REMORE: Infested Kingdom Preview: Punishing Apocalypse Strategy

Finding a punishing strategy game isn’t difficult, but few make you count your moves like REMORE: Infested Kingdom. Unlike most games where you are slaughtering enemies to be the last army standing, survival is your main goal. You must fight but you must also scavenge resources and make escape routes. Escaping with everyone alive is the goal when infinite enemies come after you.

The biggest problems are your lack of practice and the speed at which the game progresses. If you don’t understand the gameplay systems or figure out how the weapons work, this game will be punishing. There will be several failures as you learn how to play and survive. But if you stay the course to improve, it’s hard to find a similar game that challenges you. REMORE: Infested Kingdom is tough but not impossible if you are willing to learn.

REMORE: Infested Kingdom is in Early Access on Steam, available for 14.99 USD.

Story – The Infested Are Coming

REMORE: Infested Kingdom starts at the beginning of the apocalypse. Undead beings called Infested have invaded and are slaughtering the human population. You control William, a former knight who was unable to defend his loved ones from the Infested and travels alone to survive. He encounters an aspiring soldier named Edward and a foreign warrior named Diurmuid who join him on his journey.

The story has two main focuses: the situation regarding the Infested and your characters’ development. As you explore the lands, you encounter more enemies and strange events that are happening. William and his team also grow and learn, fleshing out their personalities as they gain new experiences.

The characters you meet develop their personalities.

Seeing these characters progress with the story helps with the immersion. You aren’t just fighting with three warriors, but three individuals affected by recent events. While the Infested are random invaders, your encounters with cultists suggest a darkness that lurks even deeper than expected.

You want to know what happens next or which characters you will run into. The story doesn’t develop quickly but it gives enough time for proper development. There are no sudden or unexpected changes though the story can develop slowly. While it would be nice to have more playable characters, there’s enough development to keep you entertained.

The tricky part is ensuring that you can progress with the story, since the battles are punishing. As much as you want to learn what happens next, it’s not easy when you repeatedly fail and must try another tactic.

Gameplay – Fight or Flight?

Unlike other strategy games like Silence of the Siren, your missions consist of grabbing resources and leaving. While fighting enemies is unavoidable, too much fighting is bad for you. Some enemies already exist on the map but if you take too much time, infinite amounts of Infested appear behind you. Your weapons have limited durability and there aren’t many healing options.

Every character has skills that help them stand out along with weapons that they can utilise. Fighting the Infested directly is easy but you can also shove them away or distract them. There are several strategic elements to combat that help you survive and gain an advantage over your enemies.

Enemies aren’t easy to defeat and wear you down slowly.

Looking for resources on each map is important because you find food and materials. Food is used to heal and sate your appetite while granting bonuses in battle. Materials are used to upgrade weapons or repair them to make sure they last. Getting through maps without any resources is a big mistake and you want to scour everything you can.

Balancing combat and resource gathering is a constant challenge. Battles are similar to XCOM 2 as luck plays a part. Enemies don’t always react the same way or you get a lucky critical hit. You must be tactical and decide how you take down groups of enemies, thinking ahead if you don’t want to die.

The biggest strength and weakness of REMORE: Infested Kingdom is the challenge. On one hand, the challenge forces you to think and take the game seriously. On the other, it makes the game difficult to learn and you depend on luck for good items.

Challenge – Ironman Without Practice

REMORE: Infested Kingdom has several levels but you can only proceed with the story. There are no skirmishes where you can build up experience or farm food and materials. This means what you find in missions is what you get and nothing else. It’s also difficult to rewind battles in case something goes wrong.

While you can never truly fail a mission and get infinite retries, it can be a frustrating process. There are lots of enemies and few options to experiment with strategies. Battles feel less like a tactical effort and more like a puzzle game at times. You don’t know if you are coming up with ways to defeat enemies or if you are putting enemies in the right places.

Preparing for enemies isn’t as easy as getting the right weapon.

Part of the appeal is the fact that you can’t take back your moves or that the enemies are actually difficult. But the standard difficulty can be overwhelming especially if you haven’t gotten the basics down. Given the speed at which the story progresses, a lack of practice hurts when enemies get stronger faster than you expect.

It would be nice if there was a way to harvest more resources or let your characters develop their skills further. But for now, the game remains a punishing challenge where every mission is vital and there’s no going back.

Audio & Visuals – Dark Surprises Everywhere 

The atmosphere of REMORE: Infested Kingdom is dark and gritty. Using 2D pixel art captures this well, with ruined buildings and creepy enemies. Items you pick up look simple and ordinary, reflecting a world where everything valuable has already been taken.

Listening to the soundtrack and the enemy noises enhances the horror feeling. Even if the world looks like a dark-yet-ordinary sight, the audio transports you to an otherworldly location. It doesn’t feel like you are in a village or a military building. You feel like you traveled to another dimension where everything is horrible.

REMORE: Infested Kingdom was previewed on Steam with a code provided by WEBZEN.