities such as a throwable grenade and a helicopter strike. The Tank has a shotgun as default and his rotating sawblade drones and explosive minefields make him a formidable force. There’s also an electric-based Engineer, a Huntress with a bow and arrow, and a ninja-like Ghost, amongst others.

Upon starting a level, you’ll get the option to “rescue” two more survivors, bolstering you as a team of three that all move together as one. Each character class in your team of three has access to their full arsenal, meaning that when you’re fully upgraded, you can become quite the formidable force. And given the rate at which you’re swarmed by zombies and powerful bosses, you’ll need all the firepower you can get.

The skills you can employ in Yet Another Zombie Survivors aren’t quite as outlandish as those in, say, Vampire Survivors. Your loadouts here feel a little more grounded in reality – well, as close to reality as a zombie apocalypse allows, anyway. Rather than magical water, bibles that spin through the air and explosive doves, the weaponry here involves guns, flamethrowers, swords and crossbows. But when they’re fully upgraded, you can still pack quite the extravagant punch.

One of my favourite things here is how many permanent upgrade options there are outside of a run. You never feel like you’re starting from scratch when jumping into a new fight, because you’ll almost always unlock some form of upgrade. General upgrades apply to all playable characters, and each character has their own specific upgrade tree, too. You can enhance weapons, unlock new weapons entirely, boost abilities, and a whole lot more. More generally, you can improve your health, the amount of damage weapons and abilities do, your critical hit chance, your pick-up radius and more.

No run ever feels like a waste, then, even if you don’t make it to the end. An early death will likely still result in a few upgrade points to be spent, which in turn will make you a little bit stronger for next time around.

It pays to experiment with different characters, as each one has a unique loadout. The Huntress may be slow to fire her bow, for example, but she does a lot of damage. On the other hand, the SWAT soldier has a fairly fast pistol (which can later be upgraded to an even-faster SMG) but each bullet only does a fraction of the damage. It’s a trade-off, and you’ll undoubtedly have your favourites. Combining different characters may also have synergies which are worth exploring: pair the Huntress with the Engineer, for example, and your huntress will gain access to electrified arrow attacks.

You’ll only have access to one map to begin with in Yet Another Zombie Survivors, but over time you’ll unlock more, taking you from the city to zombie-infested wastelands, swamps and more. Every new map has unique enemies that pose their own threats: from bosses that charge to enemies that spit out caustic material towards you, you’ll need to remain nimble on your feet to deal with them all.

No matter what map you’re on, though, you’re in for a great time when you’re in the thick of the action. You can disable auto fire and auto aim, but I really do think Yet Another Zombie Survivors is at its best when you’re simply moving around, dodging enemies and their attacks while letting your weapons and abilities activate by themselves. Along with upgrading your loadout during a run, you can also find team upgrades that improve your reload speed, your clip size, your health, and more. You’ll need it all if you want to see a level through to its end.

Initially, you’ll need to survive 20 minutes to “complete” a level. Once you’ve done that, you’ll unlock the next level and the ability to play the current one in endless mode, where you’re challenged to survive for as long as possible with an ever-increasing difficulty. You can simply play under your own steam, challenging yourself to survive and gaining new upgrade points along the way. Or you can pick up a challenge, which may require you to do something like pick up a set number of chests or collect so many power-ups over the course of your run.

There’s a lot going on in Yet Another Zombie Survivors, then, and it’s for this reason it has a huge amount of replayability. With multiple character classes to level up, plenty of permanent upgrades, several levels to work through and different modes to unlock, there’s dozens of hours of entertainment here. If you’re a fan of survivors-likes, you’re going to absolutely love this one.