Undawn, an online zombie survival game, has just come out! Read our review and see if its graphics, story, and gameplay are worth your time and hard-earned money!
Undawn Review and Score Explanation
Undawn Score Explanation
| Overall | Undawn is a game. One of the games of all time, even. It has all the necessary ingredients for a basic game like the survival gameplay and online features, but it lacks a real sense of how everything should work together. The game tries to be edgy and gritty, but then sells garish premium items. It's this awkward juxtaposition of elements that leaves us confused about the developer’s priorities. |
|---|---|
| Story | The game’s story is as basic as one can get. It throws together many post-apocalyptic elements with predictable stock characters. It feels almost like an afterthought compared to the rest of the game - something put in just to facilitate the exploration, grinding, and combat. |
| Gameplay | Undawn is a game that pretends to be something it's not - a survival game that offers freedom. In reality, it's an empty shell of what should be a compelling experience. It has all the usual trappings of a survival game: hunting, needs meters, building and crafting mechanics. But the game’s implementation of these elements falls flat. Everything feels too simple and lacks any sort of nuance or depth. |
| Visuals | Undawn's graphics are so dated that it feels like we've traveled back in time to the early 2010s - and not in a good way. The game's visuals belong somewhere between the sixth and seventh generation of console games, making everything look blocky. What's worse is how inconsistent the art style is. Some settlements look like theme parks rather than parts of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. |
| Audio | Believe it or not, Undawn actually has decent English voice acting for its characters. The sound effects and music also somewhat do their job. But, ultimately, that's all we can say about the game's audio design. |
| Value for Money | Undawn is a free-to-play game rife with ways to make you part with your money - from special equipment skins to cosmetics. But there are far better survival games out there that will give you a much more satisfying experience - both in terms of gameplay and where your money goes. |
Undawn Review: Undead Mediocrity
There are bad games, and then there are mid games. With bad games, you can usually laugh at how terrible they are; even find some ironic enjoyment in them. Ride to Hell: Retribution comes to mind.
But with Undawn, we're left with a painfully average game - neither good nor bad enough to be memorable. There's no laughter or irony to be found here; only a sense of mild disappointment that you could be spending your valuable time playing something worthwhile instead of grinding through this game.
We cannot, in good conscience, recommend Undawn to anyone. If you feel compelled to play it anyway, please reconsider and spend your time elsewhere.
Undawn Full Game Review
Pros of Undawn
| Things Undawn Got Right |
|---|
 Stable Online Experience Basic Gunplay |
Stable Online Experience
One thing that Undawn actually does right is how easy it is to match and how stable its servers are. I never got disconnected even once during my playthrough, and nobody was lagging whenever I got into an online match. Maybe part of this smooth online experience is that Undawn isn’t a graphically demanding game, even on its highest so-called "Cinematic" settings.
There are a few PvE modes where you and a team of friends or random players will have to defeat a boss or hold your position against waves of enemies. There’s also a PvP mode where you’ll have to capture as many points as possible to earn the highest score for your team before time runs out.
Basic Gunplay
Undawn feels a lot more like a second-rate battle royale shooter instead of the survival game it pretends to be. Third-person perspective, item boxes, and the awkward movement are the first things you'll notice when logging into the game. As a consequence, the gunplay is halfway decent for mobile players. On a phone, it’s easy enough to shoot and move around the map without sliding your fingers all over the screen. On the PC, it doesn’t feel as slick as third person shooters you’ll usually come across, but it’s serviceable nonetheless.
Unfortunately for mobile players, though, PvP matchups don’t balance out PC and phone players at all. The fidelity of your controls makes you almost godlike, so if you’re playing on PC against mobile users, you’ll have an unfair advantage that makes the game feel totally unbalanced.
Cons of Undawn
| Things That Undawn Can Improve |
|---|
|
Uninspired Survival Gameplay Dated Graphics With Art Direction That Is All Over the Place Paper-Thin Plot With Bland Quests |
Uninspired Survival Gameplay
There’s a good way to do survival games, and then there’s a bad way. The good way is to make the game revolve around survival - making items and ammo and other valuables into rare resources that have to be conserved. At the same time, the player should be encouraged to live off the land to take care of their needs. The point here is scarcity - there’s should be a scarcity of everything you need to survive, pushing the player to explore uncharted territory and give a more tense, immersive experience.
But in Undawn, it decided to go with the bad way. Instead of scarcity, you have access to everything: food, crafting materials, ammo, and everything else you need to craft whenever you want. Supposedly, enemies should keep you away from these resources, but they’re easy enough to deal with so they just become background noise.
Hence, crafting is no longer an attempt to get a more useful item, but a grinding gate that stands between you and the item. Not to mention that the crafting requirements can get ridiculous sometimes. Imagine crafting a highly-engineered assasult rifle out of nothing but tree bark, seeds, and some wood.
Getting food or taking care of your other needs is no longer the main focus of the game - they’re just things you do when the meters go red.
The only things that are truly scarce in the Undawn world are the cosmetics and the things you’ll need to buy with gold - the in-game currency which you can either earn slowly in the game or buy with RC (which is yet another in-game currency that you can buy with real-world cash). The survival gameplay is just another set of chores you have to take care of that you can even ignore most of the time.
Art Direction Is All Over the Place
When I first came to Raven Shelter (the starter shelter) the first thing I came across was the big entrance full of scaffolding, functional television screens and symbols of the Raven Squad. The first thing you’ll ask yourself is "how could such a small shelter afford something like this?" Once you make it past the tough-looking guards, you’re greeted by a nurse who looks more at home at a cosplay convention than at a refugee center. As you go around the shelter, you’ll see that everything has a look similar to theme parks - big exaggerated signs and generic-looking textures.
So generic, in fact, that it even affects the storytelling of the game. There's a part where you’re supposed to lay down flowers at a memorial as the game tries to bring some emotional gravity. However, later on, you'll find that the asset for the memorial is the exact same one they have at Redwood Shelter, cheapening the whole experience.
Now, let’s talk about the premium items you can buy at the shop. As of this writing, they’re selling an "Urban Ninja" outfit with techwear and futuristic-looking katanas floating on your back. It looks more like something out of Cyberpunk 2077 instead of a game that advertises itself as a gritty tale of survival.
Just like in LifeAfter, another online survival game made by another developer, Undawn will try to sell you cosplay accessories and swimsuits despite it being set in a post-apocalyptic world. From angel wings to cat ears to bunny slippers to burning AK-47s made of solid gold - the Undawn shop has so many items that clash with the theme of the game. What kind of post-apocalyptic survivor would go around in a swimsuit? One or two survivors might be funny. If everyone else has swimsuits on, however...
Of course, there’s this practice called "Prestiging" where big spenders would buy the flashy stuff to look good. But Undawn could have done all that without making the prestige options clash so much with the aesthetic of the world at large. It just chose not to.
Paper-Thin Plot With Bland Quests
Undawn’s premise is as generic of a post-apocalyptic world as it can get. You’re a survivor who’ve been ambushed by bandits while traversing a world that once was. You make your way to the nearest shelter, Raven Shelter, where the leadership has you going to other shelters to help sort out their problems and make alliances with them. That’s basically where the plot ends. Some of the side quests are kind of dark and have surprisingly decent storylines. But other than those few, there’s nothing that will really pull you in and convince you that this is a survival story.
Now combine that with the battle royale gunplay and the slapped-on survival mechanics, and you’ve got yourself a simple action shooter with crafting and limited building options. Rust does that too, by the way - though at least Rust can be much more thematically consistent compared to Undawn.
It’s as if the makers of Undawn looked at what LifeAfter did and decided, "Yeah, let’s do it like exactly like this," without considering the fact that NetEase is already moving on to another game that looks at least a lot more promising than LifeAfter and Undawn (It’s called "Once Human", if you’re interested. Don’t hold your breath though, because it’s made by the same people behind LifeAfter, after all).
Undawn Story and Plot
In the future, humanity comes across a mysterious meteorite shard inside a relic. This shard contains a special element that leads to a technological breakthrough for bionic technology and genetic medical treatments. But little does humanity know that the element would soon destroy their society. The zombies come, bringing about the end of civilization.
But not all hope is lost. Somewhere on the continent's west coast, a group of survivors called the Raven Squad put up a place of refuge for the remnants of humanity. After years of hardship, Raven Shelter becomes a prosperous shelter that grows every day. But the zombie threat remains, with the infected undergoing a new round of mutations, while bandits and thugs roam the lands, looking for easy loot.
That’s where you - a new arrival at Raven Shelter - come in. Work for the shelter, help smaller outposts, and survive in the wilderness, all while duking it out with monstrous abominations and humans who have lost themselves to banditry and greed.
Is Undawn Worth It?
No. There are better survival games out there. Play those instead.
Undawn is just another dime-a-dozen shooter game trying to ride the survival game fad with its uninspired gameplay, dated graphics, and cliched storyline. It seems that Lightspeed Studios and Level Infinite have decided to piggyback on NetEase's LifeAfter's scraps while adding nothing new or noteworthy in the process.
Funnily enough though, as much as Undawn is a tedious waste of time, I don't even hate it. It just exists as one of those middling games that never actually manage to do anything memorable or significant enough for anyone to care about. That's how "mid" it is - so average that it makes being a bad game almost seem like a step up by comparison.
How Undawn Matches Up to Recently-Released Games
| Games Releasing in June 2023 | How It Matches Up With Undawn | |
|---|---|---|
 Street Fighter 6 |
Street Fighter 6 is an immensely more enjoyable experience than Undawn. At least this game’s cosmetics actually tie into the game’s world and setting. | |
 Amnesia: The Bunker |
Amnesia: The Bunker’s scarcity and survival mechanics are much better polished than what Undawn has. Play Amnesia: The Bunker instead. | |
 Oblivion Override |
Oblivion Override’s fast-paced, heart-stopping action makes you feel tense, focused. Undawn is just a tired old shooter. | |
How Undawn Matches Up to Similar Games
| Games Similar to Undawn | How It Matches Up With Undawn | |
|---|---|---|
 State of Decay 1 and 2 |
State of Decay 1 and 2 are the zombie survival games Undawn wishes it could be. Simple but good survival mechanics, scavenging, gunplay, and settlement building with an actual thematic consistency in its art style. Play this game instead. | |
 Project Zomboid |
Project Zomboid not only has harsh and complicated survival mechanisms (food, illness, apparel, and even temperature), it also has both the scarcity that a survival game should have, and large hordes of zombies. Undawn doesn’t even compare to it, so go with PZ. | |
 Dying Light series |
The Dying Light games’ unique blend of parkour and zombie action make them much more engaging experiences, where every strike counts, and the correct movements spell the difference between life and death. You probably already know where we’re going with this. | |
Undawn Trailer
Game8 Reviews
Undawn Product Information
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| Title | UNDAWN |
|---|---|
| Release Date | June 14, 2023 |
| Developer | Lightspeed Studios |
| Supported Platforms | PC, Android, iOS |
| Genre | MMO Survival Game |
| ESRB Rating | Teen |
| Official Website | https://undawn.game |
