Game Reviews

Mini Day Z review - A survival game with a bit of horror

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|
iOS
| Mini DAYZ
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Mini Day Z review - A survival game with a bit of horror
|
iOS
| Mini DAYZ

Mini Day Z does pretty much exactly what you'd expect a game called Mini Day Z to do. It's a survival game, but on a teeny tiny scale. Everything is a few chunky pixels big, and you need to stay alive for as long as possible.

The problem is there's a lot of things that are trying to kill you. And not just the zombies that stalk the islands that you find yourself on.

Nope, you're going to have to deal with starvation, thirst, and hypothermia as well. Oh, and you might just bleed to death too.

E-Z?

This is by no means a walk in the park. You can choose between tap controls and a floating joystick. You'll fight any monsters that come near you automatically.

If you've got a gun you fire it by tapping a button. There's a button to pick things up and interact with the world as well.

The control system isn't the best, but then there's a lot going on here. I'd recommend using the floating joystick, because the path-finding with the tapping can sometimes be a little erratic.

You need to pick up food, ammo, weapons, and water. But you've got super-limited inventory space. Beans or bullets? Bandages or a shirt to keep you warm? These are the sort of decisions you're going to have to make.

When things go bad - and they will go bad - the tension ratchets up to the extreme. Sure, you're just a collection of reasonably expressive dots on a screen, but when you're sprinting from abandoned car to abandoned car trying to find some food before you starve, you'll be pinned to the edge of your seat.

Throw in some ravenous undead and you're left with an experience that skirts the horror end of the survival gamut.

There are no jump scares here, but the very real pressure that swells up when your character starts saying they're starving to death is surprisingly engrossing.

Hard-Z

There are a few niggles here and there, but the scope of Mini Day Z can't be sniffed at. It's a massive game, with multitudes of randomly generated islands to explore.

There are different characters to play, and each time you pick up the game things are going to be different.

If you're looking for a simple-to-start-with game of staying alive, then you could do a lot worse than checking this one out.

Mini Day Z review - A survival game with a bit of horror

A thick and juicy experience that just happens to be on the small side
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.