Post Soviet Zombies - Escape the Motherland

The Soviet Union Collapse and Rise of the Dead!

Proof that I survived, massive gamer cred

I take gambles on cheap indie games, that's not news, but consider a republic where gambling was illegal until 1989, the USSR. Post Soviet Zombies takes place after the Soviet Union collapse, but right during the zombie outbreak that I can't find in history books, likely a western cover-up. The premise of this game sounds like a meme, but it's a real indie game, one that appears to fit the mold of games like Death Road to Canada, but decadent rogue-lite RNG won't be making an appearance here, comrades, this is a linear adventure. This simple, linear indie game is rough around the edges, but so is Soviet furniture, so it matches the theme here. The music, sound, and graphics are pure utilitarian, packed into 80mb's of indie action. The four playable characters in this game don't even seem to have arms to connect their hands to their bodies, in this game, the only arms that matter are firearms. 

The four escapees are made up of a fireman, policeman, army man and male assassin, don't come in expecting any Jill Valentine here. NPC's are still helpful though, at key points in the game interacting with them is vital for progress, either offering a needed item or triggering a zombie onslaught. The game does have some brief dialogue blurbs between you and the NPC's, but they're brief enough to avoid falling into the prime-time drama that the Walking Dead has, there's not much to say when the goal of the game is to flee the infected, likely to a satellite state that hasn't yet been corrupted by the zombie apocalypse. The zombies themselves are all pretty similar except for the Big Chungus zombie that needed an extra thicc ration of bullets to buy the farm. The undead spawn in huge numbers above ground so there's two trips to the underground poop-railway in Post Soviet Zombies campaign. Whatever the mission is, it always ends with exiting the map, that's kind of the point.

Pointing to what makes Post Soviet Zombies different from other games is less about what the game has and more about what it doesn't. The aforementioned dialogue and store are nonexistent and other than being able to upgrade your guns, there's nothing in terms of xp or scavenging, something that every game adds, like theres some modern game checklist that they're governed by. Obviously a lot of the simplicity of this game is due to time constraints and the developers ability, but I like to see this as an experiment of simplicity. Just what makes a good zombie game when you separate the wheat from the chaff? It merely boils down to surviving and escaping the chaos. Games like the Dead Rising series add so much to the base gameplay that they sometimes undermine their own core gameplay and theme, that's not to say that Post Soviet Zombies is the greatest zombie game to exist, but it's not bogged down in distracting crap either. 

Escaping the former Russian zombie apocalypse is an interesting enough premise for a lot of media, so it's a no-brainer that Post Soviet Zombies is a fun enough experience at under a dollar. Maybe not worth buying, but if you've already bought it, then I can vouch for it's entertainment value at the 90 minute runtime. Speaking of bargain indie games, there's far more to come, Comrades.