[Hottentot]

Warning! A wall of text ahead! I suppose this is more glorified first impressions than a real review, but here it goes anyway.



A HANDFUL OF FOOLS

Ladies and gentlemen. I present you the last hope of humanity: five randomly picked imbeciles dragged screaming and kicking from the street. We had to convince them that it's safer here in the house rather than in the middle of the street where everyone else seems to be a brain eating zombie these days. A baseball bat helped in that. Can these five brave souls make their way through the city infested with the walking dead and gather enough resources to get out of there alive? Actually, scratch that. That's the optimistic scenario. A far more realistic question would be if these five poor bastards can get across the street without maiming each other.

Zafehouse: Diaries is an open ended strategy game set in a nameless city that has suffered a sudden and unexplained zombie apocalypse. The city is generated individually each time you start a new game, so each time will be somewhat different. It gives you the control of five randomly generated dudes who somehow managed to find each other and are now trying to get out of the city alive. There are two different ways for this, each featuring their own game mode. In the classic mode the survivors must find clues indicating when and where a rescue chopper will come looking for them. They also need a radio and the right frequency to contact the helo when it comes. In the Road Kill mode they need to find a vehicle, enough spare parts to fix it and, weirdly enough, a map so that they will know where to go (you'd think "anywhere but here" would be good enough). Each of these modes offers different challenges. On one hand the classic mode only requires you to have the radio and the frequency and be in the right place at the right time. But if you miss that, you're done for. The Road Kill mode has no time limit, but you still need to find all the stuff needed for escape. And fixing the vehicle may be somewhat challenging with hundreds of zombies swarming around. Both game modes still revolve around the same basic concepts: explore the city, scavenge supplies, find the vital stuff and (hopefully) survive long enough to make use of it.



SOAP OPERA: THE ZOMBIE EDITION

When I say that the last hope of humanity is five randomly picked imbeciles, I mean it. These people are not heroes. They are carpenters, musicians, bartenders, cleaners and various other professions. And just because they happen to be in the middle of hundreds of hungry zombies doesn't mean they like each other. Oh no. In fact, they bicker, argue, taunt each other and may even start fighting with each other. Is someone they don't like slowing the team down on the way to another location because a zombie bit that guy's toes off? Too bad: the rest of the team is totally going to leave him behind and see if he can get there on his own. These guys have about as much idea of teamwork as an average Counter Strike playing brat on a public server. And there is nothing you can do about it, because "you" don't exist. You don't even make an avatar for yourself. You just try to guide these morons through this situation as much as you can. But ultimately what they manage or fail to do depends on them and while they are not exactly bright, they can and will also come up with ideas on their own. You can be as über skillz zombie killah as you want in the other games, but here you are not.

Therefore a major part of the game is to make the best of what you got. One of your first tasks is to make these guys like each other if you can. There are a few ways for that. You can, for example, spread rumors about one of them once per day, which may make some other survivors see the person in question in better light, but might as well backfire on some other survivors. You can also try making sure that the survivors who don't like each other are not forced to do things together, so they'll have more time to concentrate on the task and less time to argue. Whereas teaming the survivors who like each other might be good for the team spirit. But then, even if they like each other, they might get frustrated because the other survivor might be inefficient at the task and slow down the other one. The game is thankfully very helpful in planning this. First of all, it shows you the relations of the survivors when you are about to put them on tasks, so you don't accidentally mix people who want to kill each other. Each survivor also has his or her skill in each task rated by stars, so you don't end up mixing a master chef and a bachelor who can't even boil water. But nothing still stops you from doing this and sometimes you will have to consider the pros and cons very carefully.

All in all, what you get in the beginning of the game should be studied carefully as it will have a critical impact on your playthrough. And there are times when you just are in trouble. For instance, there were once three women on my team and then a gay man who didn't like women. And the other man didn't like gays. And I'm not even going to mention all the problems the ladies had with each other. It was a mess that would have made the Bold and the Beautiful pale in comparison. On the other hand, some other times I have had very clear teams and much easier time with managing my group.

The survivors also have skills based on their profession and their personality. All of these are crucial but again, they are as random as the survivors are. You will have teams where no one knows how to build barricades. You will have teams where no one knows how to cook. Teams where people are absolutely marvelous at spotting zombies, but can't search locations for supplies if their lives depend on it. There will be awesome aces and there will be useless idiots. I mean, what good is a musician who literally isn't good at anything else than making lots of noise and thus attracting zombies? There are only so many times I can feed her to the undead so the rest of the crew can escape. One of the challenges in the game is that you will have to find use for these people too. After all, having at least someone spot the zombies while the rest of the team is searching the location is better than having no one at all. That way they will get an advance warning when the undead eat the screaming spotter. And again, the relations play important part here: you may have two people who are excellent at something and can't stand each other. Do you make them work together to achieve results faster or have just one of them on the task so they won't fight with each other?



SURVIVAL STRATEGY FOR DUMMIES

The game is turn based and advances one hour at a time. At the beginning of each turn you assign a task to each survivor or leave some of them idle. In between the turns they will carry out the tasks as well as they can and you'll be briefed of what happened at the beginning of the next turn. There are various tasks, but none of them feels useless and in fact it is sometimes difficult to decide what you should prioritize. Should you be building traps and barricades to your current location in case the zombies find you, or should you be modifying your equipment to make it more efficient at killing the undead? Someone should probably be cooking meals too so you won't starve, but then you should also have someone scout the houses nearby for cooking ingredients. And of course, someone should always be at least watching for the zombie movement outside or better yet, patrolling the area and trying to figure out if you are being surrounded. The zombies aren't any smarter than you'd expect them to be, but if they find out where you are, they will come for you.

You can of course keep moving. Contrary to the game's name, there isn't any designated safehouse in the game. Instead as you move from building to building you can choose to start fortifying any one you want. Some buildings are better for this than the others. For instance, large buildings with many windows and entrances are not ideal, and the game at least claims to keep track on these things when it calculates the combat results. Bunkering down is still optional and might sound useless, but there is a catch. The catch is that your very limited supplies don't go into any magic extradimensional bag where you can store anything you want. All the supplies you want to have with you will have to be carried by the survivors from one place to another each time you move. And since these are no super heroes but ordinary human beings we are talking about, there is always something you will have to leave behind. So: shotgun or rifle? Or perhaps both, but then you can't take the frying pan to make food. Perhaps you will find one at the next house. Or then not. How many rounds of ammo should you take with you? How about medical supplies? And you need tools to build barricades and modify equipment. Flashlight would be useful for searching in new dark locations. When faced with choices like these, having a safehouse where you can store supplies suddenly starts feeling like a smart idea.



SINCE WHEN DOES SPLATTER HAVE A STORY?

Every now and then you will get an event where you will have to make a decision. The events are somewhat random, but also depend on what is happening in the game. For instance, if you are treating an injured survivor, you can catch a member of your crew stealing painkillers from the supplies. Either you let it go or confront the member about it. Both decisions will have pros and cons. Some of the events will have huge things to consider. One of your team members may, for example, get infected in a fight against the zombies. Noticing the infection, you can try to stop it, let it be, or decide to kill the survivor. None of those sounds exactly pleasant. Fortunately the events are still rare enough not to become an annoyance, but they can still ruin your day and well planned strategy. From what I've seen on the forum discussion, some of these events are still pretty poorly balanced and might get tuned in the future.

The game's storytelling is fairly laconic. As the name would imply, the story is tracked through a diary as it develops. After each turn a few more entries will be written based on what happened on the last turn. These can be single lines saying "Hottentot found a flashlight in the basement" but on some occasions also go into more detail like saying "Hottentot smashed the zombie's head with the butt of his shotgun after first blasting the undead's right leg". If the survivor didn't do anything, the diary can still say "Hottentot played solitaire". It also takes time to describe the locations visited, so no two buildings will be exactly the same or just generic "houses", "hospitals" or "stores". Every now and then pictures will be added as well. For example, if you searched for a house and found a hammer, there might be a picture of it at the beginning of the entry. The chosen style fits the game nicely and it feels like I'm reading a logbook written in haste. It also leaves a lot of room for the imagination. After the game is over, one way or another, the diary can also be exported to your computer and studied or edited with the diary editor that comes with the game. It's sort of an automatic AAR feature like in the King of the Dragon Pass, but of course can't match a real AAR.



TOO LONG, DIDN'T READ

All in all, this is a decent little game and takes a fresh view on the otherwise used zombie survival genre. When the survival doesn't depend directly on you as the player anymore, it actually starts feeling like a survival game. It's no longer about your own personal skills, but more about using your brain to make the best of what you have been given in a pretty much hopeless situation. If you want to beat the game, you have to care about your survivors and think if the risks are worth the (very uncertain) rewards. Once you grasp the basic concepts it's easy to get by, but by no means simple task to survive. All my attempts so far have ended in my team being eaten. That, in a game like this, is a good sign.