Undying: Early Access Impressions

I first leanred about Undying during PAX West 2021 in Seattle in early September. The publishing team at Skystone Games was excited to explain the premise and after I saw the trailer, I knew I wanted more. After playing over six hours of the Early Access version, my desire for more still stands, but is a bit more measured.

Undying gets right down into the somber start within seconds of booting up the game. The mother (and character you play as), Anling, gets bitten by a zombie while she and her son, Cody, are just trying to get back to their house. The world seems to be dealing with this mysterious zombie infestation for quite some time, where containment zones and armed military are everywhere in the opening scene. With so many zombie (or zombie-like) IP’s, I am honestly shocked we haven’t seen a major player take on this angle. Right away we know Anling is done, but before she succumbs to her eventual end, she charges herself to teach everything she can to her son. This way, even after Anling is no more, her son can continue to live and survive in this world.

This opening sequence, with it’s faceless character design and mildly animated comics vibe, sprinkled in with some top-notch voice acting, hit me with the emotional truck of a thousand sad songs. I was absolutely in and wanted to see how this would turn out, not only for Cody but for Anling and her sheer will to help her child.

In terms of gameplay, players control Anling where Cody often follows behind. As you progress through various contained areas, it’s imperative to explore every nook and cranny for consumables, while also treading carefully to not get overwhelmed with zombies that are right in line of sight from you. Oftentimes, I found myself creeping around the areas, in hopes that I don’t get into an altercation with zombies. Even while looking for consumables, I often stumbled across diary snippets or newspaper clippings that further built out the world and the dire landscape that the two characters are in. Especially in the first hours of playing the game, I was super cautious, but eventually resources started to run dry in areas and I had no choice but to make some aggressive moves. In terms of combat, it’s pretty bare bones - hopefully surprise an enemy with a charged attack (usually a baseball bat or crowbar) and just click the mouse to get them down. There are also more craftable traps, but since resources are so scarce, I barely utilized them.

What intrigued me beyond the unexciting combat was how it impacted Cody. Immediately after my first encounter, Cody crouched to the ground and was visibly upset (but only with physical cues and a squiggly line in a chat bubble.). I walked over and noticed there was a prompt to ‘comfort’ him and get him moving again. This worked and brought me back to the notion that this is a child, experiencing utterly horrific moments and possibly seeing his mother inches away from death - that’s heavy stuff for anyone, especially a child.

This notion of caring for Cody continues throughout the game with another major feature. As you control Anling and craft resources, cook food, or do pretty much anything in the game, you have the option to allow Cody to watch you do the action. This gives Cody experience in one of three categories: Crafting, Survival, and Combat. As the experience grows, Cody eventually gets the option to learn abilities and can do more things autonomously. There’s one skill within these skill trees where Cody can find random and hidden resources within an area by himself. This was particularly wonderful because not all resources are easy to find or easy to get many of the same items. It also comes back around to the notion that Cody’s mother. Though thematically, it’s awesome to see Cody gain experience points for watching and learning everything I do as Anling, it was getting very tiresome to constantly hit the same button for him to earn the experience. Also, since there was no drawback from having him watch and learn every action, it almost seems pointless to have to actually press the button. This dissonance between the gameplay and story was a bit annoying but ultimately didn’t hinder my experience too much.

However, what became problematic was the eventual overwhelming amount of resource and health management that needed to occur. Anling and Cody have health, food meter, and water meter. Balancing all three at first was fairly straightforward, but as the story progresses, Anling’s ailment took a larger toll on her. Plus, electricity with the house, clean water management, planting seeds, and more became more of a hassle instead of an interesting notion to manage. Plus, I fear that my six hour adventure may be forced to come to an end since I may have run out of a possibly limited resource to progress the story… I hope in future updates this gets resolved so that players aren’t forced to restart. (On the other hand, maybe that’s intentional? Multiple playthroughs where you gain knowledge to get to areas quicker and with less resources used?)

Another aspect worth noting is that Anling is a Chinese immigrant who came to the United States to be with her love. The little touches of items in the house, along with a small personal shrine being the manual save location, little comments between the two protagonists, plus some talking bubbles in Mandarin are wonderful to see. As a first-generation American, it’s nice to see touches like this that remind me of my own experiences (albeit without a zombie apocalypse happening).

Undying’s Early Access premiere still has its hooks in me while also pushing me away due to the locked position I’m in. I think the premise and overall gameplay is enticing enough to give the game a try, but I may have to wait a few weeks to see how this ever-evolving game shapes up. There’s something special here by Vanimals, and I look forward to seeing the progression of this game.

Impressions by Harry Loizides