Taking inspiration from the likes of Dead State and Jagged Alliance, Urban Strife is already in a very good way, even though it’s only just launching in Early Access.
I recently played Dead Season and felt it was solid enough, but could benefit from having a more open structure that allows you to both plan more and lean into the survival element of zombie apocalypse stories. Well, White Pond Games clearly knew what sort of game I was thinking of as Urban Strife seems to tick most of the boxes that I wanted, even in an Early Access state.
You’ll play as your created character (complete with various stats) who awakens after an ambulance crash. The zombie apocalypse has been ruining everything for the past couple of years, but you appear to be one of those lucky few who is immune. Anyway, you are rescued during the tutorial and taken to a survivor’s camp where you’ll meet a number of characters to add to your team before you are sent out to bring together local factions in the hopes of surviving the incoming zombie horde.
There’s a lot of The Walking Dead DNA in Urban Strife, from character tropes, rival factions, and even the CDC falling to a rampaging throng of zombies that are now heading your way. Whilst character stories are a crux of that comic series, they feel less well-developed here. This is fine though, as the game’s mechanics are really quite solid. You’ll need to manage your base and its resources as well as personal equipment and any injuries to your squad before setting out on expeditions to complete quests and scavenge for items.
In the field, you’ll head to specific nodes that you can explore in real time before switching to turn-based mode should combat be required. Even though you can highlight containers with items in, scavenging can be a bit of a faff, as you need to go to every building and vehicle that gets highlighted. I can see why this is done, as you don’t necessarily know what’s in and around those areas, so you could stumble into some trouble if you aren’t prepared.
As you’d expect for a zombie-infested world, you’ll spend time fighting other humans as much as the undead. Human enemies are somewhat tactical, making good use of the environment to protect themselves or close range, and have equipment as scavenged as yours. You’ll just as often take on foes fighting using nail guns as you will taking on rifle wielders.
Combat uses action point points for moving and attacking around a grid. I liked that the game shows you how many action points you have left as well as weapon uses depending on where you move to. You can select which body part to aim for when attacking, which is nice, but you’ll pretty much always want to aim at the head or centre mass. Cover is important as you might expect, as is getting into the optimal range for your weapon.
Stealth is an option to an extent, and one you’ll want to prioritise when taking on the undead who can overwhelm you quickly. There’s a nice system that shows sight and hearing ranges of enemies, so you can sneak up and get the drop on some enemies. Annoyingly, stealth doesn’t seem to work nearly as well against human foes. Often if you silently take down one opponent, all the other members of their faction in the zone know about it and will attack on sight. Hopefully this will get resolved in the final version.
You don’t have to fight all the humans you see though. You can try to make peace with factions by completing jobs for them, often at the expense of other factions of course. There appears to be an overall goal of trying to unite as many factions as possible to be ready for that zombie horde. A lot of quests involve you going out and killing a group of zombies or humans, although there might be a different framing around it. I worry that in the long run this may get a little stale, but as your initial stats involve ones that can make speech checks easier there will likely be ways to talk your way through situations more frequently.
Dealing with your base mostly involves handling resource gathering and generation. Initially, you’ll need to scavenge everything for the camp to make sure supplies are maintained. If you run out of anything, panic overtakes the camp and you’ll have 24 hours to get supplies high enough to survive, otherwise it’s game over. You’ll always be on the back foot here, so sooner or later you’ll need to get enough building supplies and blueprints to build farms and reading areas to maintain food and morale.
It’s a nice system that really does force you to plan ahead. Once you’ve scoured an area for usable materials, new ones won’t spawn. Interestingly, building materials are often things you’ll want to be using in the field too. Weapons can be taken apart for constructing, but maybe you’d be better off keeping them back for fighting or replacing broken equipment. There are plenty of choices to make throughout which feels like there’s at least some depth to the management side.
Team members need management too, as their injuries can stack up. They aren’t the hardiest folks, so taking hits will lower their stats quickly, which includes their action point pool. You can heal them back at base, but this takes up time which could impact how many resources you have left. If you don’t take care of them though, they can end up dead, or worse, undead. There’s permadeath here, as well as infection to worry about, and as there isn’t a cure, you’ll need to find ways to keep the infection under control unless you want to have to put down your former ally.
Now, this is an Early Access game, which comes with the various things that you might associate with it. There are the odd bugs here and there, although nothing game breaking that I came across. A fair few text errors cropped up, as well as some graphical glitches, but Urban Strife feels solidly put together at this point. The visuals work well enough, although aren’t going to impress beyond their functionality, but the sound was a little anaemic in places, with guns not sounding as powerful as I’d expect. Equally, some of the voice acting was pretty weak, especially my main character. Kaylee comes across quite well, but Billy Bo just sounds annoying, and I’m somewhat glad voice lines are limited to them responding to orders rather than being fully voiced.
As it stands, Urban Strife is absolutely worth taking a look at if you’re into the likes of State of Decay and Mutant Year Zero. There’s plenty to enjoy at the moment, although the combat can drag a little bit with extended engagements, and it feels somewhat feature complete even at this early point. It’s one that’s worth keeping an eye on the development of at the very least. Hopefully its full release will arrive before long.
Urban Strife is available in Early Access now.
