Survival Z
Blend of zombies, tower defense play is a generic adventure.
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Survival Z
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A Lot or a Little?
The parents' guide to what's in this game.
What Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that Survival Z is a tower defense-style action/strategy game exclusively for Apple Arcade. The world has been taken over by zombies, and you and a small band of survivors try to survive while facing wave after wave of the undead, who become increasingly stronger and gain more powers. While there's nonstop violence, it's cartoonish, without blood or gore being shown. There's also no foul language or inappropriate sexual content.
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What’s It About?
As one of the last surviving humans in a zombie-infested world in SURVIVAL Z, you'll have to fight to survive and find allies. This plays out in a series of levels, each with several randomly generated routes. Through each level, you'll have to fight through several zombie waves per stage. To help you clear them, you'll need to choose what equipment to upgrade and which defensive weapons to place on the map. Health doesn't replenish except at dedicated medical levels (and even then, it's not a lot), so avoiding damage is critical if you want to make it to the end of the level. Fail, and you'll have to start from the beginning, no matter how far you'd progressed previously.
Is It Any Good?
This action strategy game doesn't do anything especially wrong, but there's just not a lot about it that you don't feel like you've seen a dozen times before. The zombies in Survival Z, even the ones who hold special powers, aren't especially creative, and there are only so many ways to make tower defense games unique. It's also a game that can be too challenging for some players, penalizing them if they fail to make it through all levels intact. A couple of mistakes can erase a half-hour of gameplay, which will certainly be frustrating to young players.
The random nature of the routes is a nice twist, though. What can be insanely challenging one time can be fairly easy the next, if you're lucky. And the change in enviroments every few levels gives you some diversity in background, at least. There are plenty of characters, representing a wide range of genders and ethnicities, which is nice, and it gives the game some replayability since each character has different skills. The question is: Will you want to replay it that often to take advantage of every character's abilities?
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about strategy and the importance of planning ahead. Can you use the lessons learned from Survival Z in other games or in real life?
How would you react when put under pressure? Would you do things differently than the characters in Survival Z, or would you do exactly the same actions?
Game Details
- Platform: Apple Arcade
- Pricing structure: Paid
- Available online?: Available online
- Publisher: Ember Entertainment
- Release date: April 20, 2021
- Genre: Strategy
- Topics: Adventures, Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires
- ESRB rating: NR for No Descriptions
- Last updated: May 11, 2021
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