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Published on February 12th, 2025 | by Nay Clark

Undying Review (Switch)

Survive in a world run by zombies in this gut wrenching tale where the living dead is more insignificant than your deadline. Undying is an isometric survival game developed by Vanimals, published by Skystone Games, and released in early access on PC on October 19th of 2021 with a full release on December 7th of 2023 and is now making its way over to Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation consoles on February 11th of 2025. In Undying, players control a mother who must take care of their son during a zombie apocalypse. Using multiple skills like crafting, cooking, and fueling your vehicle prove to be valuable abilities during these horrendous times and helping each other as much as possible is the best way to successfully handle the dire situations you find yourself in. Boil water and scavenge for scraps as you look for more survivors before rescuers make their last round of helping people evacuate.

The game starts with Anling and her son Cody taking shelter with others in a subway station from the walking dead that have already been roaming around for 4 months. After the ceiling collapses, Anling unfortunately gets bit, but is able to run away to safety with Cody. Since they have been separated from their group, they hightail it back to their house where they can rest and catch up on the news after fixing the television. They find out that the last evacuation attempt will take place in 56 days. Now infected from her bite, she must take care of her son while teaching him how to survive the final days of the outbreak.

The story is pretty interesting at first, but quickly falls into the typical zombie story. The narrative overall feels almost half-baked and some plot threads aren’t as fleshed out as you may hope them to be. While this zombie tale about family is conventional, it is still well done with dramatic story beats that have twists and turns. I felt the dialogue was on the weaker side, though. Conversations sometimes feel a bit forced or the characters will talk in a roundabout way to actually say something simple.

You’ll run into different characters that have their own problems, but the main narrative is the relationship between Anling and Cody. There are different dialogue options that you can choose from that can careen their characteristics in a certain manner. They will talk to each other every once in a while and you can make choices that seemingly affect Cody in different ways; like you can comfort him when he’s scared or if you panic, Cody will notice. There are also important events that can affect the outcome of some characters depending on how you go about some decisions and what you interact with. Undying has multiple branching paths and you can have different endings based on what you do which adds some nice replay value.

A big feature within Undying is the time limit. Easier difficulties prolong the in-game days and harder difficulties will shorten them. While the time limit seems daunting at first, it does make you think more rationally about how you should go about spending your short days. Even after figuring out all of the mechanics in the game, you will still think seriously about what you should do next in moments of downtime or levity. I really liked how the night and day cycle worked here and how it directly tied into the story, gameplay, and especially with Anling.

Undying is all about time management. Since you only have 56 days before evacuation, you can only do so much. Your main goal as Anling is to scavenge areas for scrap and other useful items as well as look for survivors to gather information about other areas and to find the route to the evacuation point. You can plant food, cook meals, create healing items like bandages, assemble weapons, as well as disassemble items for scrap parts that you can use for something else. There are benches at the house where you can complete a lot of these tasks and you can upgrade the actual benches as well to make your creations better in a multitude of ways. You can’t just go and do whatever you want though and a lot of things require something else. You need a trowel to plant food as well as water to help it grow, you need materials to build crafting stations in your house, and if you have to repair the sink in your house if you use it too much to get drinking water. There’s a lot of different things you can do, and the pressure to try to balance everything is pretty intense at first, but slowly eases up the further you get into it.

Cody is always watching, and you can choose to teach him various things. The more Cody learns, the more he will be able to help out, taking a lot of strain off of you. Eventually, Cody can cook, fish, and even help you scavenge for items. Cody uses a slingshot to pummel the zombies with rocks and he can train at the target board in the backyard, but overuse will cause the target to break in which you will have to use materials to make a new one. Cody has a skill tree that you can look at that helps you decide what you want to teach him while you are out and about looking for raw materials. He can eventually learn advanced skills like increasing his chance to find more items or gaining an extra inventory slot so taking care of him properly is really beneficial in the long run besides just having a pair of extra hands to chop down trees.

Travelling to other areas also consumes your time and makes your choices even more important. You’ll travel to different environments like the city, the farm, or the supermarket via your truck. Each area has a lot of resources lying around that are guarded by the formidable dead. Combat is simple which is nice since you have an allotted time. Melee weapons like a metal pipe or a crowbar can be swung to damage your foes and long range weapons like a handgun can be shot to damage enemies from afar. You can crouch to sneak around and get an advantage on enemies, but it’s mostly just going to be a quick back and forth battle until the enemy is downed. There are different types of enemies that do varying degrees of damage and some are faster than others. The areas aren’t too big so while there isn’t much to explore and fighting can feel unsatisfying, it helps the game not feel completely overwhelming.

There are other elements within the game that you have to keep a watch out for. When the day sets, you need to go back home to sleep, so you can’t just keep scavenging all day long. Anling’s zombie condition from her bite worsens as the days continue and she gets weak and tired when the sun sets. Eventually, you can gain some perks from this zombie state that Anling succumbs to, creating another component to play with. Since Cody is a child, he often gets frightened during moments of combat so he might freeze up or get so scared that you have to go over to him to calm him down. You can issue certain commands to Cody to let him search areas or to stay back so you can handle things. You can also hold onto Cody’s hand to travel around with him more quickly which is useful since you can’t enter areas without him.

The gameplay loop is pretty entertaining if you like games where you have to make quick choices. I enjoyed my time with it while playing it on the Switch in handheld mode since the game is very easily absorbed in small chunks at a time. It’s easy to pick up and put down since it is separated in multiple days and I find it quite accessible to jump in and accomplish a bit every once in a while and call it a day…literally. The story and combat don’t really offer anything substantial if you are a veteran of zombie media, but I found completing the different actions in gameplay like finding enough materials to upgrade a crafting station, getting Cody to learn a new skill, and exploring the different areas satisfying and rewarding.

Graphically, the game has a cool cell shaded style that has a minimalist quality. Characters don’t have faces and a lot of items and areas have a simple smooth design with flat colors. With as many things that you can do, I appreciated the design of the U.I. and in-game menus. The simplicity of them made everything really easy to firmly get a grip of so whenever you found something new, you instantly knew what the game was telling you. The soundtrack for Undying is really well done and accompanies the dreadful circumstance beautifully with somber tunes. The audio work is also good with nice contextual noise and gratifying sounds when you are tinkering with objects.

Final Thoughts?

I thoroughly enjoyed Undying although it feels like it is missing an extra layer of something unique to make it innovative. There are so many different gameplay mechanics that it feels more like busy work than actually playing the game to have fun, especially since the story and the combat are uninspired. Once you get going and the game opens up more, it starts to feel a bit redundant with lackluster upgrades and even more gameplay elements that you have to juggle. The game has a large amount of potential to be something more if it opened up its locations and quests more, but since it’s tied down with its time limit, there isn’t much more it can offer. Regardless, actually playing the game and completing tasks feels rewarding and different decisions you can make regarding Cody are creative. Undying is definitely a thoughtful and intense journey you might want to check out if you are interested in games that are focused around beneficial and effective planning.

About the Author

Nay Clark Gaming holds a special place in my heart and I never stop talking about video games. I really love all types of games and have an interest in games that have complicated stories and lore because I enjoy untangling the mystery of it all. When I'm not gaming, I unsuccessfully try to control three amazing and incredibly bright kids.

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