Night of the Dead is an open-world survival game where you gather resources and build elaborate bases to beat back an endless horde of undead. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth playing.
Night of the Dead Review Overview
What is Night of the Dead?
Night of the Dead is an online multiplayer open-world survival game where you gather and scavenge resources to build defensible bases designed to stand against an endless tide of undead. After waking up to a world dominated by zombies, your character sets out on a mission to find the cure and reverse the zombie plague. As night falls and the zombies advance in swarms, only a clever strategist can withstand the horde and survive.
Will your ingenuity let you see another dawn? Find out as you gather, craft, build, and survive in the seemingly endless Night of the Dead.
Night of the Dead features:
⚫︎ Intense zombie survival on a massive map
⚫︎ Intricate base-building and crafting mechanics
⚫︎ Massive tech and skill tree to unlock
⚫︎ Grindy but rewarding resource-gathering
⚫︎ Dedicated servers for multiplayer and single-player modes
 Steam |
$29.99 |
Night of the Dead Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Satisfying Base-building Rewarding Resource Grind Simple and Effective Survival |
Poorly Translated UI Elements Confusing Tutorial |
Night of the Dead Overall Score - 76/100
Despite initially seeming like just another forgettable open-world survival game, Night of the Dead is anything but. Its grindy resource-gathering is deeply rewarding and the wave-based progression keeps players on their toes while still giving them the liberty to craft, build, and explore to their heart’s content. There’s nothing quite like tearing through another horde with your buddies, save perhaps a zombie-slaying citadel built from by your own two hands. Fortunately for you, Night of the Dead lets you experience both.
Night of the Dead Story - 5/10
Night of the Dead’s story may as well not exist with how little of its presence is felt during a playthrough. Its insignificance and lack of urgency don’t take from the zombie survival experience, although it does lead me to question why the developers bothered with one at all.
Night of the Dead Gameplay - 9/10
Night of the Dead balances its grindy resource-gathering with an immensely satisfying base-building and crafting system, achieving what many other open-world survival games cannot. No effort to craft, build, and upgrade your base goes unrewarded, and you’re pretty much guaranteed a fun night of zombie-slaying carnage every single time.
Night of the Dead Visuals - 7/10
Upon first glance, Night of the Dead does little to differentiate itself from other open-world survival games with its muted tones and rugged urban architecture. However, after hours of base-building, the blend of rustic and modern elements creates a stylish, if somewhat unrealistic, depiction of a zombie apocalypse that I’ve come to appreciate.
Night of the Dead Audio - 7/10
Night of the Dead’s audio quality ranges from serviceable to above-average, aligning well with typical expectations for an open-world survival game. The sound effects are satisfyingly robust, enhancing the immersive experience, while the voice acting, though not award-winning, is competent and effective. The lack of music helps evoke a feeling of isolation during an apocalypse, although I’d appreciate a less grating menu theme.
Night of the Dead Value for Money - 10/10
Night of the Dead is an absolute steal at $30, not including its various cosmetic DLCs. Considering the amount of playtime you’re going to get from this game, the return on investment is through the roof, and that’s not even factoring in all the fun to be had in multiplayer mode. If you love base-building, zombie-slaying, and grindy yet rewarding survival games, this game is exactly what you’re looking for.
Night of the Dead Review: Endless Grind, Endless Fun
I didn’t have much expectations from this game going in. Quite simply, I’ve burnt myself out on open-world survival games after spending hundreds of hours on Albion Online and Sons of the Forest. Seeing the game’s focus on elaborate base-building and wave-based progression, I was momentarily intrigued before flashbacks of day-long grind fests chased such curiosity away. Still, I gave the game a shot and realized that all my fears were unfounded.
Night of the Dead is grindy, yes, but it’s also rewarding. It’ll take a bite out of your schedule and is likely to cause you a few sleepless nights, but there’s genuine fun to be had in this unassuming, yet excellent zombie survival game.
So, lace up your boots and keep your makeshift weapons ready—we’ve got a great zombie survival game to smash open.
Despite what you may expect, Night of the Dead isn’t your typical zombie-themed open-world survival game. Instead of forcing you to wander about and fight zombies constantly, zombies mostly spawn by the horde at the end of each day. I cannot stress enough what I mean by "horde" because they can come by the hundreds on the first night.
This unconquerable, inevitable siege from the undead is your main call to action, forcing you to go around and scavenge resources to build yourself a base with. There’s less of a focus on cutting a swathe through the raging horde yourself because they will always outnumber and overwhelm you. Instead, you're encouraged to hunker down and build an incredibly defensible position using turrets, traps, and walls.
Already, this is a different way to play compared to most other open-world survival games. Instead of just being a place to store your stuff and decorate, your base serves as a functional stronghold and a true base of operations. Unless you’re partial to braving the undead hordes at night, you’re either going to have to head back to base or make additional, equally defensible bases elsewhere.
Despite how I dreadful I made it sound, the best part of each night is when the clock tolls to midnight and the wave finally hits. All of your hard work gathering resources and building base components will finally pay off as your Rube-Goldberg machine of a fortress whirs to life and starts munching through the undead. The traps you can make are initially limited to proximity-activated hammers and cleavers, but enough playtime will eventually nab you blueprints for more high-tech defenses like automated missile defense systems.
Unlocking these technologies is its own journey because this game has a massive tech and skill tree to go through. Instead of requiring EXP, you unlock new technology through Research Documents, which you use like currency, and specific items you can find by exploring. I’m not a fan of this system because what you unlock next isn’t exactly up to you, it’s up to what research component you find next. This leads to a few bottlenecks in progress, but it’s way less noticeable in multiplayer when more players are out and about.
This brings us to the game’s resource gathering, which is undeniably grindy. Most of your resources come from nature, and collecting them can be time-consuming. The animations are slow, and if you're a bit too close or too far from the resource node, you might miss your target. While this might sound frustrating, the payoff is worth it. The resources you gather eventually transform into the pieces of your stronghold, making the grind worth it when those chopper blades start to whirr.
This is the core loop of Night of the Dead’s gameplay and it only gets more challenging as the days pass, prompting you to adapt and evolve your base with every wave. You may choose to make a maze-like entrapment like this was Orcs Must Die 3, or you can make a nigh impregnable kill box with massive walls and turrets to boot. The possibilities are as endless as the grind.
Unfortunately, fun as it is to do a zombie siege every night, not all of this game’s facets are as developed. The game’s narrative is barely present and not at all urgent, making me wonder why they bothered with one at all. The voice acting, while not bad, isn’t the greatest either. The same could be said for the game’s menu music and its overall graphical quality.
Still, I believe the pros far outweigh the cons. If you gather a group of friends to play with you, the downsides become more forgivable, allowing you to fully enjoy the thrill of sieging against the Zeds. Only endless fun can justify an endless grind. Luckily for Night of the Dead, it has both by horde.
Pros of Night of the Dead
| Things Night of the Dead Got Right |
|---|
|
Satisfying Base-building Rewarding Resource Grind Simple and Effective Survival |
Satisfying Base-building
I firmly believe that uniqueness alone isn’t enough to make a gameplay mechanic fun. Sometimes, sticking to the basics and executing them well could be the difference between a player’s enjoyment and a player’s frustration. I think Night of the Dead managed to do both.
The game’s base-building by itself is by no measure a unique system. Prefabs are put together and aligned using an invisible world grid and are projected through a holographic preview. We’ve seen this before and we’ll probably see it again on the next open-world survival game to make the rounds. What makes it unique and satisfying are its creative applications and upgradability.
Not every open-world survival game encourages you to make this many traps against mere mobs. Not many of them make you so defenseless against overwhelming odds either. It's this unique interaction between the nightly waves and your disadvantage in number that encourages you to make a maze of horrors that no zombie will survive.
Rewarding Resource Grind
Balancing the grind and its payoff is a delicate matter that not all games handle delicately. Favor one over the other, and the entire system might eventually prove too boring or frustrating to play. Night of the Dead managed to balance the resource grind and its payoff of total zombie carnage beautifully through one of its resource-gathering features: scavenging.
In addition to resource nodes like trees and rocks, you can also scavenge most things you see on the map. Barring major set pieces like building facades, gas pumps, and stalls, pretty much anything can be broken down into its constituent parts if you’re willing to spare the time.
Not only does this give players even more ways to gather resources, but scavenging certain items can also yield higher-tier materials like processed goods, ammunition, or even equipment pieces. This punctuates a scavenging run with minor loot boosts that push the player to keep exploring in search of the next scavengable item.
Simple and Effective Survival
Surviving against the hordes of undead through careful base-building is one thing, living off the land is another. This game’s hunger and energy system is rather simple, but it is very effective at adding another layer of strategy to your survival without making it any more tedious than it has to be.
Your hunger lever determines your maximum health and stamina in 4 stages. Topping it off lets you tank more hits and run for longer, so it’s paramount that you do. Food isn’t easy to come by, however, and both farming and hunting are more reliable than looking for the odd canned good while scavenging.
Any goods derived from those two actions can be used to craft other things, and so, you’re incentivized to do them outside of needing to satisfy your hunger. This is a good way to keep you on your toes without crippling you outright for not paying attention.
Cons of Night of the Dead
| Things That Night of the Dead Can Improve |
|---|
|
Poorly Translated UI Elements Confusing Tutorial |
Poorly Translated UI Elements
Night of the Dead’s developer and Publisher Jackto Studios is a two-person dev team based in South Korea. Although the game is readily available in both Chinese and English localizations, some of the text translations seem a bit off, most noticeably in the game’s UI. For example, confirmation popups use the word "decision" instead of using the word "choose".
It’s not immersion-breaking or anything like that, it’s just worth a mention and is likely fixable within a couple of small patches.
Confusing Tutorial
The game’s tutorial is odd in that several questlines are going on simultaneously and each of their component quests can be accomplished in any order. You also only have room to pin two of these quests at a time, so it’s hard to know which part of which quest you just fulfilled.
Some game features were also completely glossed over, as was the case with "coils" and fishing.
Is Night of the Dead Worth It?
Definitely Worth Grinding For
Not including its various cosmetic DLCs, Night of the Dead goes for a mere $30, which is an absolute steal if you consider the amount of playtime you’re going to get. You’re potentially looking at hundreds of hours worth of open-world survival fun, and that’s not even factoring in its multiplayer.
If you’re looking for a great survival game to grind through and play with your buddies (or even just by yourself), then this might be the one you’re looking for.
| Platform | Price |
|---|---|
| Steam |
$29.99 |
Night of the Dead FAQ
How Do I Troubleshoot a Save File That Keeps Crashing in Night of the Dead?
If one of your save files keeps crashing whenever you load it up, you may take the following steps to troubleshoot the issue:
⚫︎ Check the save file’s integrity by following these steps provided by Steam Customer Support.
⚫︎ If the save file still isn’t repaired, you may reinstall the game instead.
⚫︎ To make sure that the save file isn’t deleted, make sure to back up the save file before you remove the game from your device.
⚫︎ All Night of the Dead saved data can be found in the following folder: %LocalAppData%\LF\Saved\SaveGames
How Do I Deal with Performance Issues After Updating Night of the Dead?
If performance issues occur after updating the game, you may send an email to the developer’s official support website to relay the issue. Be sure to include your system’s specifications, as such information is necessary for Jackto Studios’ support team to assist you. You may send your inquiries to support@jacktostudios.com.
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Night of the Dead Product Information
 |
|
| Title | NIGHT OF THE DEAD |
|---|---|
| Release Date | May 31, 2024 |
| Developer | Jackto Studios |
| Publisher | Jackto Studios |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Steam) |
| Genre | Action, Horror, Survival |
| Number of Players | 1-50 (Online PvP and PvE) |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | Night of the Dead Website |
