Terminus: Zombie Survivors is a turn-based zombie apocalypse game where the player explores a randomly generated map with hopes of reaching safety with the remaining survivors at the Terminus.
I was lucky to be given early access to the version 1.0 release of the game. While turn-based games are not usually my thing when it’s done right, they are amazing. This game uses turn gameplay to really hone in on the player's need to focus on the survival aspects of the game from shelter to hunger and even rest. The way it was done just feels right.
Starting you get to choose one of three backgrounds. As you beat the game further backgrounds you can select from become unlocked. I ended up going with the police officer for my playthroughs as he is a weapon and they show police station locations on the map. Which I felt was a nice little advantage.
There is also a traits system. Since I went with a background of the police, I went with cigarette preference which gives me a moral boost when my player smokes. Morale is one of the many things you need to micromanage as part of the survival aspect of the game.
The game gives you a short little tutorial that is right to the point and goes over in enough detail to get the point of what each of the UI windows in the game is displaying. I found keeping my eye on the condition page in the bottom left to be quite critical in monitoring my satiety and hydration levels. This would be something I struggled with a lot that even ended up costing me dearly not that far into my first playthrough.
The first couple of zones you find yourself in tend to be homes. My first time around I took things quite slow. Exploring every shelf and couch I found. Exploring around the outside of every building. I also killed any zombie I came into contact with.
Since I only start with a couple of bullets, I learned quite quickly I should have been evading the zombies more often than using what little supplies I had. I’d need to find a gun store to restock to acquire a decent amount of ammo. I’d end up not finding this on my first attempt.
Thankfully I picked up a few weapons along the way that were on the ground or in a container. Like all equipment in this game, however, they have durability and I find melee weapons break quite often.
Some of the locations I found would be unlocked and I just needed to spend a small amount of action points to open the door. Managing action points is quite a large aspect of surviving in this game. I dare say it’s almost more important than having enough food or water. One bad situation without enough action points to fight or flee and your troubles worsen considerably.
Everything you can do is shown in one of the panels. As I progressed further along in the game and looted different items more options became available to me. You do need to click on the move or attack button to do these options most of the time.
With it almost being night time I had to clear the building I was going to hold up in for the night. Once I find a light source I could risk exploring in the night. It however becomes quite harder as tiles you don’t have light to see at night are not visible. Making it easy to walk into a zombie or waste lots of action points trying to explore.
Combat in this game is a bit interesting. When it’s your turn you can attack a zombie as many times as you have enough action points for. This is what I rather liked about the turn-based feature in this game.
In any case, I could preplan attacking a zombie. I'd end my turn early before getting too close. Which progresses the game time by an hour and allows the zombie to move as well. I did this as each turn will not give you a full bar of action points. I’m also hoping the zombie gets close to me so I can use even fewer action points to get within the attacking range.
Once I ran out of bullets, I was down to using an aluminum bat to bash the zombie to death. I ended up taking him out at the legs. This however did not kill him. I had less of a condition loss on my weapon going for the legs so I went for that first. I had a better hit chance as well.
Once I had crippled the zombie it was easier to take out. Attacking the ones early game was not worth the effort. They usually just dropped an item I did not care too much for. I would have rather had the action points or weapons that would end up breaking to kill the zombie back instead.
At least there was the added benefit of reducing the total amount of weight on my character in each situation. You can loot backpacks and other items to carry more items while also picking up a weight reduction bonus. The more weight you are carrying the more action points will end up getting consumed doing something as basic as moving around a couple of tiles away.
This game was not kind to me wanting to be a packrat. I had quite a long distance to go before reaching safety at the Terminus let alone hitting a police station up for supplies. I was going to need to find a location I could use as a stash house in my exploration.
Things however were not meant to be. Not that long after I got killed by a zombie. That is when I learned the game is not over. You might just wish it was. I respawned in the last building I was in. On low health, with no food or water.
I attempted a few times to go exploring in different directions in search of needed supplies to survive. The issue was I did not have enough health to take damage from starving. It costs a lot of action points to move to another location.
In the end, I had to make a hard choice. I could not find any way to pull myself out of the bad situation I got in from over-exploring, carrying too much junk, and not having the supplies needed to survive. I had to press the give-up button and reset the game to a fresh start.
In my next attempt, you could say I was much lighter on my feet. If I did not need something I left it behind to reduce my total weight carried. If I did not need to engage a zombie, I left it alone and they mostly did not discover me. Although there were a couple of times during the night where they broke into the place, I was taking shelter in and I walked out alive once the sun was up.
One thing I tried to do was make good use of the nighttime. Since I was not out risking exploring at those hours. I made sure to have lots of books on me. Books allow you to unlock different crafting recopies, gain skill improvements, and even learn to fly a helicopter if you find all volumes of the training manual.
Things started to get a bit more interesting in this game once I noticed there was a car. The car however had no gas and needed repairs. Even better the next zone over had a building with a power generator.
At the time I lacked the resources and ability to take advantage of my new findings. It however seems like I found a possible location to fortify, store my stuff, and turn into a base of sorts.
Final Thoughts
This is where I leave you for now. My character passed out during a rainstorm from drinking too heavily. It seemed like a safe location to take the chance and get the morale, hydration, and satiety benefits of what I found to drink.
Information
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Terminus: Zombie Survivors.
Disclosure. A review copy of the game was received for free.