Fort Zombie is a low budget survival horror RPG set in the small township of Piety. The premise of Fort Zombie is an interesting one. There is nothing quite like it on the PC, although it bears some resemblance to Dead Rising on the XBox 360. The first objective is to clear out a base of operations. After doing so, Fort Zombie is about gathering survivors, weapons, and supplies in order to repulse a final zombie assault. Click here to find out more about Fort Zombie.

The first, and most essential thing you need to know about Fort Zombie is that even when patched to the most recent version (1.03), it still suffers from crippling problems. Before it was patched many people couldn't even start the game without crashing, whereas now crashes only occur between missions if you do certain things, and occasionally during the zombie ambush event. Severe design flaws are also present in Fort Zombie, most notably in terms of the camera control. Rather than utilising the typical chase cam, with which the point of view and character turn with the mouse, Kerberos have decided to go for a clunky point of view which requires constant manual adjustment and has a limited field of view. After ten minutes of playing, or trying to play, you will probably end up doing more groaning than the zombies. Zombie Fort is also a sort of apartment complex for retired game bugs; for example, zombies periodically become immaterial and drift through surfaces, or become stuck in obstacles. I have experienced random speed changes in the game, between incredibly slow and panic inducing fast, and since the stamina cost of movement seems constant these oscillations significantly alter how the game plays. It's painfully obvious that the developers, Kerberos, released this title far too soon (for Halloween). It's even difficult to say if this game has been tested at all prior to release. Regardless of price, paying customers should not be turned into ad-hoc testers!

The mission screen. There are more fearsome opponents than zombies to deal with!

With that little rant out of the way we can take a look at the game itself. Fort Zombie looks very much like a shooter, but hits are determined by RPG style skills, rather than where the reticule is pointed. At the beginning, players choose a former profession for the protagonist, Ben Riley. Choices include policeman, paramedic, student, and criminal. Each former profession provides a basic template which determines character stats and skills. Stats affect such things as health, resistance to infection, and how far or fast your character can run. Skills establish efficiency with weapons, or at activities like sneaking or constructing traps. All these attributes can be modified to some extent and new skills may also be added. Players must then choose one of three forts to occupy: a police-station, a prison, or a school. Then it's into the big bad world with Ben.

Obviously a lot of Love went into the Crafting of this game, but it doesn't quite come off.

The first goal is to kill or evade any zombies on the way to your chosen fort, looting any goodies that happen to present themselves. Make it there, dispatch a few more zombies and the fort is yours. Each day a number of missions are made available which allow for the acquisition of resources. It is necessary to be selective about which missions you choose, as it is impossible to complete them all given limited time and the need to heal, eat, etc. No point having a load of guns and no food or medicine. And so it goes. In line with RPG convention, character development is present; Ben's abilities improve through use. There are a good many weapons to pick up through the game, perhaps twenty ranged and fifteen melee. Unfortunately, their implementation is utterly bland. As the game progresses additional survivors will become available. These can be taken on missions to provide additional fire-power, or carry out tasks, such as constructing traps or healing other survivors. They are generally best left at the base as survivor path-finding is horrendous; they require constant coaxing to keep them nearby. Just try getting two survivors down a spiral staircase...

I wouldn't have to wait up if you tried going around the car! Fort Zombie: A startling rebuttal to Darwin's theory of evolution.

In terms of visuals, playing Fort Zombie is like jumping into a time machine and whizzing back five or ten years. To be honest if everything else had been well executed, the graphics wouldn't have mattered very much. Sound is on a par with the graphics. I'm still undecided about the music, largely because there isn't any, except for a metal-esque ditty at the beginning and the constant moans and groans of the PC's most unfortunate zombies.

Unfortunately (are you seeing a pattern here?), the best thing about Fort Zombie is the relatively fresh and interesting concept which it fails to bring to life. That's not to say that it's impossible to derive fun from the game, but the instability, inconsistency, and general bugginess of the game means you have to work for that fun. I would only recommend this game to die hard fans of survival horror who are endowed with a very generous helping of patience. I'm not sure if it's possible for Fort Zombie to be improved and polished to the point where it is playable or properly enjoyable; but, if you are interested in this low-budget survival horror game, it may be worth keeping an eye on newer patches, stranger things have happened.

Update: The game is much more stable and consistant with patch 1.04. It's actually fun to play now. If you like the idea, the game may now be worth a punt. Pathfinding and performance still aren't great though, and zombies can still pass through walls. Also the framerate dropped to about 10 FPS for the final battle.