Yet Another Zombie Survivors: 1.0 Review Out of Early Access

Yet Another Zombie Survivors is a bullet heaven, the subgenre popularized by Vampire Survivors: you primarily control character movement, while weapons attack automatically and the screen progressively fills with enemies, experience, and power-ups.  The formula is simple, almost hypnotic, but precisely because of this, it often risks becoming a sequence of very similar matches.

Awesome Games Studio's game tries to avoid this problem by shifting the focus from the single survivor to the squad. Entering Early Access on July 13, 2023, and reaching version 1.0 on August 20, 2026, Yet Another Zombie Survivors doesn't reinvent the genre, but builds its identity around a more interesting question than the simple list of power-ups to choose each run: which characters can work best together? The answer isn't always immediate, and it's precisely in the synergies between abilities, roles, and power-ups that the game finds the reason to continue run after run.

You start with a single character and, during the game, you can recruit two more. All move together, but retain different weapons, abilities, and upgrade trees.

The Squad Matters More Than the Individual Character

It's here that Yet Another Zombie Survivors finds its identity. A good run doesn't just depend on upgrading the most effective weapon or ability, but on understanding which three characters can best complement each other on the battlefield. Some pairings open up specific synergies, while the fifth rank introduced in 1.0 expands individual trees to a new level of power.

The system works because it adds a horizontal decision to the genre's traditional vertical growth. We're not just increasing damage, speed, or critical chance: we're choosing which member to add and which part of the squad should become dominant. Even items collected during the game can be replaced, passed, or discarded, reducing the risk that an initial choice will too heavily influence the run.

Auto-aim and automatic fire can be disabled separately, but the game plays better by letting them work and focusing on movement. As the hordes grow, the real task becomes reading open spaces, avoiding elite zombie special attacks, and knowing when to cross a group of enemies to reach experience, healing, or power-ups. It's simple control, but not passive: at higher difficulties, one wrong trajectory is enough to end a seemingly controlled run.

The limit emerges, however, when progression becomes predictable. Once the most efficient combinations are identified, some upgrades stop being conditional and become true must-haves (I'm thinking, offhand, of the engineer's laser upgrade or the tank's minigun). Permanent growth mitigates the frustration of defeats, because even a failed game returns points to invest in characters and their stats. The flip side is that, by increasing health, damage, speed, and other basic parameters, some obstacles can be overcome simply with higher numerical values, without having to truly modify the team composition or one's playstyle. The plot remains deliberately light and functional to the roguelite structure: the zombie apocalypse serves as a backdrop to a series of missions and conversations that introduce the survivors, their motivations, and their relationship with the base. At the camp, it's possible to talk to team members, listen to short dialogues, and follow personal or main assignments, while repeatable missions offer additional objectives to complete between expeditions. It's not a story designed to surprise with major narrative twists, but a useful backdrop to give the group a minimum of personality and explain the progression.

1.0 Tries to Break the Routine

The definitive version adds the Ranger as the ninth character, the Bio Lab arena, and Boss Rush. The latter is the most interesting variation because it changes the relationship with time: there are ten minutes to build the team before the final boss arrives, and the speed with which it is eliminated factors into the rankings. So it's not enough to survive; you need to be prepared quickly.

The Bio Lab map also works against some established habits. The decontamination zone periodically shrinks the safe space and forces the player to reach a specific point on the map before the countdown expires. The concept is reminiscent of timed modes or chase events present in other bullet heavens, where it's not enough to build an effective combination and let yourself be surrounded by enemies. The difference compared to a mode like Boss Rush, which focuses pressure on the rapid elimination of powerful opponents, is that Bio Lab primarily tests positioning and the ability to abandon a safe zone at the least convenient moment. These are simple variations, but useful because they change how you move instead of just offering a new backdrop.

The Camp completes the out-of-battle structure with dialogues, radio, and missions. There are main, personal, and repeatable assignments, in addition to the Friendship system which permanently increases certain rewards. Torments, twenty-eight optional challenges, put pressure on those who have already developed much of the progression.

Yet Another Zombie Survivors unfortunately still remains a bit repetitive. You fight thousands of zombies, collect crystals, level up, and repeat the cycle, always looking for a better combination than the previous one. The difference is that the three-person squad makes that repetition elastic enough to sustain experimentation.

Zombies Come, Zombies Go

Visually, Yet Another Zombie Survivors opts for a clean 3D isometric graphic that is above all functional to readability, a requirement that is anything but secondary when hundreds of zombies, projectiles, and effects simultaneously occupy the screen. Survivor models are easily distinguishable, and version 1.0 has further improved both their rendering and overall optimization, maintaining good fluidity even in the most chaotic phases.

The price of this clarity, however, is a rather anonymous artistic identity: environments, undead, and characters use an immediately recognizable post-apocalyptic imagery, but rarely produce anything that truly sticks in the mind.  Ability effects become spectacular when a build is fully operational, although in the most crowded situations, the quantity of explosions, numbers, and indicators can start to work against the very readability that the game normally manages to preserve.