Yet Another Zombie Survivors suffers from chronic performance issues that can cause the Fps to plummet from 144 to 60 fps in a matter of seconds and then from 60 to 12 Fps without any apparent reason; while there are some theories why this happens, no one (and at this point that seems to include the developers) knows why exactly this issue affects a wide variety of PC builds from Walmart pre-builds up to RTX 4090 gaming PCs.
I, however, have two main theories based on my observations.
Firstly, XP gems seem to be the primary cause of fps issues, as the rate at which XP gems drop and fps rates drop is closely collated, and by the late mid-game, it is possible to see fps drops of around five frames per minute, which makes surviving the last few minutes of every game far more difficult than the developers intended.
This theory is reformed by the fact that collecting a bunch of gems all at once with a magnet power up fps increases slightly for a few seconds before a fresh batch of dropping gems causes it to plummet, indicating that XP gems are the primary reason why Yet Another Zombie Survivors has terrible performance, regardless of how powerful the Pc may be, with more powerful builds suffering from the same issues, just a few minutes later than those on low-end hardware.
Secondly, it appears that certain boss mobs cause intense fps issues, with the charging boss, in particular, causing drops of around 20fps per boss on screen, something which can (and I have personally witnessed) force frame rates into single digits, ensuring that players will be unable to complete the mission before their desktop locks up entirely due to a rather persistent memory leak that requires a hard reset of the PC to fix.
I have said it before, and I will say it once again: I will take good 2D (or 2.5D) visuals over mediocre 3D visuals any day, and Yet Another Zombie Survivors’ visuals are almost the boilerplate definition of mediocre and appear to all be either asset store models or the work of inexperienced or amateur artists.
Another problem with Yet Another Zombie Survivors is they are more demanding performance-wise, more costly to produce, and, for small development teams, often asset store fodder. And despite all these negatives often result in a higher price for the consumer, something the developer confirmed in a Steam forum post in answer to a question about why Yet Another Zombie Survivors costs roughly twice as much as Vampire Survivors due to the 3D visuals.
Price aside, using 3D models in a genre dominated by 2D and 2.5D games is a large part of why Yet Another Zombie Survivors performs poorly due to the amount of 3D assets required to represent all the gems and monsters anywhere on the map.
Image credit Yet Another Zombie Survivors - Published by Awesome Games Studio and developed by Awesome Games Studio.
Yet Another Zombie Survivors is possibly one of the most generic titles for any game; however, the developers seem to have a thing for terrible names, being most known for the cult classic wave defence game “Yet Another Zombie Defense”.
Yet Another Zombie Survivors is priced fairly for the amount of content that will be present once it leaves early access; however, when you consider Vampire Survivors costs around 50% less than Yet Another Zombie Survivors and contains roughly 50x as much content, right now Yet Another Zombie Survivors isn’t good value for money, despite being very fun and relatively inexpensive.
At the time of writing this review, just one map and six characters are available, in addition to each of those characters not having access to their tier 3 upgrade, meaning that a skilled action roguelike player is unlikely to spend more than 1–2 hours on Yet Another Zombie Survivors before exhausting the early access launch content.
Yet Another Zombie Survivors allows players to level up a large selection of passive abilities from increased XP gain to additional rerolls and weapon damage; however, this is pretty normal for the genre, and unless the developer starts thinking outside the box, Yet Another Zombie Survivors generic, yet adequate progression system will offer little to players who have seen it all before.
Image credit Yet Another Zombie Survivors - Published by Awesome Games Studio and developed by Awesome Games Studio.
Yet Another Zombie Survivors’ entire soundtrack appears to consist of a generic metal track by the king of royalty-free music, Kevin MacLeod, who makes a wide selection of excellent music; however, after being forced to listen to the generic doom-esque “melody”, I have come to the point that I never want to hear another royalty-free heavy metal track again.
It’s early days for Yet Another Zombie Survivors, and things will improve. Still, as of the time of writing this review, there is a great imbalance between various characters’ special abilities, with some being incredibly overpowered and others (such as the swat team helicopter) being little more than a point sink.
Will the developers find a way to make the upgrades less tedious? Most likely! But right now, except for just a few upgrades, Yet Another Zombie Survivors feels generic and lacks build diversity due to each character having an optimal build, with little to no room for experimentation.
Image credit Yet Another Zombie Survivors - Published by Awesome Games Studio and developed by Awesome Games Studio.
At launch, Yet Another Zombie Survivors offers a literal Potato upgrade that does absolutely nothing, which the developers confirmed is a placeholder item and will be upgraded or removed in the future, confirming that players were never intended to get their hands on it, to begin with, and that it is not at this time a key component of an unlockable achievement or ability like some had theorized.
Yet Another Zombie Survivors is a action rogue-like video game developed and published by Awesome Games Studio, it was released on 13 July 2023 and retails for $10.
Yet Another Zombie Survivors is available exclusively on PC.
The following peripherals are officially supported:
Yet Another Zombie Survivors is unrated and contains the following:
Yet Another Zombie Survivors is a fun game sold at a fair price, but at this stage of its early access journey, there is very little in the way of actual content, which when coupled with cataclysmic performance issues across a wide range of hardware configurations, make it very difficult to recommend playing it right away, however taking advantage of its early access price and waiting for it to complete its early access journey is a reasonable course of action considering the developer’s reputation for releasing excellent, albeit rather janky indie games.
