Still Not Dead is a rouge-lite FPS in where we find ourselves facing an undead horde with nothing but a pistol and a couple of British Pounds in our pocket. Our goal is to kill a set amount of enemies to unlock a door that will lead to the next stage. The amount we must kill increases the further we go, with a total of 6 levels to survive. Scattered about the environment are healing items, chunks of cash, and items or weapons to use against our foes if we could afford it. Spending your time exploring after you’ve met your kill quota for that stage has its perks, though it carries two significant downsides. First, your ammo is limited, even with your basic pistol and as the hordes thicken you’ll inevitably need to use more to make enough room to get around. And the biggest factor why one shouldn’t loiter around too long in search of goodies is that Death itself will come to hunt you down.
Both the layout of the levels and the items within are randomized, so you’ll never know exactly where something is. You will be given an idea as their locations are marked on your minimap such as hearts being food to heal yourself with or guns being weapons. What type of food or weapons it is, is for the players to find out should they seek to trek across the map to find them, whether out of curiosity or just being out of ammo and are down to using your knife. Melee is pretty handy against your typical zombie, but once you start encountering man-eating plants that fire a near bullet hell level of projectiles at you, the best course of action is to flee. There is quite an extensive and interesting selection of weapons on offer here, all being sold for 300 Pounds. You have a bow & arrow, a portable cannon, a device to call in airstrikes and much more wonderfully bizarre selections of things to get your hands on. Then you also have cheaper passive items like a holy cross to keep away the undead or barbed wire to slow them down.
Despite everything being randomized, you are given some amount of control over the RNG via the Crystals. At the start of each playthrough, you are given five crystals that allow you to re-roll what the item being sold is, with the hopes that it will be replaced with something better. It’s a neat way to put more control of whether you succeed into your hands instead of just hoping for a good run. They also work for health items too, so you can roll for something that will heal far more than having to chow down a mangy mushroom. Enemies are not just going to let all of this happen, however. You will constantly be fighting them off as they will not leave you be once they catch sight of you, and with so many lurking around the place, you’ll soon have a convey of flesh eaters on your heels if you try rushing somewhere. Darn near all of them are faster than you as well so once you tire out from sprinting that’s when you’ll be in deep trouble. Luckily for us, everything in this game either makes a b-line for you or fires slow-moving projectiles meaning that we can get out of most situations unscathed if you have enough skill.
There is an interesting variety of foes to face in Still Not Dead, each with their own quirks. There is a phantom that spawns in an energy barrier around you should you get close enough and while you can’t get out, more enemies certainly can get in with you. You then have these weird black piles of flesh that explode into a volley of projectiles once they die that are all too eager to take you out with them if you don’t stop it in time. And plenty more foes to keep you on your feet. The point of the game is to kill a certain number of enemies and move on so you may be thinking why in the world would we put ourselves in danger to kill the more difficult opponents. Well, other than sometimes being forced into a fight due to circumstance, there is also the reason in which the harder they are to kill, the more significant the cash they drop when defeated. Money is everything in this game and the only thing you can pick up without it are health items.
Each level looks the same minus a different colored skybox and possibly have some rain. What truly makes each stand out from each other is the random placement of buildings in each of them. That is both a boon and one of its biggest flaws. You see, there is no level design to speak of. It is just a large map with precisely that, randomly placed buildings. For a double whammy the minimap makes everything more confusing since it doesn’t outline the environment, it just shows you the location of each item. The lack of level design really makes navigating around quite a hassle all too often with items appearing nearby on your map yet you have no clue how to reach them. This is even more fatal when Death is chasing you and will soon find yourself stumbling around the level in hopes of finding the door leading out. Quite a bizarre feeling having every item marked on your map yet it always feels like you stumbled upon them. If you have an explosive weapon, you can destroy the environments for a clear line straight to your objective which is pretty cool, though does nowhere near enough to negate that issue.
Perhaps the most unique feature and the one that will keep you playing is the random effects you’ll have to choose from after each level you manage to escape. There is three to select from at any one time with the option to let the game decide for you in turn for some cash or sacrificing health for rolling three new ones to choose from. Whether their effects are positive or negative comes down to what stage you are on. One stage will offer bad, and the next will always provide a good perk to give you an even amount of both spectrums throughout as well as to avoid it becoming too unbalanced. You will have some really interesting choices to make such as whether you want to jump three times as high or gain some health back when you kill something in melee. Negative ones, on the other hand, can do nasty stuff like take away your corsair or give weapons five times the amount of recoil. It’s very much a pick your poison type of ordeal and does make you play differently to how you would have otherwise.
Perks alone offer up plenty of replay value making unlockable skulls the icing on the cake. Once you beat the game you will have access to skulls that modify the playthrough from the get-go to have things like more enemies, start with no money, or making projectiles far faster so avoiding them is quite a challenge. They are all negative effects as you no doubt noticed, and you will have to beat a run with them on to unlock more. The number of skulls you need to have active increases with each tier you unlock so pretty soon you’ll be fighting an uphill battle in your attempts to make it to the end. It’s all quite fun and a pretty genius way to get people that want more challenge to keep playing while leaving the base of it alone for those seeking a more casual pick up & play experience. Barring the lack of level design and the fact that enemies don’t make any noises meaning it is all too easy to get taken by surprise, this is a good game all around. From its fantastic 80’s style music to the meaty gunplay on offer, Still Not Dead has a ton going for it and is a title I’d easily recommend for those in search of a rogue-lite where skill is more important than RNG.
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