Deadly Days Switch Review

After being released on Steam in late 2019, it’s great to see that Deadly Days is now available on Nintendo Switch.

For those that haven’t played the game on other platforms, you’re certainly in for a treat when you pick it up on Nintendo Switch!

Gameplay

The premise is pretty straight forward; you’re tasked with getting yourself (and some survivors) out alive of the zombie apocalypse you’re stuck in. I’m normally not a huge fan of zombie apocalypse games, but this is a charming game.

It should be noted though that this isn’t a walk in the park. Despite it’s somewhat cute appearance, underneath it is a really challenging game. As is to be expected with a rouge lite game, when all of your survivors die, it’s game over. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it does add to the overall tension of the game and does make you adapt your play style.

For the first few rounds that I played, I was spending too much time looking at the scenery and messing around with the mechanics that it ended in certain death. Once the sun goes down it’s a completely different ball game and it’s really just a matter of time until the zombies finish you off. To begin with, there are only 2-3 survivors, but as you get further into the game, more are able to join your group. One important thing to consider though is that you need to have scavenged fruit. If there’s not enough to go around, then some survivors will end up dying at the end of the day.

There are various scenarios to choose from, which have varying degrees of the danger you’ll encounter as well as how much you can loot. When it comes to looting, this involves scavenging for parts from houses as well as cars in order to get more scrap metal. These scraps can then be used to upgrade your items in the game.

It really is a balancing act between getting as much loot as possible, and getting out alive. If you’re too greedy then it’ll make the process a lot more difficult. It’s certainly the case of high risk; high reward.

When you go back to day 0 after dying (which will happen), you’re also given the option of several skillsets to choose from. These range from being able to heal across a wider area of the game, as well as having stronger attacks. Playing around with these different abilities does add a degree of uniqueness to the game, which is certainly a welcome addition to it. In other games where death means a full restart, it can get quite samey. This isn’t the case with Deadly Days thanks to the ability to mix things up a bit.

The daily challenges also add an extra degree of longevity to the game. The aim is to simply see how long you and the survivors can fend off the zombies for. The results are then tied to a leaderboard. Since there isn’t local or online multiplayer available in Deadly Days, this is a nice compromise instead.

Due to the somewhat speedy rate that death can occur in the game, it’s actually a bonus that there’s not online multiplayer since less adept players could end up making more experience players left feeling a tad frustrated.

Visuals

Deadly Days has a brilliant, retro aesthetic that a lot of smaller and indie developers are opting for right now. It fits the overall feel of the game perfectly. The UI is well laid out, and playing it in handheld didn’t pose any issues at all. Everything scales down to the screen properly. The animations are smooth, and the glimering effects to let you know something can be looted is a nice touch as well, it does help planning your away around the map a lot more streamlined.

When you first get into the map, parts of it are hidden. Only by exploring the maps further will you see more of it, not unlike Command & Conquer.

Sound

It’s often the case that the music in a game can make or break it. I wasn’t expecting the music in Deadly Days to be jovial. It’s a mix of jazz music with a hint of Spanish influence and it actually fits in really well with the relaxed, organised chaos play style of the game.

The sound effects are spot on as well and much like the music, it does add to the overall experience and really cements itself as a well thought out and developed game.

There’s definitely a growing trend lately that smaller studios and indie developers are pushing out much better products than ‘AAA’ studios. It’s good to see though that the smaller studios are taking the time and effort to make sure that gamers are getting a better, unique experience at a fraction of the price of the games being put out by some of the larger studios.