Played a game of Zafehouse last night. First impressions time!
Not your average zombie game. There is no action in this. The entire game takes place in the diary. Your screens consist of the diary (which chronicles exactly what happens as it happens), a page where you have key items (notes you receive key to your rescue and a walkie talkie, you have to find these through gameplay), and a map screen. The map screen is your hub for everything, it has your characters (which you can inspect, view their histories and strengths, and even start rumors about), location info (how many zombies are in any given area, how many corpses are there, how much you've explored it, how secure it is, etc). All of your actual actions (planning) in the game take place on the map screen.
So what does the gameplay consist of? Basically, you're telling each character of your team to take care of certain things. You can make traps (which kill zombies if they breach the place you create the trap), barricade the location (this is vital to keep zombies out), watch for zombies (also vital, especially if the area isn't secure), patrol for zombies, make food, snipe, upgrade items, etc. This game is pretty damn complex. It's nice having a full team, because you can take care of lots of different things. Two people can barricade while one snipes (only if you have an applicable weapon), another can clean up corpses (you'll quickly discover why this is important), another can upgrade something, etc. It's all a delicate balance, and you really have to use your head, and naturally certain people will be better at certain actions than others. People WILL die, unless you're really smart.
Basically, you tell each person to do something, then you go back to the diary screen and click the watch. Time will progress an hour, and the diary will be updated telling you what happened in the past hour. A lot of actions (like barricading, upgrading, etc) will not happen in an hour, so they won't always provide immediate diary entries, while others like exploring new areas will happen immediately (unless the area is far away and requires travel to get to). About exploring, you can send one or more people to a location, via "investigation", "assault", or "breach". Investigation simply scouts the area, and the character determines if there's anything of use in the building and how many zombies are inside and outside. Assault, the character/s attempt to kill the zombies outside. Breach is more complicated, where the character/s go inside and are stuck in the breach action until all zombies inside are dead. All the while, zombies WILL attack from outside as well, so the moment the inside is cleared out, you're put into a perilous barricade defense situation. This is when people die. Whenever you're moving to a new area, you choose what weapons and gear you want to bring with you. Obviously for breaches, you should bring a lot of weapons and ammo.
Anyways, the game progresses and as you go, you're supposed to breach and discover clues as to your rescue from key places marked on the map. It's hard. My first game, I lasted till the rescue came (I even had the radio), but I didn't know the rescue frequency or the rescue point, so my lone remaining character was left behind. Game over. All the while I wasn't able to investigate the FIRST area that I was supposed to. It had 20 zombies inside, and I was never in a good enough way to take on that many enemies. Maybe I'll do better next time, but this is a strategy game plain and simple. It takes a lot of careful thinking.
Another couple things I should mention... Character dynamics are important. Characters have different personalities, like some older ones won't trust young people, some people are racist, some people simply don't like certain people. It's not smart to put people who don't like each other on the same objectives, they'll argue, it'll get on other peoples' nerves, and they'll even get into fights and hurt each other. This game is brutal, lol. Injuries matter, too. Productivity goes down when a character is injured, and most injuries... don't go away. You can find medical supplies in some places, but good medical supplies are scarce. Not to mention breaching someplace with supplies means you may get injuries taking over the area...
All in all, cool game. I'm glad I grabbed it. It's hard, but there's a high learning curve to it. 8 out of 10 I guess? It's hard to say without playing it more.
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