izigame.me

To start this off, This game used to be much better in previous alpha states. This has been a repeated trend with the removal of certain features that were perfectly fine and made sense within the scope of the game, such as water jars being removed as well as other features being replaced with other and objectively worse systems such as "Learn By Reading" replacing Schematics and "Learn By Skill Points" and this trend has been repeated yet again in the 1.0 experimental update or "Release". Now, I know that this is an experimental version of the game and many changes may still be yet to come. However, I hope this review serves to highlight what I feel were unnecessary and poorly thought out changes made that do not suit the game so that they can be brought to the Devs attention and potentially be corrected for when the final version of this game is eventually released.

THE 1.0 UPDATE:
It wouldn't be in good faith to not at least discuss some of the positives that were brought with this update to highlight some of the good decisions that were made and I thought were quite welcome and helped to improve the overall experience.
Positives of the 1.0 Update (In my Opinion):
- The addition of New zombie skin types was quite welcome for me as it helped to alleviate the staleness of seeing the exact same zombie type everywhere in the game and it allows for more immersion with specific skins now working in specific POI's such as Bowler Tourist Zombies in bowling POI's and Prison Inmate Janitors in the Prison and Correctional Facilities.
- Some of the changes made to world generation were very long overdue but welcome nonetheless such as finally having 1% sliders for the amount of each biome able to generated which allowed for more specific customisation of the game map far more than was previously available. Additionally, the ability to determine the shape that biomes are able to be generated in also was quite nice considering that previous alpha maps were often in weird shapes which didn't properly match the selected percentages as well as the Burned Forest FINALLY being re-added back into the possibilities for biome generation.
- New Gore and Death models are a welcome sight for this game and are lots of fun especially on melee weapons that benefit a lot for head hits and dismemberment such as the sledgehammers and spears.
- The challenge system is a welcome sight for new players who may be confused or don't understand certain mechanics and helps to give a more broad range of possible activities for newer players by incentivising them with a menu that lays out goals as well as rewarding them with experience and items associated with the particular challenge
- The armour sets were a mixed bag in the update as some were quite well designed such as the Rouge Set for Stealing and Looting as well as the Biker armour set. These sets worked well with the theme of specialisation and all were designed around a singular goal or concept for the set. Others however completely failed at this or had confusing design decisions around certain pieces that will be discussed later.
- The addition of new tier 5 POI's were nice and definitely added more unique places to go and complete once reaching the late game as it had gotten quite stale with the same POI's available to complete once having the best available equipment (I am aware that other POI's were added in this update but the larger tier 5's were the main focus in much of the footage by the devs surrounding new locations)
- Some small QoL changes such as new voice work for traders, vehicle and animal models, new lighting, better audio, Block shape improvements, etc

Now we are onto the negatives of this review which are far worse and altered the game into a much worse state than it had been in. The update mostly consisted of reworking or nerfing systems too far and/or changing systems that were perfectly fine and didn't need to be altered as have been done many times in the past.

Negatives of the 1.0 Update (And dear god are there a lot of them):
- Alterations made to how traders spawn was not at all required and could have simple been applied to Navezgane or added as a slider in the world generation menu to allow for specific traders to only be allowed in specific Biomes if the player wished. Instead what we got was that traders are LOCKED to specific biomes and cannot be moved around meaning that if you are in the pine forest, Welcome to only trader Rekt and nobody else in the entire biome. This change was completely unwarranted and not required at all, It simple reduced player choice in how they want to play the game by locking what traders the player has easy access to from the beginning of the game. (This will be a running theme throughout the negatives)
- The changes to world generation also included negatives as well, This occurred because of the changes made to trader locations being dictated by only biome meaning that the game always has to generate enough of each biome so one trader for that biome can spawn (For larger maps sizes where a minimum of 1 of each trader CAN spawn) which completely ruins immersion for the game as it completely removes the ability to have an entire forest or to have an entire wasteland map if it is what the player wants to have and instead replaces it with a cookie cutter map system that forces the player to play the game how the devs want it to be played which only further removes player choice.
- Nerfs to trader progression only highlighted how poor the other options of progression within the game actually are. With traders now no longer offering any tools or weapons to the player and instead offer crafting bundles to the player where they are required to make their own equipment which only showed how utterly terrible the "Learn by Reading" system is within this game as it requires typically obscene amounts of magazines to unlock crafting for weapons. Crafting a TIER 1 sniper rifle requires you to find 60 MAGAZINES and a max tier requiring 100 MAGAZINES. This essentially forces the player into a stale and boring gameplay loop of Go to POI -> Loot POI for magazines -> Read Magazines -> Repeat at new POI. At least using traders for getting high grade gear was fun for a time because you could do high end POI's and have fun massacring zombies within a few in game days with the right progression loop. This update has not remedied this at all and has only removed player choice for progression by cutting down on possible options viability within the game to force players towards a more crafting oriented play-style without actually addressing any of the major problems that plague the crafting progression system and actively making changes to make it more enjoyable for players.
- Trader rewards and progression were also nerfed in this update meaning that players now need to spend more time levelling their traderstage and quest tier just to receive objectively worse rewards for their efforts meaning that playing as someone who does jobs in the post-apocalypse is no longer viable as a method of gaining items for progression. The amount of money/dukes was also reduced across the board along with normal non-weapon quest rewards being much worse and not worth the players time to complete especially at higher levels where a TIER 6 POI that usually takes an entire in-game day or at least 1/2 of a day will only reward you with 3000 dukes and an Antibiotic or 5000 gas which is utterly terrible. This again just removes player choice from how YOU want to play this game by making progression worse in areas where it didn't to be reduced at this level.
Since there is a word limit, the end will have to be here. The TLDR of this entire update seems to be removing choice from players about how they want to play the game and forcing gameplay loops onto the players that are stale, boring and unrewarding for the time invested by nerfing or removing other methods of progression.