Terminus: Zombie Survivors Review: Slow Roguelike Success

When the zombie apocalypse hits and you must run to safety, it’s never a simple journey. You must scrounge for supplies, avoid fighting zombies, stay healthy, and conserve your energy. Terminus: Zombie Survivors embodies those concepts by putting you in various situations and seeing how you survive. Reaching a safe zone known as Terminus is your main goal but survival is not guaranteed thanks to the threats.

By putting several survival factors into the mix, you must treat every supply search as a crucial outing. Generating a random map with each playthrough forces you to adapt to a new challenge every time. You are thrown into the deep end with only the basics and that makes gameplay tougher than normal. Persevere and struggle through your adventures to eventually uncover a roguelike that tests you like no other.

Terminus: Zombie Survivors is available on PC for USD 19.99.

Reaching Terminus is your main goal.

Story – The Journey to Terminus

All stories in Terminus: Zombie Survivors start with a survivor learning about the titular Terminus. It’s a safehouse where survivors have gathered and are protecting people from the zombies. Your home is gradually becoming unsafe and fleeing to Terminus seems like a better option. The journey to Terminus is filled with danger, though what danger you experience depends on your travels.

The story in this game isn’t sophisticated but it sets the stage like many roguelikes. Similar to Hades II, you are fighting your way to a specific location. There are certain tweaks to the scenario that add to the difficulty, but don’t impact the core story. Every game involves you journeying to Terminus to survive. Whether you succeed depends on what happens during the game.

You must make your way to Terminus, wherever it is.

Gameplay – The Ultimate Scavenger

All adventures start with choosing your character’s profession and stats. These determine a character’s proficiencies in certain tasks such as combat or infiltration. Everyone starts on a default journey to Terminus unless you want to make it more dangerous or exciting with modifiers. It’s possible to reduce supplies in houses, increase the number of infested areas, or lower the overall temperature. Every successful journey unlocks more professions, giving you motivation to keep playing and unlock them all.

Terminus: Zombie Survivors mixes gameplay from Fallout 4 and REMORE: Infested Kingdom. You play with a top-down 2D view where your character moves from location to location. Along the way they must avoid or fight zombies while gathering supplies. While injuries from zombies are a big threat, starvation and thirst are equally dangerous. It’s also possible to freeze to death if you can’t prepare for cold weather.

Having a plan to deal with zombies and escape is vital.

Everyone on the map, from your character, other survivors, and zombies, get a certain amount of action points or AP. Once you are out of AP, your turn is up and everyone else takes their turn. This lets you decide whether you should keep moving, hunker down for the night, or prepare to fight zombies.

There is a day/night cycle you must watch out for. During the day, your vision isn’t impeded and you can view your surroundings. At night, your vision narrows and you can’t see well in front of you. Fighting zombies at night or traveling is risky but it could be necessary.

Surviving against zombies while staying healthy is difficult and fun. It’s not enough to defeat zombies; you must ensure that you have enough food and water to make a trip. However, it’s mainly difficult since the tutorial doesn’t tell you as much as you need to know.

Zombies can be hit in multiple areas but not all of them are great.

Fundamentals – Mostly Trial by Fire

There’s a tutorial at the beginning that explains most of the fundamentals, such as what the icons mean. After that, you dive straight into your first run and see how you go. While the tutorial works, it doesn’t tell you everything. For example, characters must sleep to regain Energy and Morale. There are places you can sleep such as couches that provide a restoration bonus. But you aren’t told that you can sleep on the floor if necessary.

You get a quick overview of fighting zombies but special zombies quickly make an appearance. Armored zombies or even those with greater bulk have different takedown methods. Some weapons deal extra damage to certain zombie areas like the head, body, or legs. It’s also possible to steal a zombie head for yourself if you take down a zombie in a certain way. The tutorial doesn’t discuss this and you must learn when you encounter them.

Sometimes you can only wait for night to pass.

Even information such as equipping clothes or weapon durability is glossed over. Having this knowledge before you begin would be a great help. It’s not hand-holding as much as it is giving players an idea of what they can do. The worst part is that it’s hard to apply that information when gameplay doesn’t move quickly.

Pacing – Slowly Waiting for Everyone

Terminus: Zombie Survivors factors in everyone’s movements before an hour passes. On one hand, that means that you see what everyone is doing. Zombies and survivors move around. Doors are attacked or open through an action. Your crops are healthy but need some extra water. That time helps you plan your next course of action while seeing what has changed.

The downside is that you are waiting for everyone to take their action. This considerably slows down gameplay and drags out the game length. While it’s hard to notice with individual turns, it adds up overtime. A simple game might take a few hours even if you head straight for Terminus. Add in rest time, scavenging, and relocation, and you could have a game that takes a few days. You might shorten the time per game as you get more experienced, but that requires you to get through the games first.

Everyone gets their turn and you can’t move until they do.

Audio & Visual – Simple Graphics, Simple Sounds

While the gameplay is challenging and different, the graphics are about the same as other indie 2D models. There aren’t many detailed environments but you can quickly tell apart items and read the tooltips. You can’t tell if an item is broken without trying to use it or looking at a tooltip. But it is easy to see how long food will last or how much water you have left. Zombie combat has more advanced graphics but that’s only for the image of the zombies themselves.

Most of the noises you hear are simple such as opening doors or fighting zombies. More complex sounds may appear when treating injuries, sleeping to cure sickness, or break into locations. But there are few music scores and other sounds that stand out. You will be able to tell when a zombie is nearby, and often the absence of noise is scarier.

Terminus: Zombie Survivors was reviewed on Steam with a code provided by Long Play Studios.