Game Review: ‘Deadly Days’

Zombie games pretty much have the same premise, zombies take over the world, survival is key, fight and scavenge in order to survive. Nothing new right? Well Pixel Split Games, Assemble Entertainment, and WhisperGames changed that by combining rogue-lite elements with silliness that birthed this pixilated strategy, Deadly Days.
Deadly Days is a pixilated strategy game where failure can be a good thing as the more you keep trying again, the more you uncover as no playthrough is the same. The game’s story is quite silly, some bad burgers were produced and sold in a fast food restaurant turning people into zombies, you take control of survivors to help battle the hoards of zombies while trying to find the burger joint that caused this apocalypse and destroy it.
 
 

 
 
The controls for Deadly Days are easy to master as they’re quite simple, plus the humorous tutorial at the start helps. The game’s sound designe is relatively simple but the soundtrack is amazing, depending on what you’re doing or what’s going on in the level, the music can either be plucky acoustic and loud brassy jazz, all that fits the relaxed nature of this game.
Gameplay is pretty straight forward, you can pick what mission you want to go on where then you go to the level and scavenge for food and supplies while fighting off zombies. During your adventures you come across other characters (there’s 55 different kinds) each one is unique and have their own perks that help your survivors, the more survivors you have, the more you can scavenge from the levels and the longer you can stay on them as when it turns to night the zombies become stronger.
 
 

 
 
What I love most about the game is the fact you’re no punished for losing, which can easily happen when you’re first starting out, it also helps that there’s an encyclopedia where you unlock different things in it that you find out in the world such as characters, items, and zombie types (the longer you survive, the more unique zombies you find!).
Overall, if you’re tired of the high-stress zombie survival and just want to spend an evening just grinding away in a world of moving pixels, great music, and comical characters, Deadly Days is for the zombie game veteran who wants to take a well deserve emotional break from “Walking Dead” style games.
 
 

 
 
On my scale of 1-10, with the low impact gameplay that focuses more on fun than skill, a fun soundtrack, silly premise, pixel art, and relaxing tone (a surprising thing), Deadly Days is a 10.
Deadly Days is out now on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, and Nintendo Switch.