If I said anything good about Land of the Survivors, I would be lying.
Singleplayer.
I am pretty tolerant of small bugs in moderate-sized games, but for a title this small in scope to have so many bugs is a testament to just how little the developer cares about the game and how little skill he has to address issues that arise.
I was forced to tab out and force close the game multiple times after the UI became non-interactive, meaning I could not perform even simple tasks such as selecting a character, choosing an upgrade, or starting a mission.
My character model disappeared except for her head multiple times.
My vehicle became stuck or stopped moving altogether multiple times, resulting in multiple failed runs.
Multiple times, my special abilities did not work as intended, resulting in my vehicle taking damage instead of distributing it.
Trying to start a level while using the blue Sedan caused Land of the Survivors to crash instantly, rendering my coin investment in unlocking it entirely meaningless.
While a certain number of teething issues are to be expected, this is not a teething issue; this is a full-blown dental emergency. The fact that the developer was unable to address any of these issues or comment on them in the days since Land of the Survivors’ release indicates that he either is unable to fix the issues or unwilling to do so, neither of which bodes well for the handful of people who actually bought the game.
The most difficult part of playing Land of the Survivors isn’t the enemies you face, but rather controlling each vehicle, as it seems the developer has never ridden in a vehicle or at least paid no attention as he did so, as no matter which vehicle you control, it has the handling of an oil tanker, and making anything short of a\large swooping turn is next to impossible without slowing a crawl.
Another red flag is that Land of the Survivors lacks controller support. While a good-quality action roguelike can be played with a mouse or keyboard, a poor-quality one needs all the help it can get, and Land of the Survivors is very poor quality, if nothing else.
Land of the Survivors is comprised almost entirely of store-bought assets and lacks cohesion in theme and quality. Player characters appear to be pulled from various 3D model repositories, and enemies are equally generic and low-quality.
The five maps in-game at launch are equally bad. They mostly consist of a floor texture and some wire fencing, with a few pops scattered on the other side of the fence for “added variety.”
The UI is equally bad and appears to be mostly a default “how to make a Game UI in Unity” type project without styling or proper placement. It’s honestly dreadful and likely the work of AI or copying and pasting code snippets.
Finally, each level uses an AI-generated image to represent it on the level select screen (and I am not opposed to AI). However, it appears these images have not been rescued to fit the space provided, instead opting to use the standard 1024 x 1024 output of most free AI image generators.
What little narrative exists makes next to no sense, somehow revolving around “The Church” (which church?), making arenas for people to fight zombies for some unknown reason; I am curious why the developer chose to make a Church the mastermind of this idea when it sounds more like the type of thing a post-apoc warlord would be interested in than a religious body.
The developer has wasted no time releasing a demo for a new game, “Zombie Battlefield Survivors,” which uses the same assets and surprisingly has almost all of the same bugs (except those related to vehicles, which don’t exist in Zombie Battlefield Survivors).
While there is nothing wrong with planning ahead, making a new game while your current game is barely playable is not a great way to show you’re committed to either title.
Recycling the same low-quality assets and showcasing the same poor coding that doomed Land of the Survivors does little to give me hope that Zombie Battlefield Survivors will be anything but awful.
While Land of the Survivors is very affordable, it is hardly good value for money considering that it is mostly comprised of store-bought assets, AI-generated script, and AI art, in addition to being a bug-filled mess that is honestly so bad, nothing short of a complete rebuild could make it worth even half of what it is currently selling for ($0.89)
Land of the Survivors is a action rogue-like video game developed and published by ZHANGFAN, it was released on 24 April 2024 and retails for $0.89.
Land of the Survivors is available exclusively on PC.
The following peripherals are officially supported:
Land of the Survivors is unrated and contains:
Land of the Survivors is one of the worst games I have ever reviewed, and I find it impossible to find even one nice thing to say about it. While I wish the developer well, I strongly believe that Land of the Survivors and the demo of his latest game (using the same assets as Land of the Survivors) proves that he has no talent for game development and should find something he is passionate about and good at and then go and do that instead.
