Vampires, shotguns, and 80s movie vibes? What’s not to love about Everdark: Undead Apocalypse? A few things, but there are plenty of things to still love. First of all, it’s compared to Unreal, Doom, and Resident Evil. I only saw that after playing the demo, and in my opinion, aside from the executions, it’s not like any of them. Though that’s not a bad thing in the slightest.
It is definitely an FPS and moves at a good pace. It neither plods along like the protagonist is wearing diving boots, nor does it have the haste of Doom: The Dark Ages, and there’s a reasonable approach when adopting some basic strategies like baiting enemies away, or the Leeroy Jenkins ‘run at them’ method. That doesn’t work so well, as death can be frustrating. No, really?
Dying in games is so common that it’s all part of the territory, whether it’s Elden Ring, a rogue-like similar to Mexican Ninja, or Roblox. Actually, there’s not much dying in Roblox, just me from boredom. There, I said it, kids: not a fan. Back to the grown-ups game, and with Everdark: Undead Apocalypse, I was particularly annoyed with how abruptly you die as the health bar isn’t clear, and there’s no death animation. I was sometimes in the middle of retaliating, then would return to a checkpoint.
These checkpoints are relatively short, too, and a little reminiscent of a VR-type game or slightly restrictive environments. You’d kill a few enemies, bite off a bit more than you can chew, then get clobbered by one, only to have to do the same area all over again. It’s nothing new, but I didn’t like it here as much as I did the setup. After all, ‘vampires, shotguns, and 80s movie vibes’. They’re all here, and they look pretty good. There were a few glitches playing it on the Steam Deck, where each respawn would require me to pause, exit, and then reconfigure the resolution, as if the aspect ratio was off. This happened every time I died, which obviously added up.
With those bits out of the way, Everdark: Undead Apocalypse is a fun B-movie-like experience, but with decent production levels. Sure, the dialogue is a little corny, but I’d expect nothing less, and it adds to the vibe. The standard approach applies with combat, where you point and shoot, reload, and… you get the idea. What’s cool here, however, is that when you stagger a vampire, you get up close to them for a stake execution. Better still, these stakes are infinite, and you can sometimes get to a point where you can shred away at mobs and execute them without getting touched. It’s like Blade the game, only there’s never been a good Blade game.
Everdark: Undead Apocalypse is most definitely an FPS, but there are survival horror elements present due to the themes and also because of the ammo and bandage management. What perhaps is a particular highlight with ESDIP_GAMES’ title is that it is the first in a universe of games, which is pretty exciting. My only real criticism is those abrupt deaths. An improved difficulty setting and better indicator for when you’re about to kick the bucket would really help change this up. What do you think? A demo is available on Steam now.
