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The Midnight Walkers Review [Early Access] | Janky Mechanics Meet Deadly Zombies

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Everything We Know About The Midnight Walkers

The Midnight Walkers Plot

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The Midnight Walkers doesn’t follow a narrative structure aside from dropping players in Liberty Grand Center, a mega-complex filled with zombies and other players. The goal is to fight, scavenge, craft, and extract. Players can craft weapons, armor, and consumables, trade items, and manage a hideout.

The Midnight Walkers Gameplay

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Players choose from four character classes: Brick (tank), Crow (assassin), Lockdown (hunter), and Bartender (support). Gameplay involves navigating the complex, fighting zombies, scavenging resources, crafting gear, and trying to escape with whatever you’ve collected.

The Midnight Walkers Release Date

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The game was released in early access on January 29, 2026. No official release date has been announced for 1.0.


Digital Storefronts
Steam IconSteam
$19.99

The Midnight Walkers Review (Early Access)

Janky Mechanics Meet Deadly Zombies

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It’s hard for me not to like extraction shooters. I mean, come on, what’s not to like? They’re fast, tense, rewarding if you’re a hoarder like me, and there’s something inherently satisfying about sneaking around, grabbing loot, and then getting out alive. Give me a Borderlands-style weapon scavenge or a Tarkov-esque death spiral, and I’m sold.

The Midnight Walkers, even in its early stages, teases that same rush. And yet… man, it disappointed me in ways I didn’t even expect. Extraction shooters are, by nature, easy to lampoon, easy to have fun with, and this one tries to be serious but ends up tripping over itself constantly.

Fighting Zombies, Other Players, and the Game Itself

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The premise is solid on paper. The game drops you into Liberty Grand Center, a massive, zombie-infested mega complex where every hallway could be your last. You’re scavenging for weapons, crafting armor and consumables, trading with other players, and trying to survive long enough to make it out with something worth keeping. Sure, that sounds awesome. It’s exactly the sort of tense, high-stakes setup that should make me sit at the edge of my seat.

Except, most of the time, you can’t even get to the fun part.

Connecting Is Harder Than Surviving

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Honestly, one of the biggest hurdles in this demo is just getting to play. A significant portion of my sessions was spent trying to connect to the server. Sometimes I didn’t even make it past the lobby. Other times, I’d get in, only to be disconnected after a few minutes. And when that happens, there’s no smooth fallback. The game tries to reconnect you, but often it puts you in spectator mode and before you can even exit gracefully, it kicks you again. It’s maddening.

Then, when I finally did get into a run, random lag spikes and wonky map rendering made it feel like a roulette of death. Zombies wouldn’t spawn properly, walls would render wrong, objects would vanish, resulting in getting killed by enemies I literally couldn’t see. For a game that’s supposed to be all about tension, it’s hard to feel the thrill when you can’t trust the game to show you the threats in front of you.

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And even when the game actually decides to let you play, that’s when you hit the next problem: the classes. You’re finally in, ready to fight, scavenge, and survive, and then you realize that choosing your character doesn’t exactly change the chaos in the way you’d hope.

Classes That Should Be Fun, But Aren’t

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Okay, so there are four characters: Brick (tank), Crow (assassin), Lockdown (hunter), and Bartender (support). In theory, they’re meant to offer different strategies. Tank soaks damage. Assassin sneaks and deals precise kills. Support mixes drinks for buffs. Sounds fun, right?

In practice… not so much. Skills barely matter, and the classes don’t feel unique at all. At first, I defaulted to Brick, the tank, because zombies hit like trucks and, at early levels, it felt like the only safe choice. But tanks are slow, heavy, and just not my playstyle. I wanted to try something that’s closer to my preferred fluid combat style which is the assassin, thinking maybe agility and quick kills would feel better.

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But the assassin’s attacks were still sluggish, heavy attacks weren’t the tank’s problem. It wasn’t a class issue at all. The combat itself is just clunky. Every character feels weighed down, every fight feels awkward, and what should have been fun, varied gameplay ends up being a "meh" experience.

Combat is slow, unresponsive, and uninspired. Attacks feel heavy no matter what class you pick. Hit detection can be weird, making fights more frustrating than tense. Zombie hits are overpowered, punishing every small mistake immediately, which should create tension—but instead, it just felt unbalanced and annoying. I want to enjoy this, I really do, but the game keeps reminding me that I’m fighting both the enemies and the controls.

And then there’s the loot. Because after all that struggle I finally get to collect my hard-earned rewards… only to find most of it is junk.

Loot Makes Me Question Everything

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Extraction shooters live or die by their loot, and here… well, let’s just say I spent more time wondering why I bothered than actually celebrating anything I found. Most of it is junk. I scavenged thoroughly, like I always do in these games, but the rewards didn’t make me feel clever, tense, or accomplished. It’s like spending hours hunting for treasure and finding an empty chest.

Glimmers of Tension

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And the reason why the disappointment I had when I played this game hurts is because there’s real potential here. Zombies can sneak up in genuinely tense ways. The variety in enemies is noticeable—walkers, crawling ones with explosives strapped to them—and there are moments where I felt genuinely locked in, heart pounding, thinking, "Okay, I might survive this."

On top of that, there are systems here that feel genuinely promising. There’s a marketplace with different vendors, like a pharmacist where you can buy medicine and supplies. There’s even a player trading system that unlocks at level 5, letting you exchange gear and resources with others. On paper, it’s the kind of stuff that should deepen the experience and give you more reasons to keep coming back.

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The premise is solid, the setup is there, and if the technical problems and clunky combat were fixed, this could be a legitimately exciting extraction shooter. But at the end of the day, nothing here is enough to get me hooked. And that’s kind of the point of a looter shooter, right? You’re supposed to risk, struggle, and survive because the rewards feel worth it. Here, the risk exists, sure… but the payoff? Not so much.

Early Access Isn’t a Free Pass for This

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Look, I get it. It’s early access. Things are rough, systems aren’t finished, and bugs happen. That’s fine. But a game that is more often unplayable than fun, that boots you from the lobby more than it lets you fight, isn’t ready to be put in front of players yet. Potential is nice, but in its current state, this is more headache than heart-pounding fun. It’s a cautionary tale, a "look what could be" instead of a "look what is."

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The Midnight Walkers Product Information

The Midnight Walkers Cover
Title THE MIDNIGHT WALKERS
Release Date Early Access
January 29, 2026
Developer Oneway Ticket Studio
Publisher Oneway Ticket Studio
Supported Platforms PC (Steam)
Genre Extraction Shooter
Number of Players 1-3
ESRB Rating N/A
Official Website The Midnight Walkers Official Steam Page

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