Rebuild is a top down strategy game that tasks you with reconquering a zombie infested city while leading a group of survivors. You play as a customized character who starts off with nothing but an item of your choice and a few premade survivors. It’s set in a randomly generated map featuring multiple buildings with different benefits such as police stations adding to your overall security and churches to make your people a bit happier. Acquiring these buildings for your settlements is not as easy as strolling right in however. One must first send in some survivors to clear it from zombies and then send someone to fortify it to make it a defensible location.
Your settlement can be attacked at any time so sending in some people to clear a location will leave you more vulnerable to losing people and territory in an attack. It’s a great game mechanic as you can count on your more experienced members to do a task but will leave you with nothing but rookies defending your home. It’s a neat way to get you to focus on both defense & offense as well as putting everyone in your group to use instead of relying on a few. You can equip them with items found to increase their stats but in the end their fate is based on percentages so they are rarely safe.
Hidden zombie bites, rival groups and illness can all do a character in too. The chances of this happening can be reduced by capturing a hospital or researching zombies in a laboratory but in doing so it takes away a pair of hands helping keep the immediate threat away. Every small thing in this title is deeply connected to one another and in taking an action you may very well be dooming those you wanted to protect. Your survivors need two things too function, happiness and food. Happiness is gained by hiring prostitutes and finding alcohol, decreased by someone’s death or getting injured.
Food will be your most vital resource and doubles as currency to buy items or services with. It can either be obtained by scavenging or by having farms in your territory. With each survivor comes a need for more food so having a huge squad from the get go is unfeasible and later on when you can afford to it is still risky since crops can die, food can be stolen and winter may be around the corner. Winter can and should be disabled if you are new to the game as it is brutal. Crops will stop producing and your only source to getting more food will be via scavenging. In no time the areas around you will be clear and the bigger your squad is the more dangerous the situation becomes.
Run out of food and people will grow unhappy, refusing to obey you and in turn not helping gather what they need. It’s a vicious cycle that quickly devolves into suicides, starvation, cannibalism and other unpleasantness. This does highlight one of the few flaws of Rebuild. The lack of control of your survivors. You can’t get rid or exile them and some may show up randomly to join you with no option to refuse their arrival. When you are stretched for food it does become an annoyance for someone to stroll right in and make the situation worse without your say. The only other flaw I can think of is the lack of different scenarios. Every playthrough will have the same events happen such as a mad scientist or a zombie cult.
It’s a turn based game so you will have all the time you need to make your decisions and explore your options. Ending each turn results in the characters performing the actions you sent them to do and can lead to zombies randomly attacking you. The environments do look bland due to having the same couple of buildings plastered all over the place but you’ll usually be too lost in thought about your next move to pay it much mind. Music on the other hand is great, usually playing a haunting and somber tune that I never found getting old. Rebuild is just one of those type of games that does what it sets out to do extremely well. If you are into the strategy/resource management genre this is definitely a title you’d want to check out even if you are sick to death of zombies.
Link to buy Android version here: Rebuild
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