UNDYING Review – Educating the Escort Quest

It’s not a New Year if we’re not talking about death and despair. Those are just the feelings this time of the year brings out in ordinary people like me, mainly when the Christmas songs have been playing, and we all undertake the annual tradition of Whamageddon and the drinking of alcohol in pyjamas—that or grumbling about large explosions in the background annoying our cats or interrupting our films. In keeping with this positive outlook, I’ve been playing a game called UNDYING, and as the name implies, there’s a bit of the not-dying in there.

Or, I should say, the undead. That’s precisely what you’re facing against. That and other human beings. Being generous (or is that cruel, based on the latter end of the series?), UNDYING is essentially The Walking Dead meets (less rubbish) Amy but made in China. I went into this expecting a shoddy game, something to pick up and throw away after a few hours. I’ll be Lucille’d if I wasn’t pleasantly surprised with something that isn’t a bad time at all.

Not great, but not bad. It lies on the “good” spectrum, which is extremely surprising because UNDYING is just one long escort quest, and how it weaves the escort – not that kind – into the narrative works. You are Anling, and a zombie has bitten you as you escaped a now unsafe shelter with your son, Cody. Fortunately for you, zombie bites are not as quick to turn you as in other media, giving you time to train Cody to survive the zombie apocalypse and get him to safety.

Unfortunately, Cody must have gone to the worst school in history or had never seen the outside world until the day of the outbreak. Why? Because that useless little git doesn’t even know how to take a branch from a tree. The whole push of this game is that you take Cody with you, and when you act – be it snapping a branch from a tree, gathering supplies from a box, siphoning petrol from a car, or creating an electronic circuit board at your homemade desk – you press a button to get him to watch you. If he watches enough, he learns to do it himself.

I like the premise; I think they took it too far. Cody should not need to be taught how to pick something up or boil water – no, Chris, positives – New Year’s Spirit. Sometimes Cody also gets scared about the events happening in the world, or he freezes up when zombies or bad people start attacking you or those around you, so you have to give him some soothing words to calm him down. Other times, as part of the ongoing narrative, you must explain some of the bad in the world. This develops Cody throughout the weeks and towards one of the game’s endings.

You’ll notice I said weeks. UNDYING is on a time limit; the day ticks forward, you get hungry, thirsty and tired, and each day moves into the next. However, once you get through the initial tutorial and find a board in your brother’s old farmhouse to fix the TV, you have (I think) 51 days until the army evacuates people. Between now and then, Anling decides you need to find more supplies and survivors, marking two points on the map to start. As you speak to NPCs, you’ll be told about the direction or distance of other points of interest, slowly letting you expand the areas you can go to.

This makes for reasonable and managed, albeit slow, progression. Why somebody would tell you that somewhere “is west” but not say how far, even just a guess, is unbelievable to me. Plus, considering Anling has lived here for what I assume is most of her life, she should bloody know more than the local town centre and supermarket. It’s a little too “gamey”. Even when you know the direction and distance, you’ll still need to ensure your car is repaired and fuelled up enough to be able to get there, which – alongside Cody – is another form of resource management.

You will also find random encounters and salvage spots between these critical areas. These add a bit to the game and break up what could have become dull. I won’t deny the random nature of these could lead to you losing more than you gain, especially if you encounter enough enemies, but that is the risk of a zombie apocalypse. Plus, you’ll need as many materials as possible for crafting, food, weaponry, or otherwise.

Far too many survival games throw everything at you, and it ends up too much. UNDYING doesn’t fall into this trap. The amount you can craft is limited, but it’s all useful enough to matter or essential for progression. While I will praise the item system for not going overboard, the skill trees aren’t quite the same. I’ve mentioned teaching Cody. The only problem is that everything is represented in the skill trees. Each action taken by Cody generates more points to unlock even more skills. It’s too much, particularly considering the timed nature of UNDYING.

Still, I can’t fault the game for making an escort mission feel important, weaving it into the narrative, and somehow making it less irritating than a forced circumcision with a rusty spork. Yes, that’s right, this isn’t an utterly annoying escort mission. You can leave Cody alone in a room while you bugger off and clear the path, and even if he’s with you, his cowering in fear at times makes sense. It’s not just at a scripted moment to throw you off and make things annoying.

All in all, I quite like UNDYING. Sure, it’s got some issues, and the localisation is a mixed bag at the best of times. The critical gameplay instructions have been anglicised well for the most part – it can sometimes be a little obscure what your next objective is, but it’s rare. The script fares less well, with the original Chinese names being mentioned a few times in the same sentence as the English ones and voice acting not always following the script. Minor in the grand scheme, as it genuinely looks and sounds good, going for a comic book style, almost like The Strolling Deceased.

Would I recommend UNDYING? You know what, I would. I’ve got to hand it to developers Vanimals; they have a strange studio name. More than simply being a good game, UNDYING has a decent amount of replay value due to multiple endings, random events, and the time limit, meaning it’ll be impossible to see everything. I’ll go back to it, which is rare.

Happy New Year!

Copy provided by the publisher.

UNDYING