I Walk Among Zombies Vol 1 is a visual novel set a few days after the undead apocalypse begins. These are not your typical slow walking zombies, the ones here can run as fast as a human being, and the first batch bear no injuries or deformities, making them appear human from afar. We play as a narcissistic shut-in named Yuusuke that gets near immediately bitten and spends those crucial first days in a coma. Upon awakening, he heads online to what few websites remain online, only to find out that society has fallen to the sudden zombie plague. Before long, he decides to risk it and heads out to see for himself.
It’s not long before Yuusuke runs into a shambling zombie, much to his terror. Being on the third story of the apartment complex with a row of locked doors to his right and a low railing to his left, it is pretty much game over for him after having traveled such a short distance. This does not happen. To his surprise, the undead seem to ignore him entirely, and he is able to simply walk away. Shocked and confused, he decides to go back to his PC in search of answers for such a bizarre event. Finding no useful information, Yuusuke heads back out and encounters a group of zombies clawing at a door. Calling out, he finds a survivor on the other side begging for his help and using his strange condition that causes zombies to ignore him, he manages to toss all of them over the railing, splattering them below.
With the danger over, Yuusuke finds that it was a mother alongside her young daughter who were trapped. They speak of a safe haven in a nearby elementary school, and much to their delight, he agrees to take them there. What happens next perfectly sets the tone to the start of our adventure as we are shown just how dangerous these zombies are and precisely the type of person Yuusuke is. To put it lightly, this is not a title for the squeamish. It is a grim, hopeless world in where bravado will typically get one killed, and morals have seemingly completely decayed after just a few days. Yuusuke is a cold, self-centered psychopath to start with and only becomes more unhinged as time progresses. Even calling him an anti-hero may be giving him a bit too much credit. This is a character you very likely will come to despise, yet he does have his moments. He is quite the interesting non-conventional protagonist for those reasons, one who seems less humane than the flesh-eating monsters out there.
This title is primarily focused on hentai, so you should have some interest in that before thinking this sounds cool and jumping right in. What’s a horny psychopath to do when there are no living women, and all his favorite porn sites have died due to the apocalypse. Well, remember how zombies just ignore him? Yeah.. you’d be surprised how fast he turns to necrophilia. Granted, he is not so far gone that he will just want to bang any zombie. He prefers to find some that don’t have horrific injuries. Quite a bit of the game is focused solely on sex and near slice of life stretches where nothing of note happens, as he lives it up in a dead city where he can do as he pleases. The music will always be somber, helping to remind you that things are not peachy as Yuusuke nonchalantly looks on at the rare survivor’s misfortunes.
After some time of this carefree lifestyle, he does encounter a teenage girl and her two young brothers holed up on the top floor of a grocery store. These initial encounters are extremely interesting/intense since we do not know how Yuusuke is going to react to this. He is a terrible human being, sure, but he is not a complete monster or even the worst person out there. Whether solely for his convenience or following some indecipherable moral compass, he does occasionally perform “good” deeds. They are certainly far outweighed by the bad, though this does lead to some intriguing relationships, as much like the player, no one 100% understands how Yuusuke thinks. We do not have any control over him either. This is a solely kinetic visual novel, meaning there are no choices to make, and our interaction entirely consists of left clicking to read more of the story.
The only person that is voice acted is Mitsuki, the trapped teenager in the grocery store. Her voice actor does some outstanding work and makes dangerous or emotional moments so much more impactful. It is a shame Yuusuke doesn’t have a voice actor too, as to allow them to play off of one another. He is the character we follow, yet isn’t one we are supposed to see ourselves in. Having him narrate his thoughts and dialogue would have added a lot to this title’s atmosphere. It is understandable once you take into account the game is only $15, which is pretty cheap in visual novel terms. The lack of a voice actor for Yuusuke is one of the only cutbacks I felt throughout. Despite the low price and being the first of an episodic series, it has a good amount of content and a surprisingly large collection of CGs to see. The artwork in them is fantastic, and so are the character sprites. Most of the backgrounds are a bit too sterile, however. Japan after the apocalypse is still much cleaner than California on a regular day.
A nice change of pace from other lewd titles is that we do not have to download an uncensor patch with the Steam version. Everything is unmodified from the get-go, and even rarer still is that there are no mosaics. When Yuusuke isn’t trying to jam his penis into places it probably shouldn’t be, the plot does get legitimately interesting. This is not your standard zombie apocalypse, and it really shows as the story progresses. It throws some curve-balls that will catch you off-guard from what you were expecting from a hentai based zombie game. I do appreciate how it doesn’t solely focus on Yuusuke. On occasions, you may get a glimpse into the pre-zombie apocalypse past to better flesh out other character’s backstories. This also applies to the present day to let us see how the mindset of other people is or how they are dealing with an event.
In total, this title lasted around seven and a half hours from start to finish. Being a kinetic visual novel, there is little reason to replay it again. Not that you’d need to. It has a nifty feature in the extras menu that lets you read from the start of any hentai scene you’ve already seen. In that menu, you can also view the CGs and listen to the soundtrack, which are always a welcome inclusion. Once again, make no mistake, I Walk Among Zombies is focused primarily around hentai. You will need to be that intended audience to get the most out of this, even if it does have an intriguing plot and character relations. If you are, this is definitely a game to keep your eye on. It’s not often where I say I’m playing an eroge for the plot, but that is exactly what happened as I immediately start downloading Vol 2.
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