I love zombie survival games. Let’s get that out of the way right here in the beginning. Very few games and scenarios can pull me in and completely dominate my free time quite like a post-apocalyptic dying simulator. Now don’t misunderstand me; while I experience great joys from these games, I’m about as good at them as I’d be at surviving under the same conditions in real life.
My lack of measurable survival skills is why I usually try my best to steer clear of some of the more popular and challenging titles in this genre. Instead, I find myself on an eternal quest to find a game where all zombies used to be couch potatoes instead of Olympic level athletes.
Welcome to my life, Undying. Undying starts us off in an apocalyptic world that is currently falling to the Zombies. You play as both a mother and her son attempting to reach a safe zone when the forever morning breath-ers attack them. While shielding her son Cody from the attack, the mom, Anling, gets bitten and, as such, is no longer welcome in any safe zone; instead, the two now find themselves on their own.
It’s now up to you, the player, to make sure that Anling survives and fights the motherly urge to eat her son up, in her case, literally. You also have to use Anling to teach Cody all the necessary skills to survive. This “mother/son” dynamic was exciting because it’s not something we’ve come to expect from either survival or horror games. The moments of sensitivity and vulnerability shown between the two only highlight the foreboding and hopeless situation they find themselves in. As a set-up, it works well.
An interesting dynamic to the well-seasoned survival aspect is balancing the consequences of Anling’s… situation. While a lot of your time in the game will be spent doing what you’d expect from a game like this, namely gathering items and crafting, another massive chunk of your time will be dedicated to managing Anling and Cody’s statuses. As time passes, status effects will affect both mother and son, like thirst and hunger. However, because of Anlings infection, some effects pop up only for her, such as gout, which significantly decreases her travel distance while also constantly eating away at her health.
This creates an ever-changing yet delicate balancing act between getting into a rhythm of controlling Anling and Cody and then completely changing everything up when a new status effect pops up. While exploring, players can only physically control Anling, but that doesn’t mean they can leave Cody to the wind. If Anling travels too far from Cody, there is a chance he will panic and even collapse from fear, and unless he is behind Anling, you won’t be able to travel to a new map.
Undying isn’t my favourite survival game I’ve played, but it felt the most human at times. Playing through the struggles a mother and her son faced shouldn’t have been as relatable as it was. Yet, ultimately, that sense of kinship makes Undying a truly compelling play.
