October is always so much fun because we get a lot of new games with horror elements to play. We’ve tried to cover quite a few of them here at GiN this month including Vampire: The Masquerade Reckoning of New York, The Casting of Frank Stone and even Crime Scene Cleaner. Today, right as Halloween rolls around, we are reviewing a really fun new zombie apocalypse title, Dread Dawn, which is available for under $20 on Steam.
Now, Dread Dawn is coming into a pretty crowed field of zombie titles. In addition to games like Call of Duty where new titles in that series often launch with a zombie mode, there are plenty of games that are fully focused on the walking dead. For example, GiN columnists Neal Sayatovich and Vincent Mahoney often group up to play 7 Days to Die or State of Decay 2. Meanwhile, there are series like Dying Light, Dead Island and World War Z which offer first or third person interfaces, which could help some people get more into the spirit of the adventure. And some titles like They Are Billions lean into the swarming nature of zombies since they always seem to keep coming in both games and television shows.
Normally a new title coming into a crowded genre would have a bit of an uphill climb, but right from the start Dread Dawn does a lot to distance itself from other zombie games. For one, the main part of the adventure (there was recently a sandbox mode added) features a pretty compelling story that takes us right from the start of a zombie outbreak to past the point where an entire city has been overrun by the undead. Also, most other zombie type games have the main character pretty much alone in their world, maybe meeting another survivor or a small outpost of living people from time to time. But in Dread Dawn, you play a student at a university surrounded by others. So, while the focus is always on individual survival, there is also a strong community aspect that makes a lot of sense, especially at the start of a citywide outbreak.
As a college student quarantined at their university when a mysterious virus starts to spread across the city, you are pretty clueless at the beginning of Dread Dawn. The people who are infected are banning together and “rioting” according to the news, and when they attack people, those people rise up and join the horde. Of course, we as players know that this is a zombie outbreak, but the students at the school have no clue at first. Thankfully, the military and local law enforcement come to the school to protect everyone and arrange for an evacuation. Not so fortunately, the situation spirals out of control in the city too quickly, and everyone, including the students, soldiers and a few others all get stuck at the school and have to fight for survival right there.
This innovative plot makes it so that there are really two (or three) main aspects of Dread Dawn, including some elements that don’t normally combine in a single game. First there is the exploration angle, where you go out into the infected town to look for supplies, upgrade your arsenal or because of a mission objective. For example, in the tutorial you are tasked with raiding the local police station to find your troublemaking sister who got arrested away from the school right before the outbreak.
Secondly, there is the tower defense aspect of Dread Dawn because thousands of zombies will sometimes charge the campus and you have to set up defenses, like mazes of walls and turrets, to defend against them. Finally, there is a strong crafting component that runs through everything else. That includes having to craft all of those defenses, as well as outfitting your character with the best possible gear, while also ensuring that they don’t starve while out on missions.
The exploration aspect of Dread Dawn is some of the best that I have seen in a long time. The map of the infected city is quite large and is littered with secrets if you take the time to look around at everything. Mostly you are out in the world because of story missions, but you can also collect a lot of high value loot and crafting materials while you are there. The open world nature of the game also gives you a lot of options about where you go. For example, there is a helpful red line on your radar that points toward the current objective. However, that line often winds through highly infected areas. Instead of following that, I will sometimes take more winding paths down alleys, through buildings, across parks and other areas that are less populated with undead.
My roundabout walking strategy is emboldened by all the things that the developers have hid inside the town to experience and find. Several times I have gone into a building to look for loot and been surprised by a bandit ambush or zombies crashing down through the ceiling lights. Surprises like that keep players on their toes. You can also use the environment to your advantage. For example, some heavily armed bandits were guarding a store and taking shots at me when I tried to enter. But the store had a promotion going where alarms blare and sirens go off when the one millionth customer enters. On a whim, I crossed that threshold, and sure enough, it set off the alarm bells. I then ran around the corner as fast as I could and hid in an alley because the noise attracted a small horde of zombies who charged into the store and started attacking everyone inside. The bandits and the zombies wiped each other out, and I was free to clean the place out after eliminating the small handful of undead who survived.
On the tower defense side of Dread Dawn, things are also pretty well done. The zombies follow the same rules as most enemies in other tower defense titles where if you fully wall them off, they will start pounding on the barriers, break them down and crash through. Instead, you need to build a winding path for them to follow so that your turrets, fixed defenses and human guards have plenty of time to pick them off while they wind through that maze. The hordes come in very large sizes, so building elaborate defenses is a must. And unlike most tower defense games, Dread Dawn has players crafting most of the defenses with materials that they gather while exploring.
Your character even levels up in Dread Dawn, adding a bit of an RPG element to everything else. You can also improve their health, speed and other attributes by equipping certain armors or pieces of clothing. You can even change their appearance by finding certain outfits, although that mostly seems to be done for fun. Still, everyone secretly enjoys playing dress up in any video game, so this is a nice addition.
Dread Dawn is not perfect, but the developers are working to patch lots of bugs and quirks, and they seem to be doing a pretty good job at that. Bugs aside, Dread Dawn does something that not a lot of titles have achieved: adding something new to a pretty crowded genre. The bottom line is that Dread Dawn is a lot of fun to play, and anyone looking for a zombie or apocalypse type title will find a lot to enjoy about this newest entry into the zombie horror menagerie of games.